078,874
CAUTOGRAPHY
EDITION X
WAND
I! FACTS
WOPINIONS

ni. Staaq

GRAD/BOHR
11605
1895
Entered according to the Act of Congress
by
F. B. DICKERSON CO.
1895.
BURRI GRAD
Is true freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt ?
No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free !
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
-FAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
INTRODUCTION.
People who do not know the spirit that actuates
the officers of the American army, suppose they
are anxious to fly at the throats of people at every
little row brought about by corporators who want
to exercise complete control over their workingmen
and reduce wages when they see fit. Whenever
a general manager of a railroad has perpetrated a
steal, his first move to cover it up is to lower wages,
and at the same time he fills the' trains with Pink-
erton detectives to spot conductors for knocking
down. It is always the big thief who howls the
loudest about the little thief. The officers of the
United States army being as a rule intelligent and
fair-minded men, are aware of all these moves on
the part of corporations, and are also aware that
the corporations have for many years practically
usurped the powers of both National and State'
governments. And it must be remembered that the
majority of these officers, under the rules of promo-
tion, come directly from the great body of the
people who entertain sentiments antagonistic to the
rule of corporations, trusts and combines.
When the call came from the commander-in-chief
at Washington, under the advice of his attorneya
general, who used to be a corporation lawyer,
it was promptly responded to by the various
detachments of troops. They believed the reports
that were circulated about mob outrages in
INTRODUCTION.
e
Chicago. These reports were industriously circulated
by the gang of railroad managers collected at Chi-
cago, who were howling about destruction of prop.
erty until the people of the United States thought that
all the railroad property in the great railroad centre
of Chicago was going up in flames. Of course the
managers had a big fund under their control to hire
clouds of detectives and other agents, but whether
all the fund went for the payment of the hired help
only the managers themselves know. There are
various means by which railroad managers get rich.
One of the best ways is to raise a big fund to buy
legislatures and only spend a fourth or a half of it
and pocket the balance. This is what in current
slang is called "playing both ends against the
middle.” That is to say, the managers manage to
buy the legislatures for small money on the one
hand and beat the owners of the roads on the other
hand. The managers take part in politics and this
requires a fund which is handled by them. Thus
they have various funds for various purposes which
must be met by the earnings of the roads. The
roads would make more money were they subject
to proper State control under a general law, than
they do now under the control of the managers
and the stock would be in a better general condition
as-investors would have more faith in these
securities.
INTRODUCTION.
The managers that met at Chicago had more or
less control of most of the newspapers in that city
and the hue and cry that went up directed the
sympathy of many misinformed people away from
the strikers and covered up the real cause of the
industrial struggle. It was the managers that most
largely influenced the bringing of the troops to
Chicago. There was a chance for money in it.
More than that; there was a chance for the absolute
control of the workers and an opportunity for
dominating the unions.
The troops flocked in from all sides and were
disposed all round the city at strategic points and
guards and videttes were thrown out. Information
came in from the strike districts and little by little.
the officers gathered all the facts in the case. And
they found the facts to be grossly exaggerated, both
the representations of the managers and the publica-
tions of the tools of the corporations, which were
certain newspapers. Wherever opportunity offered
they compared the information gathered by their
own men and themselves and when they exhausted
inquiry and were satisfied, they met in one of the
Chicago hotels. That meeting was one of the most
extraordinary for its significance that was ever held
in the United States. It was a calm and quiet
comparison of notes gathered by the officers them-
selves, and the conclusion was clear that the army
INTRODUCTION.
had been brought to Chicago under a pretense
for the purpose of siding with the corporations
in an industrial struggle. It was clear that there
was no emergency of sufficient moment to demand
the appearance of the United States army. They
were in a dilemma. The unhappy operatives at
Pullman were not armed men, nor were the men
of the Railway Union who took their part cut-
throats or armed rebels. It was clear that it
was a fight for just wages against Pullman and
his sympathizing corporation gang who refused
arbitration. Pullman had said: “There is nothing
to arbitrate," and a misguided president of the
United States had sent the troops to back Pull-
man. It was clear to the eyes of these officers
that the police, or at the utmost the State troops,
were equal to the disturbance that had been going
on, and it was clear to them that such work for the
army would, when the real facts were known, render
the army obnoxious to the thinking people of the
United States, as showing that it was at the beck and
call of corporations, and as showing that a corporate
aristocracy had the control of the army, and that if
a republic were to be maintained it would call for
the total abolition of an army that could be made
use of for such anti-republican methods.
There in that room, officers who had seen service
in the great war of the rebellion expressed their
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INTRODUCTION.
U
indignation that they were called out to be
used, as was patent to them, not so much to
quell a riot as to crush labor unions; in a city-
where cowardice and greed for money predominated
over common sense; where howling newspapers
egged on rather than allayed the excitement of a
badly misinformed city, and all under the flimsy
plea of enforcing the interstate commerce act, they
were to be used as the general managers might
deem best. These officers did not confine themselvės
to the mere expression of indignation. Their patri-
otic feeling led them farther than that. They de-
nounced among themselves the advisers of the Presi-
dent of the United States who had sent them on
such a mission. It was not the spirit of insubordi.
nation, but of righteous indignation against being
used against the defenseless and the weak and to
bolster up wrong and greed, that animated many
regular officers.
In their righteous anger they were willing to
give their views to the public, and a second meet-
ing was to be held to formulate those views which
were to be spread over the length and breadth of
the land to the people of the republic.
It is a pity these did not see the light of day at the
time. Had they been published, there might have
been a different end of the great strike. The people
would have known the truth. All the facts of this
12
INTRODUCTION.
S
meeting were, however, well known to newspaper
men of the Chicago dailies and those from other
cities who were on the ground, and some day it will
be history and be to the credit of our army, although
now it may not appear so.
By some means the particulars of the first
meeting leaked out before the second meeting was
held, and a court-martial of the officers who par
ticipated was ordered. They created great excite
ment among the railroad managers to whom the par-
ticulars had come. The facts were also known to the
newspapers—at least, they were known to those in
the interests of the corporations; but they were
told not to publish them, and they kept these im-
portant facts from the public. Thus the newspapers
judge of the kind of facts that must be laid before
the public, and the kind of facts that must be with-
held from the public. And thus the line of facts
that are against the policy of a newspaper are left
for the slow coming of history, while the line of facts
that are in line with the newspaper's policy are pub-
lished red hot on the day of the happening, in order
to influence and control public opinion. Had the
opinions of these officers been published at the time, it
would simply have shown that many of the news.
papers of Chicago were lying in every edition,
distorting, garbling; and publishing the policy of
the paper in the headlines of articles supposed to
contain a simple relation of facts.
INTRODUCTION.
13
The fact of the court-martial also leaked out at
the time, and the publication of that too was sup.
pressed. Among the officers to be court-martialed
for expressing an opinion against using the army for
such unholy purposes, was a colonel of a regiment
who had served through the war of the rebellion
and whose name is well known in this State. But
the court-martial never took place. The com-
manding officer was discreet enough to forward
particulars to Washington, and the president,
aghast at the front of independent American
citizenship which he had aroused in his sub.
ordinates by his anti-American methods, squelched
the court-martial, but the colonel was retired from
active service and the other officers cowed by
pressure from the Washington authorities.
This action on the part of these thoroughly
American officers is one of the bright spots of a
black page of American history; a page as black as
that of Homestead, where workmen were on the
defensive against bogus philanthropy and hypo-
critical patriotism. Their action shows clearly that
the intelligent men of the nation are holding to the
opinion that justice, and not gatling guns, is the best
recourse of this nation under all circumstances. It
shows that men who have seen serious service in
arms are averse, except under the direst necessity,
to sweep the streets of great cities with machine
14
INTRODUCTION.
PVC
guns. That the men who have defended the flag,
want the arms of the nation dignified by placing
them against the real foes of the country, and
not against the workingmen, who constitute the
bone and sinew of our population and the bulk of
our soldiery in time of real war. The troops
of the United States should never be called into
any struggle that does not involve a conflict
between the civil authorities and the mob with the
expressed intention on the part of the latter of over-
turning government. They should never be called
on to interfere in industrial struggles between em-
ployer and employed, as there has never been a
time, and the time can never arise, when the constab-
ulary, the police and the militia of any given State
cannot handle the matter, however grave. No
matter how loud the call of corporationists and their
managers, a deaf ear should be turned to their
frantic appeals for the interference of United States
troops. They were never intended for this purpose
by our forefathers.
It will be a sorry day for this Republic of ours
when it becomes the rule to settle disputes about
wages and coerce workingmen by bullets and
bayonets. No settlements of this kind can be lasting.
Let it rather be upon lines of justice, 'humanity and
righteousness. Better let the army sometimes be
used to restrain greed and wrong, than in uphold-
INTRODUCTION.
IVI
ing them. Unfortunately the laws are generally on
the side of the trusts and corporations; laws made
or purchased by them for just such occasions; and
so are most often the decisions of courts.
Pullman should have no more influence than any
other citizen. Carnegie, the library philanthropist
and wage cutter, should not be able to draw out
troops. Men and not money should be the first
consideration with any government that is of the
republican form. Flesh and blood, humanity, is the
alpha and omega of the republic, and property is a
secondary consideration; mankind first and money
second.
But money is first in consideration in the
republic to-day, and the corporations and their
brothers, the banks, control the money. Trusts and
combines rule the Congress, and the corporations are
represented in the administration. The Canadian
Pacific is the real government of Canada, just as the
Pennsylvania Railroad is the government in the
State of Pennsylvania. In Michigan the Michigan
Central rules the Legislature. The Ohio roads rule
Ohio, and in Indiana they run both parties. West
of the Mississippi the land is under contribution by
the railroads alone, while east of the Mississippi it
is the railroads and banks. South of the Ohio is
less of this rule, but there they are controlled by
old prejudices, which is as bad as the rule of the
INTRODUCTION.
Con
corporations at the north. The corporations run
the conventions, and the people think they run the
polls. Corporations do not care what party is in
control so long as the men of either party are on
their side, and they usually are. Huntington in
California may be defeated for the time, but he is a
ruler in both parties and the purchaser of the third
party. Having bought the three conventions, he is
sure of victory whatever party wins. Conventions
block candidates from the people. Conventions are
controlled by a few men, and these few men are
largely in the hands of the corporations-either
directly belonging to the corporations or indirectly
connected through business channels. A president
of one of Michigan's railroads, a Vanderbilt corpora. .
tionist and an alleged Democrat; the grandson of one
of Michigan's illustrious generals, long since dead, a
general who got his honors and his money through
the Democratic party; he, the grandson, furnished
money to support the candidacy of a Republican
for Governor of Michigan. Some years after when
a Democrat was elected Governor this same
railroad president got the attorney for one of
Michigan's railroads appointed railroad commis.
sioner for Michigan, thus controlling that import-
ant office in the interest of railroads. These
incidents are only related to illustrate a condition
now patent to nearly all men, and that is, that
INTRODUCTION.
17
corporations do not care a straw for the furtherance
of the principles of any party, but worm them-
selves into the conventions of all of them for the
express purpose of gaining their own private ends.
So long as the party conventions endure, so long as
there is no marked rising of the people against the
dominaton of the conventions by the railroads and
their sympathising corporators, no matter who is
elected at the polls the corporations will still have
their subservient tools in the Congress of the United
States and in the Legislatures of the States, and the
corporations will control the Government and the
law-making power instead of the people. Thus the
interstate commerce law is an interstate fraud.
It was passed ostensibly to regulate railroad traffic
between the States; to control railroads; but it
turns out to be a practical device to send United
States troops to put down so-called riots, which were
raised by railroads and Pullman himself, and prac-
tically promoted and egged on by boodling railroad
managers. Look at the practical operation of the
interstate law, sneaked through the Congress by
Reagan of Texas and his fellow corporation con-
spirators against the peace and the wages of the
Republic. Of the seventy-five cases started under
this sham law only five were directed against rail.
roads; the balance of seventy were directed against
railroad employes mainly for the purpose of break-
-
-
INTRODUCTION.
ing their unions. This fraud in the guise of law
prohibits the issue of railroad passes; but every
member of the Legislature and every member of
Congress can have as many as they want by
applying to the attorneys and counselors of the
railroads, and as a general rule they apply. Rail-
road passes are a kind of cheap bribe. Under
the interstate commerce law these are illegal; but
who ever heard of a road being prosecuted for
issuing them?
In room 150 of a hotel in the capital of
one of our States an ex-State Senator, the tool of a
United States Senator, dictated the laws to the
Legislature of the State and prevented the relief of
people by preventing the repeal of obnoxious rail-
road laws. In Washington, the capital of the
Nation, United States senators control in the matter
of street railways for the District of Columbia,
and some of these senators are interested in the
street railways of some of our principal cities.
The following is what Congressman John S.
Williams of Mississippi says of affairs in the
District in a speech delivered in the House last
winter: “I am sorry that the commissioners
for the District of Columbia and the District
committee in this House should have seen fit
to set their forces against any plan to get for the
public the value of franchises (for street railroads)
INTRODUCTION.
and to show a preference to continue giving away
valuable public rights to the enrichment of cor-
porators.
“The Congress of the United States and the
Commissioners of the District of Columbia, like
Cæsar's wife, should be above suspicion, and as long
as this special legislation continues there will be
suspicion of favoritism, and even of fraud and
corruption.”
This was the one voice heard in the wilderness
of gross deceit, fraud and corruption of the last
Congress, and nothing was heard of it in the news-
papers, because it was made against corporations.
The money interests of newspapers are hopelessly
entangled with corporations. It is impossible to dis-
entangle them. Horace Greeley once said: “I am
not wealthy myself, but I have got a wealthy news-
paper." That newspaper was rich in all of the
facts laid bare to the reading public. To-day the
newspaper selects its facts and does its own color.
ing. It has a policy even in the selection of facts.
Mere incidents dilated upon cover up the essential
facts. Every real newspaper man is continually in
tacit protest against these conditions. They are the
victims of their environment. They are fully aware
that the newspapers upon which they are engaged
are being conducted as mere incidents to other busi.
ness and money-making connections.
20
INTRODUCTION.
The owner of a newspaper who does not depend
upon his newspaper for a living may be surely
counted upon as being indifferent to facts affecting
his other business connections. There is no expe-
rienced newspaper man but will say, if he speaks
honestly, that the owner of a newspaper ought to be
dependent upon it for his support; that he ought to
be conducting it personally, and that he ought to be
a broad, liberal and wide-awake man. The danger
from newspapers lies in their outside connections
and their inside stock jobbing and corporation
alliances. The safety as against this stripe of news.
papers is in the almost universal distrust which they
have inspired and the accurate deductions made by
the people regarding their connections. For one
man who is now influenced by an editorial there
were formerly all of 10,000. Even their relation of
alleged facts is distrusted. It is a pitiful condition
of things. A remedy? That question presents a
difficulty that at present looks insurmountable. But
the day is not far distant when the so-called news-
papers will force the issue against themselves and
some radical expedient will be adopted by the public
to rid themselves of the flippant, insincere, and even
corrupt incubus. While the principle points the
way to the private ownership of newspapers as it
does to that of the private ownership of railroads,
the expedient of the riddance of the rule of corpo.
INTRODUCTION.
21
rations, with which newspapers are associated, may
be forced upon an unwilling people, and the news-
papers in turn be forced out with them and into
the hands of public control. Thoughtful men in
railroad-ridden Pennsylvania, a State absolutely
governed by railroads and whose representatives
in both houses of Congress represent corpora.
tions instead of the people, a State in which
a Carnegie exploited his bogus philanthropy,
are already well advanced in the line of a
radical overturning of railroad rule. The convic-
tion is being forced that in these days of cor.
porations, trusts and combines the term “private
ownership” is a misnomer when it is patent to all
who can see that the corporationists, trusts and
combines are the government itself-the practical
government, the power not only behind the throne,
but literally on the throne. Modern thought is
perfectly conscious of this, and to show its trend, a
Pennsylvanian, Richard T. Ely, says: “The con-
struction and management of street-car lines by
English municipalities, the purchase of the telegraph
in England, the growing importance of State forests
under the apparent inadequacy of private enterprise,
and to manage it properly, the reversion of all
French railways to the nation in the coming century,
the reversion of the street car-lines to the munici-
pality of Berlin in 1911, and like reversions in our
Y
22
INTRODUCTION. '
own and other countries; all these are similar phe-
nomena showing the tendency of modern thought in
this regard.” It may be set down as a truism, a
thing that needs neither argument nor illustration,
that no organization of whatever name can be suc-
cessfully opposed without an opposing organization.
So long as it is unopposed in this way, it usurps
powers outside of those which it was created to
exercise. Power, not principle, is what it contends
for. Government is the creature of the people and
the corporations are the creature of the government.
But it is demonstrated that the creature of the gov.
ernment has usurped the powers of the creator, that
the corporations are the practical governing power.
Decidedly, then, the corporate organizations have
no opposing organizations to confine them to their
legitimate functions. What, therefore, becomes of
the principle that railroads should not be in the
hands of the government, but in the hands of private
persons? Newspapers are either the open advocates
of such an anarchical condition of affairs or, guiltily
conscious of it, stand neutral, and by omitting to
denounce it are participators in the crime of deliver-
ing the government to the hands of the few through
the criminal manipulation of conventions and the
practical disfranchisement of the voters of the
republic. If railroads are to pass back into the
hands of the people through government ownership,
INTRODUCTIOŅ.
23
if the expedient and not the economic principle is to
be adopted in order that the people get back what
belongs to them and what they ought to control,
with an expected return to the principle under fairer
auspices, and as the newspapers are radically
involved and are a part of the assets of the corpora.
tions, should they not also pass into the same hands?
Facts are invaluable to the people. Their fair and
open publication are essential to the life of the
republic. Judgments of the people, the formation
of laws, the decrees of courts must be based on
facts. It is clear that the newspapers do not publish
the facts. It is as clear as the unclouded sun that
newspapers should, as a question of pure principle,
remain in the hands of private persons. But they
have made themselves a part and parcel of cor-
porate power, and all that may be said in defense of
handing over the railroads to government ownership
applies equally as well to the corporate newspapers.
The story of the attitude of the officers of the
army, who are so loyal to duty, is told to emphasize
the degree of seriousness to which the feeling, has
attained, that grave wrongs are the outgrowth of
the extraordinary growth and power of corpora-
tions, as well as the wide-spread belief that industrial
troubles spring directly from their greed and rapac-
ity. That riotous conduct must be put down goes
without saying with all judicious men; but that we
must go farther and seek the true causes of the out.
24
INTRODUCTION.
growth of riot, is a duty quite as grave as that of
applying the proper force to the suppression of vio.
lence. Everything points to the unholy alliance of
corporations and newspapers as the source of all of
the trouble, and these should be held to their own
proper functions by the firm hand of proper govern-
mental control, in the interests of justice and the
peace of the country.
My experience in fighting monopolistic corpora.
tions as Mayor of Detroit, and in endeavoring to
save to the people some of their rights as against
their greed, have further convinced me that they,
the corporations, are responsible for nearly all the
thieving and boodling with which cities are made to
suffer from their servants. They seek almost uni.
formly to secure what they want by means of
bribes, and in this way they corrupt our councils
and commissions. For more than a year I have
been besieged by letters from all parts of the coun:
try and by personal solicitations to give my experi-
ence in book-form. It is in compliance to these
many requests, and to show how the people of
Detroit have suffered from monopolistic corpora-
tions and their paid tools, that I determined to give
the public the results of my experience. Hence the
apology for the following pages.
H. S. PINGREE.

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In the same boat-the farmer and laborer both pulling against
the current of monopoly.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
CHAPTER I.
Like the Pullman Chicago riots and the riot at
Carnegie's Homestead steel shops, the street car
riot in Detroit was brought about by tampering
with the wages of men and the exhibition of disre.
gard of the endurance of workmen in the matter of
exaction of hours.
Riots are little revolutions and it is always pre-
sumed that the troubles bringing them about can be
satisfactorily adjusted by the courts. To bring
these troubles into the courts, the usual process is to
put down the riots with the strong hand and then
inquire into the causes. Ordinarily the public is
satisfied when the riot is put down. The newspa-
pers are not, because when the excitement is over less
newspapers are sold and hum drum court proceed-
ings do not sell so well. This is excellent commer-
cial spirit but it is not in line with what people, per-
haps foolishly, suppose that newspapers exist for;
many, if not all, believing that newspapers are
established by philanthropists, like the little city of
Pullman, for the benefit of mankind. They forget
that Horace Greeley and his like are dead.
25
26
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
But are these matters out of which riots grow
satisfactorily handled by the courts? It is doubtful.
The courts must obey the laws just as workingmen
must; the law-making power is in the hands of
political conventions and it is quite clear that
political conventions are in the hands of corpora.
tionists either directly or indirectly. The entire
tendency of the law is to hold the masses in check
and give to the chosen few the largest liberty.
Anybody with half an eye can see the danger to
republican institutions through such a tendency.
This country is now a wage country, but laws do
not confront that fact because law makers are of the
class that hire men.
It is useless to talk of great questions of any
kind of vital interest to the people, as for instance
the money question, while the doors of the conven-
tions are only opened or closed for their admission
by the corporationists and, in regard to money,
their allies the banks. Nobody can enter the legis-
lature and few can enter the halls of congress
except by leave of the convention door tenders.
When the money lenders and the corporationists
are kicked out of the convention temple, it will then
be time to talk of questions of great public interest
that are rapping for admission to deaf ears. The
quiet capture of all party conventions has been un-
noted for years. The corporationists are a very
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
quiet people. They know that primaries go by
default, as few attend the caucuses; most people
being indifferent because they rely upon the mana-
gers to see to it that the nominations are made-
and the managers usually make them to satisfy
those who have invested money in the party for
private purposes. Delegates are not chosen by the
people, who depend largely if not solely upon the
ballot, not knowing that the day of the ballot has.
departed and that the power solely lies in the con-
ventions. Of what avail are ballots when men in
private business together, private business which
depends for profits on congressional and state acts,
and who cause themselves to be made the captains.
of the republican and the democratic parties and
who corrupt the conventions of the third parties,
practically control conventions which clearly oper-
ate to the disfranchisement of voters? One of the
best illustrations of this condition is afforded in
Detroit where a captain of the democratic party,
and a captain of the republican party, are proprietors
in the same banking institution. The two conven-
tions might as well club together and elect the men
they want to control the federal and the state
governments. The control of the conventions does
that very thing, as under the name of “democrat”
and “republican” the corporationists secure the
men they want. It is time enough therefore to talk
28
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
.
of great public questions when the people have the
control of the primaries and the conventions. They
certainly have not that control at the present time
nor have they had it for years. Corporations will
control politically until the people take active and
aggressive interest in the caucuses and cast as many
votes at the primaries as are cast at the election.
the conventions, men who are looked up to by the
people as possible candidates for the presidency
would not be silent on great public questions as
they are now, but would be frank and open in their
expressions of opinion with a view to meeting what
the people want in the way of a platform which
would mean something, have some spine in it and
be a thing of life. Public men ought to be able to
know what the people want or they are in the
wrong position. But they do know; and they stand
back alarmed at the hold that the few have upon
the conventions and cut and pare and trim or keep
silent lest the corporation and banking influence
and money, which are so potent in conventions,
become alarmed and array themselves against them.
But I must tell the story of the struggle against
corporate greed, in Detroit, a greed which caused
the riot, a greed which causes riots everywhere in
the United States and for which there is no remedy
in the courts, and only the rioters get punished when
riots occur.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
29
AV C
A Detroit street railway company got possession
of the chief avenues of the city with a franchise
which only called for a tax on the gross receipts of
the company and on its real estate. The proper
tax was collected on the realty, but it has never
been known through the series of years in which it
has held the franchise whether the proper taxes
were collected on the gross receipts, since a com.
plaisant common council made no provision for the
inspection of the books of the company to verify
the correctness of the sums offered to the tax col.
lector. During my administration an effort was
made to obtain a look at the books, but it was
refused by the company when application was made
to verify. The matter was taken into the courts,
and there it was decided practically that the com.
pany's contest with the city placed the city in the
hands of the company in the matter of taxes upon
the gross receipts. This is a comfortable position
for the company, and they rather enjoy it. But the
possession of the city in this respect was not all
they possessed of public property. They owned
the common council and exercised such a remark.
able control over the public streets that it was with
extreme difficulty a street could be paved that was
occupied by the company, since the company's con-
sent had to be obtained first, and that (notably in
the case of Woodward avenue) was very difficult to
30
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
obtain. It was notorious that the common council,
with a few notable exceptions, were bribed in the
interests of the company after they became alder-
men. But the company did not depend wholly
upon bribing an alderman after he was elected.
They resorted to another scheme, and that was to
enter actively into practical politics and aid alder-
men to procure nominations after exacting a promise
of support. Their attorney was actively in the work
of securing such aldermen for weeks before the
caucuses were held. Strikers, bummers and ward
workers of all stripes were paid to assist at the pri-
maries where but few men attended and, owing to
the indifference and inattention of citizens toward the
caucuses, the company agents succeeded in securing
a goodly number of tools in the council. Some-
times the attorneys of the company went to great
lengths to defeat the nomination of a good and a
strong man. An instance of the kind is related by
the victim who was nominated in one of the wards
and who was approached by one of the attorneys of
the company with an offer of $3,000 if he would
work in the interests of the company in the council.
This, although he was not by any means a wealthy
man, was positively declined by the nominee. The
attorney then proceeded to undermine him through
the compliant ward committee, and as money works
well in the primaries, the attorney succeeded in hav-
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
31
ing him removed from the tablet and a tool of the
company took his place. By such means this cor-
poration dominated the common council of Detroit
as easily as the railroads dominate the legislature
through their agent. Such was the persistent indus-
try of the attorneys and agents of the Detroit City
Railway in the aldermanic primaries and of those of
the old upper house of the council that the company
literally owned the council body and soul. Every-
thing for the company went through with a rush.
So accustomed had the council become to taking
toll that a regular rate on all business except that
of the Detroit City Railway Company was formally
placed at ten per cent., and was regularly quoted by
the newspapers with the prices of cattle and other
things that are bought and sold. So accustomed
did the aldermen and the councilmen of the old
upper house become to this kind of stealing that
they stole from one another. The fellow who
received the funds for distribution to the gang
didn't make a fair distribution. He only distributed
the steal fund in part, just like the railroad managers
of such funds, and held a big percentage of the
other fellow's swag to himself. A new council.
man, who was the victim of this kind of distributive
honor amongst thieves, received but fifty dollars of
a certain swag. Finding that his share of the
boodle ought to have been one hundred dollars, he
32
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
nan
flew furiously indignant at such deceit, and seeking
out the distributor he charged him with dishonesty;
"You got one hundred dollars for me," said he,
"and you gave me only fifty dollars. If you don't
show up I'll fix you!” “Fix me," said the dis-
tributor, calmly. “Just you go ahead and fix me.
It's just as much a State's prison job for you to take
fifty dollars as to get one hundred dollars.” A man
who had the reputation for honesty in the upper
house once went down to see the City Railway man-
ager and said: “See here, I never got a cent from
this company and have always voted for you. Now,
what I want is a pass-book on the road.” The
manager replied, “If you did not get any money,
you are credited with it.” In this case the dis-
tributor had retained the whole of the swag that
ought to have gone to the man who only got a
pass. People who only take passes are a low grade
of boodlers who, as the regular boodlers claim, just
as lief take “stuff,” but have not got the nerve.
This is the city view. In the country, however, at
almost every railroad station there are men who
have passes who cannot be classed as boodlers, but
who act in many cases mischievously in favor of
railroad corporations. They are lawyers, and some-
times doctors and others, and they see to it in their
way that the primaries go in favor of the corpora-
tion gang. Only a few choice spirits congregate at
FACTS AND OPINIONS..
33
.
the caucuses, the general run of citizens in the vil-
lages and the farmers stay at home, a corporationist
or a sympathizer with corporations goes to the con.
ventions, the legislators are chosen, and the farmers
and others wonder how it is that corporations con-
trol the legislature and allow the Michigan Central
and other big roads in the United States to charge
ancient history rates. The railroads pay for the
services of attorneys a higher rate than the average
attorney can command, even the raw lawyers just
out of colleges know this, and they pay it because
the managers want political workers as well as legal
lore. Railroad attorneys are always in the political
field, and they confine themselves exclusively to the
primaries and to the conventions. They figure on
it that fools will vote some ticket, and as the attor-
neys operate in all parties, they usually turn up on
caucus day with the aid of the agents of other
corporations, whose name is getting to be legion.
People who do not think the war is over had better
get acquainted with corporation lawyers and agents.
People who are talking about silver had better find
out pretty soon that there is no admittance for any.
thing new among the men who own the primarieș.
They can talk their heads off; there may be ten
million majority in favor of taxing corporation
property in the United States, but the corporation
conventions will prevent the question getting to the
34
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
are
polls by locking up the primaries. The primaries
are the key to the ballot box, and the corporations
own the key.
When the Detroit City Railway Company got
complete ownership in the common council, they
ran bob-tailed cars, extended lines in the best paying
districts, ran cars to suit theniselves, and gave the
most wretched of service for the most money. They
were growing rich, and they were satisfied to take
their own way because it was the easiest. They
were not equal to the demands of a great city that
was steadily growing, and they enjoyed their feast
of fat things at their ease. The management of the
line was better fitted for a town that had ceased
growing and was dying out than for a progressive
city. Complaints of bad service were coming in
from all quarters, but the company held back like a
balky horse and refused to get up and go. In addi-
tion to this wretched service, which caused such uni.
versal complaint, another torture was added by com-
plaints from the employees that they were underpaid
and overworked. In the midst of the boodling, bad
management and general complaining, the employees
struck work and threw themselves into organization.
One night in April, 1891, bands of workmen in
sympathy with the employees tore up sections of the
rails of the railroad, but as this comparatively slight
damage was easily repaired and did not affect all of

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Scene on Woodward Avenue. The results of long years of evil-doing.
36
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
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the lines, cars were running next day. These cars
were interfered with by gangs of men, and Wood-
ward avenue was the scene of some excitement when
a car was attacked. Prominent citizens stood in the
crowd that gathered, and while all seemed to enjoy
the exhibition, some of them were in active sympathy
with the mob. There was a complete tie-up of the
lines for several hours. At first no attempt was
made to run any cars except on the Woodward
avenue line, and this line was abandoned in the
afternoon. Nearly everybody walked, and, strange
to say, all persons making these compulsory exertions
took them with general good nature. Staid old
business men who had been confirmed street car
patrons for years, plodded along the stone sidewalks
with apparent relish, and cracked jokes with each
other about the benefits of such service. It was
noticeable that they frequently drew forth their
timepieces and consulted them anxiously, as if they
desired to avoid making faster time than they had
made on Hendrie's slow-going cars. All this was.
significant of the feeling against the company, which
was almost universal in the city. During the day vari-
ous large bodies of workingmen made orderly par-
ades through the streets, some headed by bands of
music and carrying banners designed to convey sym-
pathy with the striking street car men. Woodward
avenue was crowded with sight seers, and no expres-
aveni
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
37
Y13
sions of any sympathy amongst the crowds was
recorded by any of the newspapers. The Fourth
Regiment was in readiness, but at no time was the
so-called riot outside the handling of the police. The
newspapers were howling against mob violence, and
some, if not all, of these had corporation connections.
Indirectly they helped raise the devil, and they were
extremely anxious to lay him. The company howled
for protection in running their cars, after doing every.
thing they could in the way of squeezing their men,
corrupting aldermen and domineering the public
with charges for bad service which the people were
compelled to accept under silent protest. The com-
pany howled to me to turn out the troops, after tying
my hands by bribing the council. Of course, on
the face of things, they were entitled to a show, but
I didn't see why the militia should be turned out.
I had a meeting with Sheriff Hanley and Judge
Gartner, and Hanley didn't appear to think there was
any call for an extraordinary show of force. Judge
Speed, city counsellor, furnished an opinion that I
had no authority whatever to afford such protection
as asked by Hendrie, except to request the Board
of Metropolitan Police to quell the riots and preserve
the public tranquility. That was written on the
22d day of April. The same day I sent a communi.
cation to the police board, calling the attention of
the board to the matter. Next day I got another
TY
38
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
letter from Speed, revising his opinion of the day
before, and stating that I had power under Chapter
321, Howell's Statutes, to disperse mobs. That
afternoon I had a conference with Col. Sheahan and
Lieut.-Col. Corns, after issuing a proclamation in
accordance with the statute alluded to, and these
officers agreed with me that there was no such
crisis as demanded the calling out of troops. In the
evening, I addressed a letter to Mr. Hendrie, stat-
ing that the unfortunate condition of affairs was
the immediate result of differences between the
Detroit City Railway Company and persons in its
employ. As there might be facts on both sides
affecting the situation, and that the disclosure of
these might show either in favor of one side or the
other, it seemed the part of wisdom to arbitrate
the difference. As the executive head of the city,
I strongly urged arbitration, as it would be opera-
tive of nothing but good in the end. I pointed
out that the acceptance of arbitration on the part of
the company under the conditions in the city would
put an immediate end to the trouble and restore
quiet and good order.
And I may say here that had Pullman shown
any disposition to arbitrate the troubles in his palace
car shop the Chicago riots would not have occurred.
Hendrie replied that he had called a meeting of
directors on the subject of arbitration, and on the
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
same evening another letter came from the same
source consenting to arbitrate. Herein Hendrie,
in accepting arbitration, differed from Pullman, to
Hendrie's credit. But Hendrie's business was more
open to physical attack than that of Pullman. The
latter had his business so concentrated it was easily
defended, while the lines of Hendrie's railroad were
open to easy assault. Still this may not have
influenced Hendrie and his counsellors so much as
the almost unanimous opposition of the city, which
might operate to the serious disadvantage of the
company by a revolution in the council and the con-
sequent pressure of charter powers, with the people
in approval behind them.
A board of arbitration was formed consisting of
M. J. Dee, editor-in-chief of the Evening News and
a reputed stock or bondholder of the company,
George Jerome, attorney for the Detroit, Grand
Haven & Milwaukee Railroad, and W. T. Law and
W. A. Taylor of the Street Railway Company Em.
ployees Association. Rev. C. R. Henderson, since a
professor in the University of Chicago, was chosen
chairman at my suggestion. Before the matter
came to a hearing, however, the company acceded
to the claims of their employees and all the cars
were running early on the morning of April 25th.
The discharged men over whom the fuss was pre-
cipitated were reinstated and the employees in the
V
40
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
end gained many concessions in the way of better
wages, shorter hours and more reasonable treat-
ment. They organized themselves into a union and
the dealings of the company and the men have since
been conducted through this union. I believe that
no corporation should be allowed to hold a public
franchise and conduct its public business unless it is
willing to submit its difficulties with its employees
to arbitration, and no man should accept employ-
ment with any company or corporation unless he is
willing to submit his differences to like arbitration.
When the strike was settled it was entirely satis-
factory to the company and the employees. There
were no lives lost during the three days' strike and
very little property was destroyed. While that
point in the controversy between the city and the
company was settled satisfactorily and the direct
cause of the riot adjusted, there were other and
more serious ones yet to be tackled.
Contemporaneously with street railway agita.
tion in Detroit were the discoveries in the common
council of the local taxation of the property of steam
railways whose great termini occupy so much space
in the city. The council decided to invite Don M.
Dickinson to represent the city before the legisla-
ture. Before the legislature Mr. Dickinson spoke
as follows: “I appear here, sirs, as a citizen of
Detroit, coming at the request of citizens without
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
41
distinction of party, and also at the request of the
common council of the city. Fron some motive, a
pleasant one to me, the council passed the resolution
to pay me excellently for my services, but I have
declined and am here without money and without
price. What I have to say should be accepted as
my sincere judgment, rather than as my paid
opinion as an attorney. It appears by the returns
of the commissioner of railroads for 1888, that the
total valuation of property in this state is something
like $950,000,000; that the total property of the rail.
roads in the state, estimating by capital stock and
bonded indebtedness—far less than their actual
valuation—is something like $545,000,000. None
of this property, either in any township, city or
village in the state is taxed for any of the expense
of living, in the sense that people live under govern-
ment, so that the vast body of taxation for local
purposes, which is the great body of taxation, rests
upon the other property owners and the other prop.
erty of the state.
1
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have the benefit of our schools for their employees'
children; of our police protection, which costs us
somewhere near $750.00 a day; of our courts, and
no one uses them as much as the railroad companies;
of all our taxation for water rates and things of
that sort, although I think water rates are paid.
42
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
But for every purpose of local self-government,
railroads are free.
“Now there is nothing in reason why they
should not be taxed for the purpose of self-govern-
ment everywhere. In no other state in the Union
is there such freedom from taxation for railroad
property as in the state of Michigan. Freedom
from taxation has not conduced to the prosperity of
those states which granted it. In the county of
Cook, Illinois, to-day, the railroads pay of the taxa-
tion of the county of Cook, $750.000. In the city
of Chicago alone the railroads pay towards the
expenses of local self-government about $450.000
in round numbers; and if there could be an example
-if there could be an illustration stronger than any
other of prosperity built upon proper rules—that
example is Chicago.
e
“In the city of Detroit, on the other hand,
we have exempted property to the amount of
$33,882,381, between $6,000,000 and $7,000,000 of
which is railroad property, which does not pay a
dollar towards anything.”
A SENATOR: “As I understand you, you claim
that the specific tax now paid should be in lieu of
the state tax, but you claim they should be com-
pelled to pay a local tax like other institutions ?”
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
MR. DICKINSON: “Certainly. That is the case.
We do not propose under this bill, gentlemen of the
committee, as I understand it, to tax rolling stock
or anything else but the real estate of these corpor- -
ations, precisely as they would tax store property
or manufacturing-tax it for local purposes. We
propose to have that tax imposed in addition to the
specific tax they now pay, and as to railroads which
have not a special charter, we propose to impose a
tax upon their property in addition to the specific
tax.
“But it may be said that this is largely for the
benefit of Detroit. Now, let us see about that.
Detroit is the great shipping point for Michigan,
through which, and at Port Huron, you reach the
great avenues of commerce known as the Great
Lakes. But for the competition of lake navigation,
the rates which constitute a tax upon the produce
of the West and Northwest would be far greater
than they are. Now, do you know of any reason
why this water communication which furnishes you
the power to hold down the rates of railroad trans-
portation should be taxed as it is taxed within the
city of Detroit, and within the city of Port Huron,
and everywhere, while the railroads go scot free?
This is not a bill merely to benefit Detroit, but it is
a bill for your townships, and for proper taxation in
any local self-government. But I make that appeal
44
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
also on the ground that when you tax your lake
transportation to the full limit, as it is, you tax your
real estate and your stores and your manufactures,
and allow the railroads to go scot free, to the extent
that you prefer the railroads, by immunity from
taxation, you are impairing your great friend, which
is conceded to be your friend, and your only friend
as against railroad transportation.”
MR. POND (attorney and counsellor for the
Michigan Central Railroad Company): “I should
like to ask my brother, Dickinson, who builds the
roads for these vessels that plow these seas? Do
these vessel owners build their harbors ? Does the
United States build the railroads as it builds these
harbors and opens these channels for the use of
vessels ?"
MR.DICKINSON: "I will answer my learned friend.
The United States and the State have subsidized
railroads and subsidized railroad transportation until
there is no domain for settlers. The United States
and the State of Michigan have given away the
greater part of the fair State of Michigan to rail-
roads. I don't know of any subsidy yet paid by the
United States or the state government to the friend
of the producer who ships by the Great Lakes-no
farm, not an acre of ground, not a dollar of money;
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
45
but I do know that no railroad has been built but
has been helped from the state treasury from the
time it laid its first rail until it finished it, and for
years and years afterward.
“And now let us see. It will be conceded on
all hands that in the present condition of the com-
merce of the Northwest and West this matter of
transportation to the market is simply a tax upon
the producer. The railroad tariff or the vessel's
tariff for transportation is a tax upon the producer,
and as that tax is greater or less in the present con-
dition of the industries of the West and Northwest,
so the farmer may or may not live; so the manu-
facturer seeking a foreign market may or may not
live. The question of life and death of commercial
interests is regulated by the question of transporta.
tion, and anything that cripples the competing lines,
anything that cripples this carrying trade of the
Great Lakes,-anything that hampers it and makes
it less able to compete with the great railroad sys-
tem of transportation, is inimical to the manufacturer.
"And let us see what it amounts to. I have
shown you that for purposes of local taxation every.
where, the railroads pay no tax whatever. I have
shown you that in the city of Detroit, while the boot
and shoe men, merchants and manufacturers of all
kinds that have come in there, everything that has
gone to build up the city of Detroit, have paid their
46
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
CO
n Ou
in-
ern
local tax, and indeed almost the whole of the two
million of tax, the railroad companies have paid not
one copper; not one cent contributed to the life
boat, as it has been called—the life boat of govern.
ment-the fund raised by tax. You must remem-
ber that in our system of government we are a
complete system in ourselves. By our system of
local self-government and local maintenance, the
city of Detroit is a miniature republic; your town
ship is another one, and your counties, and so on
until you reach the state. Now, for the purpose of
maintaining all the protections of government with-
in the city of Detroit, taxing ourselves for that pur.
pose this enormous amount of money, the railroads
with their real estate aggregating between six and
seven millions, to say nothing of their rolling stock,
having the benefit of our police tax-having police
protection, having all the protection of our laws,
having our school system, having our courts, having
every one of the uses of government for the protec-
tion of life and property-they pay not one cent.
“ Bear in mind, that if you ship by water in
summer, or during the season of navigation, or
reserve for the months when you can ship in the
season of navigation for low rates, that that method
must charge you enough to make up for first cost,
for a fair return upon its cost, and something more
to pay its taxes, and that its rates must be increased
ก
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
47
and must be held up sufficiently to give a fair return
for the money investment, net, over and above the
wear and tear and taxes, so that if the rate is in.
creased at all by tax, if it is put in a position where
it cannot as well compete with the railroads as be-
fore, if the railroads are put in a better position, the
owners of the shipping do not suffer, but the people
who use that method of transportation suffer.
“No one will pretend that the railroads pay a
cent of any kind in this matter of sustaining the sea-
port or lake-port at Port Huron, or Detroit, or any.
where else. Yet the railroads come there and go
right up to the line and compete during the season
of navigation with this method of shipment to the
East. I have taken the trouble to have made up
for me from the assessor's office, the amount of prop-
erty on which transportation and shipping pays
taxes in the city of Detroit, sharing the burden of
local taxation with other citizens. The total amount
of property used for dock purposes and merely
for the purposes of shipping by lake in the city
of Detroit, which pays local taxes, is $4,042,940.
The total amount of vessel property, according
to the estimate of the assessors, exclusive of dock
property, that pays taxes in Detroit is $6,000,000,
making a total of dock and vessel property
used for that transportation, and a fair income
48
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
upon which must be charged to enable vessel
men to compete at all with the railroads, of
$10,042,940. These pay their taxes in Detroit and
have never asked for immunity or exemption. This
is the $10,000,000, gentlemen of the committee,
which competes with the railroad $6,000,000 or
$7,000,000—or with the railroad's $30,000,000, if
you put in rolling stock-and competes with it to
hold down the charges upon transportation, which
constitute a tax upon the production. The
$6,000,000 or $7,000,000, or $37,000,000, pay no
taxes. The $10,000,000 pay taxes and are to that
extent crippled in their competition with railroad
companies. To that extent the railroad companies
are given the advantage over lake transportation.
It cannot be gainsaid. It is true. And it is for
this committee to report whether that is just-not
merely just to the people of the city of Detroit, but
whether it is just to the people of the state of Michi-
gan. It is not a question as I said before, Mr.
Chairman, whether the lake navigation shall lose
this tax. They charge it back upon the producer.
It is a question whether the people who have goods
to ship shall lose the money–whether the people
who have goods to ship shall have the benefit of an
uncrippled line of competition.
“And this is growing more and more important.
There is the railroad exempt property along the river
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
49
irro
front (pointing to the map). The best part of the busi-
ness section of the city of Detroit is the river front.
The most valuable part of Detroit-and is for years to
come—is the part which you see within the lines of
those railroads. It passes and struggles across the
tracks that surround the city at grade, but it passes
to property which is of inferior value when it passes
beyond the railroad tracks. The property that is
of high value is the property that is within the lines
of the railroads. Look at the business part of the
city of Detroit containing that valuable property
and see the amount of river front devoted to railroad
purposes, through which no man can reach the dock
and no load can reach the dock save by your leave.
You see you have but the small space between
those two railroads still belonging to the city, or still
open to the city, upon the river front. And yet
all that property that is touched with red upon
that map is exempt from taxation.”
The remainder of Mr. Dickinson's argument
was to the effect that the legislature has power to
amend the charters of the railroads and the general
railroad laws exempting their property from taxa-
tion, so as to allow local taxation, without providing
compensation to the railroad companies, except as
to certain property of the Michigan Central Rail-
road Company named in their charter.
CHAPTER II.
MEETING AT THE AUDITORIUM—THE HON. DON M.
DICKİNSON CHAIRMAN.
In answer to Mr. Pond, attorney for the Michi-
gan Central, Mr. Dickinson might well have said
that at the time, he was making his speech there
was practically little difference between the rail-
roads and the combines of vessels upon the Great
Lakes, since the boats which were included in the
vessel associations were largely controlled and
owned by the railroads, but were operated in the
name of other companies.
Like the newspapers, the railroads and the
vessel associations are mere money makers under
the guise of being public benefactors, like Pullman,
who had model houses in a model town and, like
Carnegie, who bought libraries for workmen out of
wages wrung from them. It is singular, but it is
true, that every so-called public benefactor that is
be-praised by the corporation newspapers, which are
a part of the assets of these organizations, as doing
all the good for humanity, are either millionaires or
the sons of millionaires. Most of the ordinary pub-
lic benefactors, those who are held in the common
belief to be such, are usually found in history to be
men who have been nailed to the cross.
50
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
51
Y
Something has been done in the way of taxing
vessels for local purposes in Detroit; but even after
Dickinson's splendid showing before the legislature
the railroads ran free.
Along the latter part of June the street railway
company and its organs organized a general talk on
rapid transit, and this pow wow of rapid transit talk
was made a cover for getting a new franchise and
covering up their past poor service. When the
dust was supposed to be well thrown into the peo.
ple's eyes by the papers having a corporation
alliance, a franchise giving the company a further
lease of life of thirty years was sprung. The dis-
content of the people with the service made them
seemingly ready to accept any sort of a promise on
the part of the company, and the company overesti-
mated the readiness in its eagerness to make another
grab. They asked extraordinary concessions in the
extension of the franchise to their various lines, and
the council, under the cloud raised by the cry of
rapid transit, and all sorts of great improvements by
the company, voted down all amendments that were
not clearly in the interests of the company. No
supervision could be obtained by the city. The old
and highly irregular tax on gross receipts was to go
on, and with no opportunity on the part of the city
to ascertain from the company's books what the
gross receipts really were. Little by little the facts
52
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
leaked out, and the conspiracy was finally seen in
its true light. People poured into the City Hall
asking me to veto the franchise, the trades council
denounced it and finally a public meeting was called
at the Auditorium on a petition signed by the most
prominent people of the city, regardless of political
affiliations. The council had rushed the franchise
through in the name of rapid transit. No one
advanced any specific charges of bribery, but had
the city been a jury the council could have scarcely
escaped a verdict of guilty. I assured all callers
that I was with them against the infamous action of
the majority of the council that had literally rail-
roaded the job through. There was a staunch
minority, however, of honest men.
The call for the great meeting at the Auditori.
um read as follows: "The moral sense of this
community has been outraged by the recent action
of the common council in the granting of large and
valuable franchises to the several street railways
without adequate compensation. It is an outrage
which calls for the public expression of the citizens
of Detroit that will sustain the mayor in his antici-
pated veto of this measure and make the council
aware of the light in which their conduet is viewed
by every honest citizen.”
Monday evening, July 6th, the meeting was
held. In the words of one of the newspapers: “It
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
UV
was probably the most magnificently unanimous
expression of popular sentiment on a municipal sub-
ject that has ever been manifested in Detroit. The
rink, now called the Auditorium, was crowded in
every part and citizens fairly clambered over one
another in their anxiety to secure positions of ad-
vantage. The attendance was estimated at four
thousand by a judge who is usually pretty close to
the mark. Save a few interruptions, more or less
excusable, that greeted an attorney for the railway
companies, who sought a hearing on behalf of his
clients, the utmost good order prevailed. Judge C.
I. Walker called upon Don M. Dickinson to pre-
side. Tumultuous cheering followed the choice.
“Detroit's treasury," said Mr. Dickinson, “is not
full enough to permit her to grant franchises worth
half a million or a million a year to any company or
set of companies, for the sole consideration of giving
us rapid transit.”
The audience was composed of no particular
class or classes of citizens. Wealthy merchant
princes sat side by side with the mechanic. Old
and middle aged men who saw the birth of the
street railway company, jostled and were jostled by
youngsters. But old and young, rich and poor, were
there with one common object in view.
Vice-presidents of the meeting were: Thos. W.
Palmer, 1. L. Edson, D. M. Ferry, C. C. Bowen,
S
e
IS
54
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
C. A. Warren, Wm. H. Elliot, R. H. Fyfe, J. L.
Hudson, John Harvey, C. A. Newcomb, L. W.
Partridge, Wm. A. Moore, S. M. Cutcheon, O. E.
Levitt, C. I. Walker, C. A. Kent, C. Herz, M. W.
O'Brien, August Marxhausen, D. B. R. Hoyt, H.
A, Robinson, Thos. Berry and a long list of others.
C. A. Kent presented the facts in the case of the
Detroit City Railway. It was organized, he said,
about 1862, its first privilege being granted by the
common council in that year. Under the law the
company should go out of existence about the end
of the thirty years, or 1892. But what has the
company done? Six months ago it quietly filed
new articles of incorporation and changed its name
to the Detroit Street Railway Company. Then
it seized the opportunity presented by the popular
demand for rapid transit, and under the guise of
securing an extension of its franchise in considera-
tion of changing its motive power, it has obtained
from the common council what is practically a new
charter for a new company. We ask that the
charter shall not be given effect, but that it shall
be withdrawn before it is too late.
It was claimed by the company that it had still
a franchise right of seventeen years to run by the .
attorney of the company.
• Resolutions were passed unanimously by the
committee in which an earnest protest was entered
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
against the action of the council and a committee of
fifty prominent citizens was appointed to present the
protest of the meeting to the mayor and the common
council and to take such other and further action in
the courts or otherwise as the committee should
deem best for the welfare of the city.
The franchise was vetoed and under the pressure
brought by the people the veto was sustained.
Trickery was tried at the meeting of the council at
which the veto was read and a storm of indignant
protest drove the president at the conclusion of the
session for refuge into the clerk's office where he
was located until the crowd dispersed from the City
Hall.
This was but the beginning of the fight against
the street railway company. The company's rights
under the old franchise were called into question
and the first thing to do was to ascertain precisely
what they were. All that had been accomplished
thus far was the administration of a stinging rebuke
to the common council for its action in allowing
itself to be manipulated by the railroad company.
The responsibility fell upon the committee of fifty
organized to do up the company. Daily in the
newspapers appeared the customary routine mention
of what the committee were going to do; but noth-
ing was done. Meantime the company shifted names,
issued new stock and a general distribution of this
1
56
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
stock was made among the more prominent people
who were present at the meeting at the rink.
Whether this was the cause or not, it was plain to
be seen that these prominent men had gradually
grown cool, that the enthusiasm which bubbled
over furiously in fiery ardor at the rink died out at
committee meetings. True, they had done a great
deal of interviewing with newspapers, but the fire
ran low little by little until the kettle got cold and
there was no more steam singing.
After considerable push on the part of the
minority aldermen, a resolution was passed by the
council authorizing the mayor to hire a couple of
lawyers to see the case against the railway company
run through the courts. Those able gentlemen,
Don M. Dickinson and Alfred Russell were chosen;
but after a time they too concluded to draw from
the fray. On looking around for the essential legal
talent to replace these gentlemen, I found that the
company had retained for its service almost every-
thing with even the color of the required talent in
the city, with the exception of C. A. Kent, a former
professor of law at the Michigan University. His
services were secured at once. The second law-
yer required to refill the other place was found in
the person of Benton Hanchett, of Saginaw. These
gentlemen took up the legal weapons at the point
where the others had dropped them, and have
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
57
1 YYY
YV a
OS
fought and are still fighting it out in the United
States Court, where the manipulators of the com-
pany place their cases.
My first impression growing out of this struggle
was that the city should own the street railway
tracks and thus be in possession of its own streets.
Seeking at this time to put this view into practical
shape, I found, on examination of the Michigan
Statutes, that legislation would be required before
it could be done. This was a most effectual block
to any advance in municipal ownership, because the
legislature was in the hands of the managers of
steam railways, who in turn were in sympathy with
street railways and in complete antagonism with
myself and with my views, the antagonism to myself
growing out of those views. I was also aware that
in making its change from one of its names to the
final appellation of “The Detroit Citizens' Street
Railway Company," the president of one of the
principal steam railroads of Michigan had come into
possession of some of the street railway stock.
Some of it had also gone into the hands of a news-
paper man or two, and these, with the rest of the
people who had shared in the division and who were
supposed to be able to control and sway public
opinion, settled back for rest on their stock laurels.
Under all of the circumstances it would have been
little short of madness to have approached the
58
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
-
T
i
legislature with a request for an act enabling the ,
city to own the tracks laid in the streets. All the
average member of the legislature needs is a petti-
fogging speech to cast his vote for the railroad in
whose favor he has been retained by assistance
rendered at the primaries. Besides, railroad states-
men at Lansing representing any given road are
always eager to assist the duly elected representa-
tives of any other road. Last winter's was an excep-
tional session, and although the legislature had
received considerable caucus compensation in
advance, a great deal more in the way of rewards
were handed over. True, there were caucus laws
to be passed for Detroit, health board laws to fix
up and special legislation of various kinds designed
to effectually dispose of an obnoxious mayor of
Detroit and elbow him out of the political field
because he had arrayed himself against the domina-
tion of railroads. For this purpose money was
used freely, and the chances for a Republican
triumph in 1896 were discounted. Federal offices
were promised, to be delivered during the next
administration, to all who could not be bought out-
right with money.
After a study of the improvements in street rail-
way transit brought out in the five previous years, ..
it then occurred to me that the city ought to receive
benefit from such improvements as well as the rail-
1
FACTS AND OPINIONS. : 59
ways; as well as the corporations that had adopted
them, and I began the agitation of cheap fares
which such improvement ought to have brought
about. It was useless to endeavor to treat with
the Citizens' Railway Company, which evidently
had ulterior motives in hanging on to a five cent
fare. These motives were disclosed when the road
subsequently negotiated a $7,000,000 mortgage on
a plant and lines, which, when torn up and thrown
away, rebuilt and completely equipped with elec-
tricity, will scarcely have cost $3,000,000. They
still held out roseate offers of rapid transit, fishing
for further franchises; they talked of the beauties
of electric transit, but claimed that enormous
expense would be involved in its adoption, but
never advanced a step in the way of improvement
until they were forced to do so by the advent of
the new company. They confronted every move
of the city with an appeal to the courts, headed by
a solid array of the highest-paid legal talent. Their
attitude clearly demonstrated the high significance
of a five cent fare in the magnificent margin of
money which it disclosed that the slow coach.com-
pany had earned.
I then cast about over the United States in
search of men with the requisite capital who would
invest in street car property in Detroit with a view
to competition in the city. These invitations,
60
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
.
together with the publications, distributed so widely
over the country, of the street car agitation and
court warring, brought the representatives of the
various syndicates to the city looking the matter
over. Parties from New York City and westward
from Denver came and looked the situation over
and one by one went away dissatisfied with the
looks of things.
The old company was steadily resuming its
sway over the common council, and the people,
impatient at the delay consequent upon the refusal
of capital to invest, began to look upon the prom-
ises of the company with some degree of leniency.
The old franchise had thirteen years to run, if found
valid by the United States Court. That extension
had been granted by a corrupt council and was a
practical gift, but the people, growing weary of
delays, appeared to be willing to drop the whole
subject and suffer along for the sake of peace and
rest. At the eleventh hour the firm of Pack &
Everett, the owners of the new Detroit Railway,
which is now running successfully on a three cent
fare, appeared in the city. The gentlemen com-
posing the firm were H. A. Everett, of Cleveland,
and the brothers Albert and Green Pack, of Alpena,
Michigan. The last named has since died.
Other companies were evidently afraid of
involvement with the old company in legal com-
T
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
61
2
plications, and were shy of any rate less than five
cents. The firm of Pack & Everett went at the
matter in a business way and were not to be fright-
ened off by threats of litigation which the old com-
pany industriously circulated, laying a claim to the
refusal of every one of the city streets upon the
wording of lapsed franchises and uncomplied with
conditions. Their offer to the city was a three
cent fare from 5:30 a. m. to 8 o'clock p. m., eight
tickets for twenty-five cents, six for twenty-five
cents for the balance of the time, and five cents for
a single fare. This was accepted by the city, con-
ditional that the city do its own paving of streets,
inclusive of between the rails of the new road, but
where a paved street was broken for putting in
tracks, it would be at the expense of the company
to place the street back in the same condition in
which they found it.
Wherever it became necessary to widen streets
for the accommodation of double tracks, that too,
under the franchise, must be at the expense of the
company, both for the work of widening and of
paving.
This is the history in brief of the struggle for a
three cent fare, as it is called, and in its successful
result a long stride has been taken in the direction
of breaking the monopoly of streets of cities. One
step in that direction means more, but those who
62
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
intend to enter the struggle with monopoly must
expect that every step will be fiercely contested by
not only the monopolists, but their friends, hang-
ers-on and their business connections. Everything
may be expected to be resorted to. Not only will
the monopolists fail to fight fair, but they will not
fail to fight unfair if they think they can make a
point. Their great resorts are the courts, which
they deluge with cases of all descriptions, and
every inch of legal ground is contested. Personal
attacks of all descriptions, of the meanest and even
of the vilest kind may be anticipated, as the corpo-
ration sleuth hounds stop at nothing. The least
hole in the private character of a man who goes up
against corporations will be noted and enlarged
upon. If they are not there, all sorts of attempts
will be made to make holes to order. They have
been prowling around my skirts for years, and have
finally concluded I must be insane. Whether they
reached that conclusion by finding that I was
strangely different from the men with whom they
usually came in contact and who were more com-
pliant, or not, I do not know, but I was seriously
asked by a corporation attorney while I was testi-
fying as a witness, if some of my progenitors had
not been insane. So accustomed had this corpora-
tion lawyer become to male prostitutes, that a man
in the normal condition of mental health appeared
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
63
ma
7
to him as abnormal. I was even pursued into the
sanctuary and pushed out as though I had been a
mere money changer. The local banks caught the
itch of petty persecution, and ordinary accommo-
dations were refused. My intimate friends and
supporters were served in the same way. As a
manufacturer of undisputed responsibility, whose
business required the customary accommodations,
I was still pursued to the East, where the trade of
the firm is large, but the pursuit in that direction
was profitless to the pursuers. I mention these
incidents attendant upon the efforts to do the work
entrusted to my hands as a hint of what may be
expected by those who place themselves in the path
of corporations. The newspapers for years have
printed hundreds of columns of dark tales of bood
ling, and made me the victim at the same time of
about as many columns of adverse criticism, mis-
representation, lies by the cord, artistically painted
facts, everything in short, with never the decent
support that might be under the circumstances
expected. And yet the corporations have been
clearly responsible and are to-day, for every tale of
boodling which the papers published, and are pub-
lishing, or might publish. In other words, while
loud in condemning boodling, they are quite as loud
in their condemnation of the only method of suc-
cessfully opposing it.
11 YT
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Although at first many of the corporation stock-
holders were with me in the fight against the City
Railway, which was principally owned in Canada,
as soon as it became apparent that I was not going
to stop with that Company alone in my endeavors
to rescue the city from under corporation rule, but
meant also to tackle the gas combine and the elec-
tric light monopoly, both of which concerns were
holding up the people and charging extravagant
prices, the whole crowd went against me and formed
án alliance offensive and defensive for mutual pro-
tection. It was an unheard of thing, and not for a
moment to be tolerated, that their right to rob the
city should be interfered with. Were they not the
“best citizens of Detroit" and had they not had
this undisputed privilege from time immemorial?
When I was elected, there had been nothing of
this kind on the programme. They held up their
hands in holy horror at such proceedings, and they
have been my sworn enemies ever since.
With the experience gained in street car war-
fare, which demanded the fullest investigation of
the facts in all possible aspects, I am prepared to
say that a street car franchise at a low rate of fare
is one of the safest of investments. I am absolutely
confident that the old street car company of Detroit
could well afford to pay from $250,000 to $1,000,000
for a perpetual franchise. Yet streets are given
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
0
(
O-
away to street car companies all over the United
States. I think that every municipal government
all over the United States should have a stringent
law making it obligatory upon common councils of
the country to refer every question of street fran-
chise back to the people for action.
It has already been alluded to that the Citizens'
Railway Company of Detroit mortgaged their lines ·
for $7,000,000 on a real investment of less than
$3,000,000. Were it required by the city to take
the control of the streets acquired by this company,
such is the protection afforded these corporations
by the courts that every cent of this $7,000,000
would have to be paid. This I take for granted,
in view of the past decisions of the courts, throwing
the shield of the law over such transactions. This
must be accepted, and it must be admitted that this
company, with its doubtful tenure of the streets for
ten or twelve years, can persuade the court, as they
did the mortgagee, that the franchise, aside from
the investment under which they are operating, is
worth more than $4,000,000. It does not seem
that any other view can be taken by a court, for
property must be valued for what it is bought and
sold for. The lowest possible fare consistent with
such startling figures should be the rule.
It may be that the sale of such franchises out-
right should be the method, and this rule is advo-
cated by good men.
66
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Ir
It is to be conceded that it has its merits, but it
is subject to the manipulations of combines that
grow more numerous and more effective every
year. A low fare and complete municipal control
seems to me the more feasible; but, perhaps, even
these might be secured with the sale of franchises.
Most of the cities of the United States are tied
up by improper disposal of these great franchises,
and there seems to be no remedy for it. That
fraud has entered into all of them there would seem
to be a moral certainty; but, unfortunately, that
kind of certainty cannot gain credit in courts
of law. That the disposal of these franchises in
the way of rewards will go on in the future, there
does not seem to be any manner of doubt. If there
is a change, it must of necessity be very slow. That
an effective remedy ought to be found, consistent
with the protection of contracts, every fair man
believes. That it is to be found, rests with the men
who are made judges. Whether laws made for a
simple form of society are equal to the more com-
plex form which is steadily growing more intricate
and involved, is a question suggested by contempla-
tion of the features of the municipal problem. The
application of these laws must be made by the
judges. That they interpose difficulties of proper
application seems to be plain, hence the popular
question: “Is he a corporation judge or is he for
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
67
the people?” This is even asked when the highest
court in the land is being discussed with reference
to municipal questions. There seems to be ample
room for disagreement amongst the highest judges;
but it appears to me, in view of my experience of
the swindling, stock jobbing, bribing and corrupting
corporationists, that decisions in favor of the greatest
number could not be far out of the way. It would
take the worst description of gambling out of busi-
ness life and relegate the boodler to the shades. It
would take one of the greatest educators in theft
and bribery, one of the greatest perverters of public
thought from the office of teacher. Already are the
youth of the land well nigh convinced, from the
language in common use about them, that any
means of obtaining money is the ordinary method
of attaining to wealth, the regular recognized
method. They see men who have obtained it by
devious methods publicly honored with the highest
offices in the land; they see them deferred to by the
learned and the able; at every feast and festival the
foremost; at the grave assemblages of the courts
among the most honored, that even in the sanctuary
they have the foremost seats, that their hands are
shaken by the reverend and the revered, while the
fair-play man is relegated to silence and the shadows
of life. If there is any hope for a better manhood for
the republic that hope lies in the courts. But even
common
68
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
the courts must change before such hope can be
realized. The corporations can afford to use the
entire expensive machinery of the courts, and they
are the cause, both direct and indirect, of more liti-
gation than the rest of the people combined in which
the higher courts are used. Delay is their great
resort, and their method is, to fight step by step
from one court to another, and apparently nothing
would please them better than to have law-suits run
on indefinitely without end. They could well afford
it, at least in the case of street car contests--such
as that with the Citizens' Company of Detroit-to
law on forever. Where millions are to be gained
by delay, a few tens of thousands are well spent in
the courts. They are prepared for this by being
well equipped with regularly salaried lawyers, just
as they are well prepared to capture the primaries
and conventions of the State. Our court systems
favor corporations. There is no means of obtaining
swift justice in the courts. No matter that every
man, woman and child in the great cities are con-
scious of the frauds perpetuated by the corporations,
that, were they sitting as jurors, every boodling
alderman and every bribing corporationist would be
hanged, the court system furnishes no remedy, since
false oaths are as common as boodling.
The latter end of the nineteenth century has
produced men who compose a grade of criminals of
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
finished rascality, whose combinations are such as
to defeat the ends sought by the officers of the law,
the courts and the judges. They are in the so-called
best society, and they are in close touch with the
general business in the locality in which they oper-
ate. Their own pursuits upon the face are strictly
legal. Honorable business-men who are fully aware
of their methods refuse to disclose anything that
will bring the scoundrels to justice, because the
weed cannot, in scores of cases, be plucked up with.
out pulling the plant with it. Indirectly the honor-
able business of the honorable man depends for its
stability upon the dishonorable business of the dis-
honorable inan. Hence I have seen men of splendid
character fighting in defense of the aldermen who
were robbing the community. Hence I have seen
perfectly upright men shoulder to shoulder with the
corporation because there was big money in it.
While the law might be able to meet such condi-
tions, there is no means to get the proper disclosures
before the courts, because the court systems demand
a kind of proof that is not obtainable. The court
knows nothing; justice is blind, and must be told
everything before it can judge. There is no nicety
of method of the courts that is equal to the nicety
of method of the aldermanic boodler and of the
corporation briber and manipulator and corrupter of
the primaries. It is this feature of the municipal
70
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
situation that causes the popular suspicion of courts.
The swindling systems are better perfected than
the detective systems. People are perpetually pay-
ing taxes for the sustaining of detective bureaus
and courts, and are also paying indirect taxes, and
just as perpetually, to the swindlers. And the
people are complaining seriously.
On the question of small pox in Detroit one of
the ghastliest of farces was displayed by corporation
doctors and lawyers, with the aid of a few news-
paper mer. In the name of the health of the city
and under a fire of lies from the press, the conspiracy
for political power in, aid of the Citizens' Street
Railway Company was pushed in the Michigan
Republican Legislature, who did not represent the
spirit of the Republican party of 1861, or of to-day,
any more than Grover Cleveland represents Jeffer-
sonian democracy.
Managers of trusts and combines, heads and
managers of corporations, and intriguing newspaper
owners who carry the Republican name at the heads
of their papers, are party wreckers. There is no
corporationist of any party that has the least wish
for party success inconsistent with a desire to control
legislation in behalf of corporations and of personal
preferment and influence. These men control the
machinery of the caucuses of both parties and combine
to purchase the conventions of any third party
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
71
movement that is likely to catch the ear of the
people and control votes. That they are party
wreckers is shown in Kansas where the domineering
of the railroads changed the State from the Repub.
lican party to the Populist party. A better illustra-
tion of this fact and of the association of prominent
Republican and prominent Democratic doctors and
lawyers cannot be given than that furnished in the
city of Detroit, where the corporationists, regardless
of party, attempted in every way, inclusive of a
riotous demonstration, to throw the city back into
the hands of the Citizens' Railway Company. That
they are party wreckers is daily illustrated in Detroit,
where at least one of the leading papers is prostituted.
for hire in the interest of corporations and is con-
stantly abusing and belittling a Republican admin-
istration. Seven years ago Detroit was a Democratic
city. It has elected Republican officers for six years.
But they were and are not the tools of corporations,
hence the futile attacks of this so-called Republican
newspaper upon the flanks of a Republican admin-
istration whose protracted struggle with corporations
is by no means over, but which so far, notwithstanding
the fire-in-the-rear paper, has been tolerably success-
ful in modifying the tax imposed by the street
railway which it is supporting. Aligned with the
benefits derived, the entire city tax, together with
the sums expended in fighting corporations, is
72
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
TI
insignificant compared with the taxes imposed by
the corporation known as the Citizens' Railway
Company, yet this recreant paper, owned by a
corporation Republican, advocates any and all taxes,
which is but another name for charges for transpor-
tation, levied by this corporation, by weakly efforts
to discredit a Republican administration.
Here, in the face of a campaign in a city nominally
Democratic, this paper antagonizes a Republican
administration, and this furnishes an additional fact
to the array of facts, showing that corporations and
the newspapers they hire care nothing for the party
which they pretend to support. The whole con-
spiracy to wreck the Republican party is so obvious
that even that grand-motherly paper, the Free Press,
sees it and urges anxiously on the corporation
Republicans to move faster in the scheme to steal
the primaries in the good old way in which they
have been stolen before; in the good old way in
which they have been regularly filched in this
and other States, for the manifest benefit of the
corporations. At the same time it must be a
humiliating spectacle for Democrats, whose organi-
zation the Free Press assisted in splitting, throwing
itself in array with the corporationists who have
openly robbed the city for years as the only pitiful
crutch upon which it can lean for hope of success
for the Democratic party in a Democratic city.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
73
But right here we confront the ever-recurring
fact again that many of the so-called prominent
men of the Democratic party, like many of the
so-called prominent men of the Republican party,
are corporationists first and Democrats and Repub-
licans afterwards. They only belong to parties
nominally. Some of them contribute money for
campaigns after they have captured the primaries,
but such funds are good investments, as the profits
are in the shape of the taxing and law-making
powers, and it all reverts to the benefit of the cor-
porations to which they belong; as, for instance, the
influence in the last Legislature of Michigan by
the railroad corporations was worth thousands of
dollars, if not millions, to the railroads, and all of
this money came out of the people. It is a rare
thing that more than $50,000 is put into any State
campaign as an investment, but it is equally rare
when the corporations do not make a quarter of a
million or more per year on that investment. There
is business in politics. Business in the Republican
party, forced there by corporationists. Business in
the Republican party that was formed in the name
of human rights. Business to the Republican party,
whose masses are still true to the principles on
which it was founded. The spirit of 1861 still
survives in these masses, and there is every indica-
tion that they are not misled by the false notes of

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Results of “influence"-one gets ninety-five per cent. of the profits,
the other five per cent.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
75
1
as
alleged Republican organs which are false to the
traditions of the Republican party. They only wear
the name. And the Republican party will live
to slough off the domination of corporationists,
who use it only as a means to legalize plunder and
advance and guard class legislation for the sole
benefit of enriching corporations. They have no
sympathy with party progress; they are neither, I
insist, Republican or Democratic. They are together
as corporationists strictly in the business of stealing
primaries and conventions in the sole interests of
their private business. They are in politics for the
money there is in it. They tie the hands of both
parties, after the purchase of the third party, and
disfranchise voters at the polls of elections. The
time for the work that ought to be done is frittered
away on side issues. Principles are made the cloak
for the concealment of wringing railroad fares and
freights out of toil. The flag, even, is flaunted by
the combine and the trust. Law is warped to the
needs of the corporations. Courts are deluged with
cases in their interests. The bench has been sullied
with men who were mere tools in their hands.
Congress andthe State Legislatures have been pol-
luted and degraded in the eyes of men. The youth
of the nation, taken by the rush of this whirlpool,
are on the make, regardless of the common rules of
fair play. For money, money, money is the cry-
no matter how it is made.
CHAPTER III.
CORPORATION INFLUENCE GETS IN ITS WORK.
LEGISLATION AGAINST HOME RULE.
SMALL-POX SCARE.
It has become the rule nowadays that the con-
trol of the primaries and the election of pliant tools
by certain corporations has become part of their
business enterprise, so as to be able to pass in the
Legislatures laws increasing their profits or prevent-
ing legitimate competition, or to defeat any measures
intended to make them contribute their just share
towards public expenses. They are in politics only
as a question of per cent. The political boss of a
State or a city is generally well fixed financially and
is a stockholder in many of these corporations, and
his political pull is made use of to pass these
measures. He can whip them into line by promises
of office or threats of eternal damnation, which is
cheaper than boodle.
While the last Michigan Legislature was in the
hands of the combine of railroad corporators, and
engaged in a conspiracy in the interest of the Citi.
zens' Street Railway Conipany, there was a case of
small-pox broke out in the Merchants' Hotel. One
76
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
W
:
of the reputable physicians of the city was in attend-
ance upon the patient, who diagnosed the case as
measles. Reports were received at the office of the
health commission that small-pox was suspected,
and the health officer, in accordance with custom,
asked the attending physician if these reports had
any foundation. He was assured they had not, and
on this assurance decided not to interfere. This
was according to custom, as there has not been a
health officer in Detroit who has ever pretended
that all cases of contagious diseases can be detected
by the health office, no matter how watchful and
efficient it may be. Reliance must be placed upon
the physicians of the city who are, in the course of
the practice of their profession, called in. There
was no doubt as to the ability of the physician who
handled the Merchants' Hotel case; the newspapers
never questioned that. The patient died, was taken
to the morgue, and on examination of the body by
the health officer, he concluded that the death was
caused by small-pox.
Pending in the Legislature were several bills
presented and defended by persons in the railroad
interest. These bills were circulated, by the re.
arrangement of the acts of the Legislature, to take
the government out of the hands of the people's
representatives of the city and place them in the
hands of a railroad legislature. Once there the
ca
78
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
YO
corporations would have a clear sweep and instead
of a city enjoying home rule, at least in part, Detroit
would be practically misgoverned from the capitol
of the State and by men whose interests were in the
railways of the city and State.
The small-pox case was the Morgan of the
campaign of recklessness that ensued. It was a
campaign of villification, abuse and misrepresentation
of the motives of the administration, but the health
officer was inade the center of the storm of petti-
fogging. Under cover of the fumes ejected by the
newspapers the corporationists got in their work at
Lansing. State legislation of importance was cast
aside to rid the city of a person who was obnoxious
to corporations. Whenever a corporationist howled
“McLeod” he meant Pingree. Many level-headed
physicians of the city, stirred up by the corporation
doctors, took sides against the people for the time
being, but presently, looking out from the fumes of
the newspapers, promptly receded from the position,
leaving their corporation professional brethren to
fight the worth of their salaries out. The news.
papers of the city, generally taking their cue from
the morgue case, filled their columns with hosts
of cases of small-pox, contrary to their customary
policy, suggested by their advertisers, of making no
reports of small-pox cases, since, as the advertisers
pointed out, it hurt the business of the city. But
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
79
all care for advertisers and for the business of the
city was flung to the winds in the mad rush for the
protection of a corporation by some of the papers;
and by others for the purpose of bolstering up weak
Democratic party managers with props of contagious
disease. For weeks every day the papers kept up.
their fire of small-pox reports, corporation doctors
were prolix in their communications to the press,
showing the extreme distress about the health of
the city; they went in little knots to the various
central offices, and when no reporter was present,
and they were all corporation lawyers and doctors
together, they talked openly of ridding the city of
Pingree; but where a reporter was present or a
physician not in sympathy with the conspiracy, they
talked volubly of the threat to the health of the
city and of the terrible disaster that was to overtake
the town. This brought a large number of citizens
in direct antagonism with the health officers, and,
if human nature runs with physicians as it does with
the rest of mankind, then the assistance rendered
the health office in the endeavor to check the
disease must have been small indeed. All of the
talk, and the communications of the corporation
doctors to the press, especially those in connection
with the change of physicians at the pest house,
looked to tying the hands of the health officer and
the consequent spread of the disease. All of the
80
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
wa
publication of a politically-used and foolish press
was deliberately designed to prejudice everybody,
inclusive of physicians, against the health officer
and assist the spread of the disease. Defiant of
consequences--blinded by the prospective benefits
to monopolizing railroads and to themselves on the
one hand by one stripe of paper; hope of the accu-
mulation of political capital on the other by another
stripe of paper; egged on by corporation doctors
and lawyers, and interlinked business interests, the
newspapers threw all semblance of decency aside
and filled their columns with lying reports of small-
pox, and editorials based upon those lies. And they
kept it up even after the cases of small-pox grew
less and were brought under control by a health
office so terribly handicapped. They refused to
publish the reports of the abatement of the small.
pox and I was forced to resort to bulletins to get
the information before an excited people. The bul.
letins were ridiculed, and the newspapers thus placed
themselves in the most disgraceful light.
All sorts of schemes were set on foot to get the
health commission in confusion, and the health
office employes were played upon and sides were
taken by them in the disgraceful struggle brought
on by corporate greed.
Confronting the apparent fact that the physicians
of the city were arrayed against the health officer,
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
81
the health commission, knowing that the co-operation
of the physicians of the city was essential to the
effective conduct of the office, and as it appeared
that that co-operation was rendered practically
negative by the attitude of the press and the influen-
tial corporation doctors, they cast about for some
relief from the oppressive situation. It was found
in the offer of the health officer's resignation. That
officer considerately tendered his resignation under
circumstances requiring great moral courage on the
part of any man of spirit. It was practically a
tender of his resignation under fire. But he reserved
the right of an investigation upon which the validity
of his resignation must hinge. It was no more than
any man would do. But the newspapers on the
one hand took the resignation as a confession of
incompetency and on the other hand jeered at his
demand for investigation. They were out for blood
and the character of a man or his reputation was a
thing not to be regarded when the scent of blood
was in the nostrils and palms were tingling with
boodle. Again the tom-toms of servility were
beaten and the corporation doctors were buzzing
like so many bees. All the reason of this hustling
lay in the effort of the health commission to secure
the services of another physician to take the place of
the health officer. For they were determined to
defeat this at all hazards, since the change might
82
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
affect the vote upon the legislative acts pending
which gave control of city officers to the corpora.
tionists. This action was a fresh disclosure upon
their part that they were not seeking the health of
the city any more than were the corporation lawyers
who went before the Legislature with speeches
eloquent of despair for the city's health; all pleading
for a change in the law so that they might choose
a health officer of their own to preserve the integrity
of the health of the back districts and not lose
passengers at five cents per head for their medicated
cars. Their play was to keep the health officer in
office until the conspiracy was made effective by
changing the control from the city to the State. No
matter how many died in the interim from the
dread disease, small-pox, through the alleged in-
efficiency of a health officer whom they condemned as
inefficient, he must be kept there until they won
the battle, even though they walked over the streets
filled with the putrefying corpses of their victims.
There is no length to which the corporation doctor
and lawyer will not go to attain their ends.
It was useless for the health commission to look
to obtaining the services of any city physician of
ability, no matter how willing they were to enter
the city's service. They would not care to enter
upon duties which would be constantly interfered
with and blasted by the intriguing corporation
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
. 83
was
as
doctors who had politics more at heart than the
relief of the city. They shrunk from entering an
office whose office force was demoralized by the
wrangling of physicians. They were intelligent
enough to see the play of the corporation doctors
and they knew that the health of the city was
farthest from their minds. ..
But finally Dr. Hutton, of the United States
Marine Service, on duty at Detroit, was selected as
the proper man to take the place. He consented to
take it on condition that he be relieved by the
proper department. That consent for relief was
forthcoming, but by the time that Dr. Hutton was
ready to take hold at the health office, the corpora.
tion influence got in its work and he was constrained
to decline. Meantime, hampered on all hands,
abused, vilified and hung in effigy in the city press,
the old health officer kept on, discharged the clogs
in his office, appointed a new physician in the place
of one of his opponents at the pest house, and when
the Legislature, in obedience to the demands of the
corporations, legislated him out of office, he turned
over its affairs with the small-pox stamped out and
a clean bill of health. To-day, September 20th., 1895,
as I write, there is a fresh inroad of small-pox,
which is a constant visitant, with other contagious
diseases, of all localities the world round, but you
will not find a word about it in any issue of any of

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FACTS AND OPINIONS.
85
the papers of Detroit, although there is as much
danger from small-pox to-day as there was when
the corporation lawyers and doctors, assisted by a
railroad legislature, helped to overthrow the laws of
the people and substituted something more in
accordance with the wishes and designs of the cor-
poration class.
Pending the nefarious transaction of the Legisla-
ture, a fight was made for the preservation of home
rule for the city, and the newspapers who created
the small-pox scare, after printed editorials in defense
of home rule and in favor of the federal system of
government for the municipality, veered directly
around and took the opposite course. And it is
noticeable that such newspapers are always the
advocates of a close approach to principle when
they feel that the interests of corporations are safe;
but the instant that corporative rule is attacked
they change for the advocacy of the expedient, no
matter what of principle may be wrecked or hung
in doubt by the process.
When they themselves advocated it, surely it
was quite clear that it was good; it was quite as
clear when I advocated it that it was bad. I was
in opposition to corporations. That was the differ-
ence between the newspapers and myself. They
owned stock in them, or saw political possibilities
in favoring corporations. The Citizens' Railway
86
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
sai
managers made up a purse of $75,000 for me, which
was taken out of the stockholders. I didn't get the
money. Possibly the newspapers or the managers
of the newspapers know where the $75,000 went
to. I have spent about that amount fighting corpo-
rations. I wish I had a million to spend in the
same way. But I haven't got through yet.
There was only one thing demonstrated in the
course of this fight for the plain rights of the people
that will touch the reflective faculties of men as it
did mine. Boodle aldermen paused in their course
of spoliation, and actually began to express doubts
as to the advisability of following their crazy corpo.
ration leaders to the lengths they were going. It
seemed to evince some slight traces of a conscience.
Whether the attitude of their roused people in their
respective wards did not cause these symptoms of
conscience to appear on the surface and astonish
the onlooker is neither here nor there. It was
pleasing to see because it was new. It was some-
thing that I had never seen in a corporationist and
I began to suspect that, after all, there was some-
thing to build upon in the boodling tool, whose
financial condition may have tempted him to wrong-
doing, which was not evidenced by the owner of the
tool. A corporationist has no conscience. The
noble men who stood in the minority in the council
took heart at the attitude of the people of Detroit,
FACTS AND OPINIO
87
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
and at a meeting held January 23, 1895, the council
was unanimous in the expression for the rule of the
people as against the rule of the corporationists,
through the State.
On the adjournment of that session of the coun-
cil, I prepared the following proclamation:
(The accompanying proclamation by the Mayor
was submitted to the four daily newspapers of
Detroit, who refused to publish it, the News and
Journal declining to accept it as a paid advertise.
ment.)
EXECUTIVE OFFICE,
CITY OF DETROIT, January 23, 1895.5
To the Inhabitants of the City of Detroit:
At a public session of the Common Council the follow-
ing preambles and resolution were unanimously adopted:
By Alderman Coots:
WHEREAS, There are pending before the Legislature of
the State of Michigan measures looking towards the reorgan-
ization of three boards of Detroit, by which it is proposed
to take the selection of those boards out of the hands of the
people of Detroit and their representatives, the members of
the Common Council and the Mayor, and,
WHEREAS, We believe that such principles are a blow
at the principle of local self-government, which principle is
dear to the heart of the intelligent and patriotic inhabitants
of this city; therefore,
Resolved, That the Mayor be requested to call a meeting
of the inhabitants of the City of Detroit, who, by the charter
constitute the body politic and corporation known as the
City of Detroit, for the purpose of taking such action as
may be deemed necessary to prevent the passage of laws
1
88
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
which are intended to deprive them of the right of local
self-government.
Adopted.
In compliance with this request of your direct repre-
sentatives, the members of the Common Council of this city,
I call on you without respect of party to lay aside your busi-
ness, your pleasures and your cares, and assemble in citizens'
meeting at the Auditorium on Larned street, on Saturday
evening, January 26, 1895, at 8 o'clock, for the purpose of
taking into consideration such measures as may be necessary
to prevent the enactment of laws intended to deprive you of
the control and management of the affairs of your beloved
city.
In making this call I deem it my duty to give expression
of my views upon this important question:
If the City of Detroit is to become what it should be,
the most beautiful, the most healthful, the most intelligent
and the best governed city in the United States, it will be
when its honest men and true women are united by the ever-
present responsibility of local self-government. It has been
proposed by the measures which have been introduced in the
State Senate to take from you the selection or control of the
Board of Education, the Police Board and the Board of
Health. In other words, it is proposed that the Governor
of this State, at the instigation or suggestion of a few men
who may have influence with him, shall relieve you of the
responsibility of the care and education of your children,
the protection of your life and property, and the preservation
of your health; powers which are exercised as matters of
inherent right by your neighbors living in the adjacent town-
ships, as well as the inhabitants of every other city, town,
village and hamlet in the State. By this proposed legisla-
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
89
tion, you alone of all the people living in the broad State of
Michigan are singled out to be enslaved-to be deprived of
these rights which have come down unimpaired from the
founders of this grand Republic.
In the days when the newspapers of this city were
controlled by independent thought and action, they stood
like towers of strength in favor of this great principle of
local self-goverrment and municipal reform. But since one
man has become substantially the owner of two of the news-
papers, and appears to exert a terrorizing influence over at least
one of the others, the three have joined hands for the purpose
of enforcing the principle of government, which will make
the city of Detroit a mere province of the State of Michigan,
and its inhabitants subject to the control of agents in whose
selection they have no voice.
Public opinion was formerly expressed and public action
was had through the town meeting, where the people them-
selves assembled in a body to give expression to their views
and enforce their desires. The growth of cities has made
that impossible, and in great cities the public press has often
been the only medium necessary for a true exposition of the
principles which lie at the foundation of the honor, the
integrity and the virtue of a great people, but when a
combined effort is made by the press of the city acting
substantially under one control and one management, in the
interest of corporate greed, to carry out schemes of designing
and malicious public enemies, it is time that the people as
in early days, should assemble and give expression to their
views. The public mind is being poisoned.
This is a matter in which I have no interest, except as
one of your members. The obligations which you have
imposed upon me came to me without my seeking and they
90
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
are obligations which in the future you will impose upon
others, who may discharge them with more intelligence and
fidelity than I have, and you should see to it that the great
rights and privileges which are entrusted to your keeping
should not be bartered away by those who are warring upon
me. In my earnest struggles for the peoples' rights against
grasping monopolies and holders of landed estates, who have
wasted so much of their energy and spent so much of their
time in avoiding the tax collector, and who have been willing
that the poor and the humble should bear the burdens which
they should willingly share, I have made enemies who are
bitter, vindictive, malicious and sleepless. You should look
to it, that, in aiding them to defeat me, you do not take to
your bosom a serpent that will sting you to the death.
H. S. PINGREE, Mayor.
Now, I desire to say right here, in the midst of the
relation of the story of the wrong-doing on the part
of corporationists, that all corporate control in the
municipality, in the State, in the congressional dis-
tricts, and in all other federal primaries, having come
through the control of the caucuses by the corpora-
tionists, it is therefore in the caucuses where the
people must seek a remedy. I offer nothing new
when I point this out as a remedy against corporate
control. The caucus has always been with us, and
the caucus, to all appearances, will ever remain.
There is nothing new in the proposition to make
the caucus the means by which every reform may
be pushed forward. As simple as it appears, it
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
91
means a complete revolution in political matters.
By the caucus system, every voter's hands are tied
for the ensuing election. But few have hitherto
attended the primaries in any State in the Union.
That is the corporationist's advantage. And he
takes it. Hence there are but few States that are
not corporation ridden. I have said that corpora-
tions are party wreckers, and I have touched upon
Kansas as a case in point. In Kansas, for twenty
years, the people have literally groaned under the
iron heel of the Atcheson & Topeka and the Kansas
Pacific Railroads. Their Legislatures have been
corrupted by those roads as fast as they are elected.
It was cheaper for the roads to bribe and corrupt the
law-making power, than to pay their just taxes upon
the alternate sections of land which the general
government had granted them. A State peopled by
the bone and the sinew which made up the Union
armies of the war of the rebellion, men who had
gone there to establish homes for themselves and
their children, and who, so doing, suffered in privation
and poverty; representative Americans who, on
hanging up their rifles, after bearing a noble part
in the preservation of the Union, sought peace and
livelihood upon these western lands. At one time
casting a Republican majority of over 20,000,
Kansas has drifted from one ism to another in its
endeavor to rid itself of railroad oppression. The
92
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
people are powerless against the combined millions
of the corporationists. Although at one time badly
shaken, the railroads are again in the saddle, and by
escaping taxation and charging enormous freight
rates, while depopulating the State, they are re-
couping themselves for the next spasmodic effort of
the people to overthrow them.
I shall not say that the remedy for this and other
States is the remedy for Kansas; but I venture to
assert that political conditions in Kansas are not
unlike those in many other States. Certainly, in
the fact that the Legislatures of many States are in
the possession of the corporationists, as are the
Legislatures of Kansas, they are alike. Certainly, in
the fact that in the matter of excessive railway
charges, the majority of States are alike. And that
the primaries are dominated by corporationists
must be as true of Kansas as it is of Michigan, else
corrupt men could never appear in the legislative
halls. I say that if the sewers of the caucuses were
flushed by the whole vote of any State, no cor-
poration rot could survive. Too little attention is
paid to caucuses, and too much attention is paid to
the subsequent election. The mischief perpetuated
in the caucuses can only be spasmodically repaired
at elections. Who ever heard of a full vote of the
people being cast at the primaries? Who ever
heard of a set campaign for the caucuses ? All
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
class legislation in favor of the corporation has
originated in the caucuses. They go by default of
attention of nearly all but the vigilant and watchful
primaries. I hope to see the day when the caucuses
will be the final resort for the people. To-day and
in the past every man's hands have been tied by
the few that appear at the caucuses. Here in the
city of Detroit the rally of a few more than the
ordinary number of men at the polls overthrew the
corporation gang. Finding that the ordinary
methods did not prevail, they entered the Legis-
lature, where the way was already prepared, and
passed a so-called law for the preservation of the
purity of caucuses, which for years their agents had
corrupted. In this farcical law, for whose carrying
out the proper tool had been prepared, no provision
had been made for the supervision of the proper
casting of the caucus ballot. The law does not
even provide for a policeman in the booths. Antici-
pating that the creature of the corporations, who
was familiar with the bum element of the city, and
long familiar with the men who miscount caucus
ballots, would have control of the appointment of the
• inspectors of caucuses, no guard was thrown about
the caucus ballot boxes. What the result would
have been no man familiar with the political trickery
of this tool of the corporations could fail to see.
The law was passed in the interests of fraud, and the
94
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
proper men were selected to carry it out. The
fight was made for a prospective fair count of the
ballots which are to be cast in the caucuses.
I hope to see the day when all of the protection
thrown around the elections is thrown around the
primaries; when proper supervision will be had
upon the men who take the ballots, and when
the Australian law will be applied with all its
vigor at the caucuses. But above all do I desire to
see the day when the people will turn out for the
caucuses in overwhelming numbers, and force a fair
count in all of the dignity of great numbers of
American citizens. It is in the caucuses where the
danger lies. It is for the caucuses that apathy is
exhibited, and that very apathy is the opportunity
of the corporationist, who easily provides the proper
set of tools for the business. The cost of neglect of
the caucuses has been fearful, and will continue to
be such until a revolution in methods is successfully
inaugurated. Too much stress cannot be laid upon
the importance of the caucuses. I am fully con-
vinced that if the people control the caucuses they
will control the municipalities in the State and in
the Nation,
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND MEETING AT AUDITORIUM.-RIOTOUS
PROCEEDINGS.--CONTRAST WITH
FIRST MEETING.
The meeting referred to in the proclamation,
which had for its purpose, as declared in the call,
the discussion and defence of local self-government,
the proper control of the city affairs by its inhabit-
ants, was made the scene and the center of a riotous
demonstration by the anarchical element of the cor-
poration wings of both the Democratic and Repub-
lican parties of Detroit, where they furnished proof
conclusive, if it has not already been amply evi-
are
higher estimation than are the interests and the
stability of party. The c orporation lawyers and
doctors entered into a conspiracy to break up the
meeting. They placed themselves, masked and
armed, in the path of free speech as highwaymen
place themselves on the road of the peaceful
traveler. They gathered together bands of unre-
flecting students through cunningly contrived
speech-youth who generously respond to those
to whom they look up to with reverence and esteem;
youth whose deference to intellect and attainments
95

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First meeting at Auditorium " Detroit's treasury is not full enough to
permit her to grant franchises worth half a million to any com-
pany.”—DON M, DICKINSON.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
97
is: little short of devotional. These they led astray
to throw themselves into antagonism with the free
institutions of their city and their country. The
boys had evidently been persuaded that to break up
such a meeting was a huge joke, a rollick upon
the campus, a midnight roast of a freshman, and a
rush on general principles. But not a little of the
superabundance of mischief evinced was due to
hobble-de-hoy provincialism of the daily press,
whose columns were but little elevated above the
primitive sheets of a newly-settled frontier, who
dwelt on mere incidents, dilated on foibles, and failing
to grasp the growing importance of a metropolis
in the break-neck race for immediate pay from
hustling corporations, threw discretion to the winds
and joined in the howl of conspiracy.
The red flag was not there, but anarchy of the
basest type was present in full force. Hoodlums
were present, and the cause of their presence was
traced to the editorial rooms of one of the news.
papers. Some time before the hour of the meeting
as called, the prominent and respectable (?) conspira-
tors by some underhand means, got possession of
a side-door of the Auditorium, and entered in the
darkness before the regular entrance was thrown
open for the general public. They took possession
of the stage and sat in the dark. The police found
them in possession. Of course, were it different,
98
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
had those in possession been other than the respect-
able representatives of powerful corporations, had
they been men whom the police are accustomed
to force into obedience of the law by the free use
of the baton, they would have been summarily
ejected from the hall. But those men were not of
the class who break minor laws such as the police
are organized for, but men who both make and
break the higher laws; men far more responsible
for the demoralization of great cities than all of the
classes of the rough element combined; men who
regard law as something to control somebody else;
men who calmly and eloquently deliver lectures on
the best way to regulate by law the so-called
threatening element of great cities; men who com.
mend the getting of strong armed bodies to put
down mobs; themselves a mob. The police knew
beforehand that there was to be a row at the
Auditorium; but they were powerless before the
corporationists, who had prepared for the row. The
Superintendent of Police was absent, but meeting a
Detroiter at Chicago, he told him that there would
be a riot at the Auditorium. Had the preparations
for the riot been made by workmen instead of cor-
porationists; had workmen, after the police informa-
tion, been found in the building in the dark by the
police, the riot would not have occurred. The
workmen would have been ordered out, and if they
.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
99
a
ere
refused they would have been clubbed into the
street. I do not cite this to find fault with the
police. They are the unconscious victims of the
corporation environment, just as the reporters of
newspapers are. The details of this conspiracy
against a Republican administration of the affairs
of the City of Detroit were never truthfully pub-
lished in the papers. They were deliberately gar-
bled and distorted, and upon this garbling and
distortion editorial conclusions were drawn that
were false in the gross and false net. One of the
men who writes such editorials assisted in gather-
ing together the hoodlums who were sneaked in by
way of the back door, with an editor or two, for the
express purpose of breaking up the meeting. That
my motives were impugned was nothing strange or
new; they have always been. In the face of the
fact that I, as a member of the Health Board,
accepted the resignation of the Health Officer and
assented to the request of that officer for an investi.
gation, to which he was clearly entitled, and which
the subsequent event of the stamping out of the
small-pox, clearly showed he was entitled to; even
in the face of the fact that in conjunction with the
other members of the Board, I sought to obtain the
services of another physician as Health Officer, and
was unable to do so through the interference of cor-
poration doctors, lawyers and owners of street rail.
SU
Was
100
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
way stock engaged on newspapers, these same news.
papers, in pettifogging editorials, persisted in stating
that my object in raising the question of self-govern-
ment for the city was to retain the Health Offier in
office for political purposes.
Here is a quotation from one of the newspapers
of the time, which indicates that I was going to
pack my own meeting. It does not explain that
Alderman Charles Wright was one of the principal
assisters of the Citizens' Street Railway Company
nor that he was one of the defenders of a five cent
fare, but such was the case. And I desire to say
that all of these quotations from newspapers are
made for the purpose of showing the kind of reports
that were made by the papers at the time, the very
best reports being selected. It will thus be seen
that the mess of trash that passed for reports by
Detroit daily papers have no value as statements of
fact in a matter of vast importance to the city, in
that there is no coherency in the relation, the aver-
age reader knowing nothing of the run of local
affairs must be incapable of drawing any conclusion
from the jumbled statements:
“Both sides understood at the time that the
meeting would be packed. This led to a coup
d'etat prepared, for which Alderman Charles Wright
of the second ward is responsible. He spent the
greater part of yesterday calling on the prominent
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
ΙοΙ
business and professional men of the city. They
were instructed to be at the wholesale warehouse of
Williams, Davis, Brooks & Co., druggists, on East
Congress street early, so as, only having to pass
through two back doors and across the alley, they
would have the choice of seats. At 5:30 in the
afternoon Alderman Wright left his place of busi-
ness, puffing a Havana, his overcoat closely buttoned
up and his fur cap well pulled down. He was
accompanied by a smooth-faced young man. The
two went up Larned street, across Woodward
avenue to Bates street. At the corner he was met
by a stranger, and, after a moment's conversation,
the two went down the alley, back of the Auditorium.
Immediately after Alderman Wright went around
to the front, and those in the rear of the Auditorium
heard the bolts of the back door being removed.
They were invited in, and stumbled over chairs
towards a red glow which turned out to be a cigar
which the alderman was smoking.
“It was the beginning of the development of Mr.
Wright's strategic move.
“It was suggested that lights were bad for the
eyes, and the incandescent lamps were turned off
until one alone was left burning. It was directly in
front of the dressing-room. Again three raps were
heard upon the door, and it was carefully opened.
Two brawny men were vouched for, and yet care-
1
W
On
102
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
fully sīrutinized as they entered. They passed up
the aisle and a box of cigars was opened. This
was at ten minutes after 6 o'clock.
“Then began a long wait. One man in a husky
voice asked if there was any whiskey. He was
told there was none, and a shade of regret passed
over his face. He hitched in his chair and puffed
the stronger on his cigar.
“Now and then a deep silence would fall upon
the gathering, a silence broken only by the ringing
of the telephone bell or the rattle of the engineer
fixing his fire. Now and then one of the husky
men would take a fresh cigar and wander to some
distant part of the big hall,' away from the smoke,
and all that would indicate his presence there would
be the lurid flame of a match or the tiny round light
of the cigar.
MC
HAD CONFIDENCE IN PING.
“Once a swarthy-faced man, with a week's
growth of beard on his chin, muttered:
«Old Ping will find others to work his own
game.'
“He did'nt explain what game it was when he
was asked. He simply followed his remark with a
gruff laugh. It seemed out of place in the gloom
and silence, and the laugh soon died away.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
103
mo
“After an hour's wait three loud and distinct
raps were heard on the back door. A big man of
gigantic frame was the first to enter from the cold.
One by one he called the names of the others as
they entered, and every one of them he touched on
the shoulder as he called them.
". They're all right; that's Jim-come on, Charlie
-Pete. Hurry up, Bill — take seats over there,
boys-back up so that the others can come in-
move along, Joe,'
"And so he continued. Ten men entered; twelve,
fifteen, sixteen—now they tumbled over one another
in their haste to enter the warm, but gloomy, Audi-
torium. There were no exclamations of surprise-
twenty-twenty-one, twenty-five, thirty. Still they
continued to tumble in.
Right on the moment,' exclaimed Alderman
Wright, joyfully, 'I didn't think they would fail.
The business men are gathering over there-there'll
be a slew of them.'
“Forty, fifty, and still the mass of humanity left
the cold outside for the warmth of the hall, and it
was done quietly. Seventy, seventy-three, seventy-
five, seventy-six.
wa
DOORS BOLTED.
“ They were all in now and the door was bolted
and barred again. Not another minute passed
104
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Tas
Swar
before three raps were again sounded on the door
and when it was opened in swarmed a great
crowd.
«• Better turn on a light now,' suggested Alder-
man Wright, and an arch of lights were turned on.
This was an arch directly over the platform and
the center of the building. It was bright now and
one could easily see who the newcomers were.
Those who came before were laborers. They were
fresh from sewer and forge and factory.
"All their arrivals had been accomplished.
Those who came now bustled about and laughed
and cracked jokes. Still they were not boisterous.
Their appearance was that of business men and
men of the professions. By the light they could be
easily distinguished. J. B. Moore, cashier of the
Peninsular Savings Bank, was one of the first to
enter. Dr. Donald Maclean, ex-Alderman James
Vernor, Dr. McGraw, Ashley Pond, these and
others as well known continued to pour in from the
alley. E, C. Van Husan. James B. McKay and
others assisted in getting them all in. Alderman
Wright was jubilant. He bustled about from one
man to the other; shaking hands here and whisper-
ing a word there. His eyes fairly snapped with
excitement.
“Then came three hundred students from the
Detroit College of Medicine. Almost every man
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
105
carried in his hand a tin horn, but only a blast now
and then was given.
“ The more prominent of the men who entered
were escorted to seats on the platform, and they
joked at each other and laughed over Pingree.
wer
A GENERAL UNDERSTANDING.
“ There had been no general discussion as to
why they gathered, although it became known that
they were gathered to hear the discussions on the
strength of the Mayor's proclamation. It was not
openly stated why they came to the back door half
an hour before the meeting was called to order, but
it became common property that they were there to
see that the citizens were well represented and that
boomers from the city hall did not occupy seats as
vice-presidents. Everybody seemed to take it for
granted that everybody else knew just why and
how it was done.
“I don't think Ping will have everything his
own way to-night,' laughingly said one man, and a
dozen heads were nodded in affirmative response.
“ Still the people continued to pour in until there
were over six hundred present, and every seat on
the platform, except one, was taken. A policeman
rushed up the alleyway when he saw the immense
gathering. He stood in the doorway for a minute
and then left.
11
106
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
“Among those who arrived via the back
entrance were Dr. Donald Maclean, Dr. Yemans,
Frank. Eddy, J. B. Moore, Ashley Pond, J. B.
McKay, Henry Heames, F. E. Snow, James Vernor,
Dr. Mulheron, Homer Warren, James E. Scripps,
J. L. Hudson, Dr. E. C. Jenks, F. B. Dickerson,
Ex-Alderman George Dunlap, Alderman Licht, Dr.
Carstens, J. E. Donnelly, Michael Brennen, William
Zeigler, F. P. Byrne, E. C. Van Husen, Oren
Scotten, Jasper Gates, E. A. Fraser, Jerome Croul,
F. O. Davenport, Dr. Obetz, Dr. W. J. Brant, Dr.
W. C. Martin, George W. Owen, W. H. Maybury,
John Considine, Jr., A. S. Brooks, Jeremiah Falvey,
George Lane, Senator McLaughlin, and others.
STUDENTS CHEERED.
« The students of the college cheered the faculty
and hissed Dr. McLeod. In the meantime the
crowd in front of the Auditorium grew to gigantic
proportions. At 7:15 o'clock, fifteen minutes
before the hour named for opening the door, a
platoon of police, thirty strong, under the command
of Captain Martin, marched through the front
doors, bolting them after. The police were scat-
tered throughouť the crowd already present and
other positions of advantage were taken.
“At 7:25, five minutes before the hour agreed
upon, the front doors were thrown open, and the
OW
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
107
first men in, almost fainted from surprise. Senator
W. G. Thompson, Fred. A. Baker and ex-Judge
Gartner came up the isle abreast. They entered
by the front door.
«« Nice thing to do,” said Mr. Baker. Has
Pingree got possession?".
“I am shocked that you would do this,' gravely
said Mr. Thompson, looking at Charles Wright.
"Was this thing planned?"
"S. M. Cutcheon and Ralph Phelps came
through the crowd and were given seats on the
platform. At this time Acting Mayor's Secretary
Bruckner forced his way through to the platform
where Alderman Wright was sitting.
6. What's your program going to be?' asked
the Secretary. “I suppose you will let Pingree call
the meeting to order?
“Alderman Wright laughed.
“Not by a d-n sight.'
“ The Secretary retired abashed, and the men
on the platform waited to see if the Mayor would
appear.
“A few minutes later the doors were opened
and the great crowd came in.
When they entered the Auditorium the stage
was in the hands of the mob, who had their own
chairman, who proved to be a capable low comedian
in the farce.
108
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Endeavoring to get some semblance of direction
for the proper discussion of the question before the
meeting, I received the treatment of a mere inter-
loper. The scene was graphically described by the
reporters, and the papers reveled in columns of
incidents in which they delight. It will be seen
that the meeting was tortured out of all semblance
of what it was called for, by the following extracts
from the papers, wherein it is graphically shown
that the Mayor was the disturbing element among
the corporationists who entered the back door, and
wherein the ingenious reporter has cleverly inter-
woven the policy of the paper. The paper says:
“For more than an hour and a half the extra-
ordinary spectacle was witnessed of the Mayor of a
great city being hissed and hooted down by his con:
stituents. For more than ninety minutes the chief
officer of the city begged the surging crowds to
hear him, though only for a moment; but they
would not. He pleaded, reasoned, implored, en.
treated, beseeched, demanded, even wept, but no
man, except the stenographers and the newspaper
reporters, heard the sound of his voice, and he might
as well have attempted to reason with the white.
capped waves that hammered against the piers on
the river front.
"But if the crowds would not listen to the
Mayor, neither would they listen to anybody else.
Il
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
109
evo
For two hours the speakers attempted to arrest the
whirlwind of hisses and yells and groans, and bring
order out of chaos; but they might as well have
endeavored to stay the force of the wind that was
driving the snow-clouds down from the north. The
4,000 men who packed the Auditorium were not
there to be reasoned with; they were not there to
be coaxed or driven or cajoled; but they were there
to express their unqualified opinion of the manage-
ment of the health department, and almost as one
man they stamped upon it the seal of their impas.
sioned disapproval.
“Never before has Michigan known such a
meeting, and never before in Detroit did such a
meeting produce such a spontaneous manifestation
of public indignation. On the question of home
rule and the appointment of local boards by the
Governor, there was some division; but there could
be no doubt as to the feelings entertained towards
Dr. McLeod and the health department. Their
doom was sealed in the denunciations of the multi-
tude.
"If the meeting was remarkable as a demon-
stration of public sentiment, it was no less remark.
able in other ways. Gray-haired men, who have
long · been prominent in the affairs of the Church
and State, behaved like sophomores at a cane rush.
"The lie was passed freely, and well-known busi.
IIO
FACTS, AND OPINIONS.
ness men amused themselves by shaking their fists
under the noses of men whom they never saw
before, and offering to fight.
“From the moment the meeting was called to
order—or rather disorder—it was unique and
entirely unapproachable in its way.
ITT
ALD. WRIGHT'S SHARP WORK.
“When Mayor Pingree issued his celebrated
call for a mass meeting several days ago, it was
generally understood that the entire City Hall
delegation would wield its influence to pack the
Auditorium with men who train in the Pingree
ranks. When the hundred or so of the Mayor's
supporters who arrived at the big hall an hour and
a half early Saturday night to grab the front seats
finally broke in, they found that Ald. Wright had
outwitted them by a clever coup. The stage was
already occupied by prominent men, whom Mr.
Wright had gathered and admitted through the
rear door. Among them were J. L. Hudson, Dr.
Donald Maclean, Ashley Pond, S. "M. Cutcheon,
Homer Warren, Dr. J. J. Mulheron, Dr. T. A.
McGraw, and many others. Several hundred
medical students and others were also admitted, and
when the Pingreeites arrived they found that the
opposition had captured the meeting. By a pre.
arranged plan William Parkinson nominated Joseph
III
B. Moore for Chairman, and it went with a rush.
Parkinson also nominated A. S. Brook for Secre.
tary, and that was carried, too.
PINGREE TRIED TO PRESIDE.
“When Mayor Pingree came into the hall, a
few minutes before eight o'clock, in company with
John Atkinson and Charles Flowers, he found that
his claim had been jumped. The Mayor stepped
upon the stage, amid thousand of hisses, plaudits
and cat-calls.
""I'm chairman of this meeting,' said he to Mr.
Moore, as he raised his hand and attempted to
speak.
“You're not,' replied Mr. Moore, tersely.
"I hired the hall,' declared the Mayor.
Don't care if you did,' responded Mr. Moore;
(you called a citizens' meeting, and we're all
citizens.'
“This is an outrage,' shrieked the Mayor.
“During this time the audience was in pande.
monium. The words of the Mayor and Chairman
Moore could not be heard three feet away,
“There were cries for Fred. Baker from the
stage, and Mr. Baker succeeded in working his way
to the front of the platform, where he stood beside
the Mayor. “Baker! Baker!' 'Pingree ! Pingree!
· Baker!' yelled the crowd.
112
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
6. Let me speak for a moment,' said Mr. Baker.
"Sit down,' shrieked Mayor Pingree. This is
my hall. I paid for it.'
“For half an hour Baker and Pingree talked
together. Each pleaded with the audience to hear
him, but the crowd would have none of it.
"Sit down, Pingree!' yelled a thousand men in
a chorus. The Mayor shook his fist savagely and
continued to demand that the people should listen
to him. Mr. Baker as importunately demanded
that they should hear him.
66. You can't cry me down! screamed the
Mayor. “I'll stay here until the sun rises in the
east.'
“Mr. Pingree was red in the face, and the per-
spiration poured in a stream off from his forehead.
THE PINGREE-BAKER DIALOGUE.
"Mr. Baker-'Mr. Pingree, will you sit down?'
“Mr. Pingree—“This is my hall and I paid for
it.'
« The Chairman cried for order, and ordered
Mr. Pingree to take his seat. Mr. Pingree replied,
I ordered this hall.'
“The cries continued, and Mr. Baker made
several attempts to speak, getting only as far as
· Fellow Citizens.' He was interrupted by Mr.
· Pingree on each of these occasions, until Mr. Moore
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
113
said: "We will let you speak after a while.' Mr.
Pingree attempted to speak and was greeted with
cheers and hisses from all over the house. During
all this time the noise continued and it seemed as
though everybody all over the house was yelling at
the top of his voice.
"Mr. Baker-Fellow citizens of this city-
“There were cries of “Sit down, Pingree! to
which Mr. Pingree replied, turning to Mr. Baker,
"No, I won't, either.'
“ The Chairman,'I call the gentleman (Mr..
Pingree) to order. He is a disturber here, and has
no rights here beyond any other person.'
"Mr. Baker_Fellow citizens, this is the
Mayor of Detroit; do you know him? He wants a
chance to be heard. This is a citizens' meeting.
It has been duly organized by the election of a
chairman and a secretary-
“ The Chairman And the Mayor has nothing
to do with it.'
MR. CUTCHEON BREAKS IN.
“A roar was the response. S. M. Cutcheon at
this point arose and waving his hat toward the two
speakers and the people, began: "Fellow citizens—’
"Mr. Baker _'Of course it is utterly impos.
sible for any one of us to speak to you here to-night.'
“Mr. Cutcheon again attempted to speak and
114
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
was interrupted by Mr. Pingree, who said to the
audience: "You can yell, but there will be no
speaking. The Chair called for order and asked
Mr. Pingree to sit down.
“Controller Moore made his way to the front,
and said:
6. Be decent, can't you?'
66. I am,' said the Chairman.
6. This pains me; this grieves me; why aren't
you honest and decent, Joe?
666I am; this is a citizens' meeting; here are the
citizens. There is no call for the Mayor to inter-
rupt it as he is doing. I have been elected chair-
man. Now the Mayor wants to prevent our doing
business.
“ Mr. Pingree (at the top of his voice, but
not heard beyond a few feet) - There won't be any.
meeting! No meeting will be held here to-night!'
"Oh, yes; there'll be a meeting, Ping,' called
out some one standing near, but it won't be a City
Hall nor a Board of Health meeting.
“Mr. Baker again attempted to speak, and said
that if the Mayor would sit down he would go on.
He stated that he had been requested to speak by
the Chairman and the people in the hall, and that
he was there to discuss the questions to be decided,
He was again interrupted by Mr. Pingree, who
yelled that this meeting was called by him.
FACTS AND OPINIONS..
115
BOTH TALKED AT ONCE.
re no mor
""Sit down, Mr. Pingree,' demanded Chairman
Moore. You have no more. rights here than any
other citizen.'
W.Yes I have, too,' yelled the Mayor in response.
“This is my meeting. I paid for the hall.'
“Mr. Baker said that he was perfectly willing to
give the Mayor a chance to speak after he had
talked for a moment, but he declined to yield the
floor. When Mr. Baker opened his mouth the
Mayor chipped in, too, and both talked at once,
notwithstanding the fact that nobody but the
reporters could hear a word either was saying.
Somebody handed Mr. Baker a copy of the resolu.
tions that had been prepared, and he began to read
them. The Mayor went off the handle again. He
charged that the medical students had been hired
to come to the meeting, and that most of the
audience came from the other side of the river.
"Baker is here in the interest of the Street
Railway Company,' he said; "he has been hired by
George Hendrie to come here. While Pingree
was denouncing Baker the latter continued to read
the resolutions, which declared that the Health
Department had become a political machine, organ-
ized for the purpose of perfecting the Pingree
faction in the city; that it had shown itself incapable
116
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
of combating with the small-pox contagion that is
now raging in the city; that the Board of Educa-
tion, as now elected, has shown itself wholly
inefficient; that the Mayor had left the Police Com-
missioners without a legal quorun, and had not
interfered with the workings of the Board, It
resolved that as the sense of the meeting the bill
introduced in the Legislature be approved.
“ The Chairman put the question, and amidst
an indescribable chorus of yells and hisses, declared
the resolution carried.
NOT A CORPORATION LAWYER.
6. Mr, BakerWhen the Mayor states I am
the paid attorney of the Street Railway Company,
he says something that is not true. I am here as a
citizen. I was appointed by a committee of your
citizens to draft the bills which the Mayor is here
to attack, and I am here to defend those bills.
Those bills were carefully prepared, and they
express the voice and the sentiment of the people of
this city. They do not violate any provision of
local self-government. The object is to accomplish
a public good, and if I could be permitted to explain
them, and the Mayor allow me to be heard, we
would go on with the meeting. I do not desire here
to oppose the Mayor as the chief executive, except
so far as is necessary to maintain the right of the
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
OPINIONS.
.
117
people of Detroit, when they are assembled in a
public meeting. The Mayor of the city has no
royal prerogative, no executive prerogative in this
meeting. A chairman has been elected and a
secretary. They cannot be heard. The people
assembled here have a right to appoint their chair-
man and their officers. They have a right to listen
to those they desire to listen to, and they have a
right to refuse to listen to those they do not desire
to hear.'
“The Mayor—'Is there a man in this house
that says I have no right here to call this meeting
to order ? If so, let him stand up.
“Mr. Baker– You have a right here, but no
more than any other man. Fellow citizens, it has
been said that these bills violate self-government.
That is a question to which I have devoted a great
deal of my professional life, and it is a question
that has been disposed of and settled by the
Supreme Court of this State for all time. The
maintenance of public peace, the maintenance of
the public health and the maintenance of the
common schools is not a local question. It is a
question which concerns the whole commonwealth
of the State of Michigan. .
mo
BAKER AND FIVE CENT FARES.
"The Mayor — Gentlemen, this is the man
(shaking his fist in Mr. Baker's face) that has
118
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
fought this town. He has been the means of
making you pay five cent fares. (Loud cheers,
jeers, and groans.) Do not forget it. Do not
forget it. Gentlemen, will you hear me?'
“Mr. Baker The Board of Public Health, of
which His Honor, the Mayor, is a member, has been
trying to suppress small-pox in this city ever since
June, 1894. They have proved themselves utterly
inefficient, utterly incapable to deal with it; you
have a great deal more of small-pox in your city
to-day than when the disease started. What we
want, what the people of this city want, is a Board
of Health that will suppress the disease, preserving
the public health of the city. The Mayor is not
willing that we go in an orderly proceeding. He
is blocking the public meeting. We claim the
precedence. We claim the right to call to order;
we, the citizens, claim the right to call the meeting
to order, and I have been asked to be your first
speaker. That right belongs to no man. The
Mayor has no such prerogative as he assumes.
When the public assemble in a public meeting
they have a right to elect their own chairman;
they have a right to go on with their own meeting,
and the Mayor of the city, the Governor of the
State, the President of the United States has no
right to interfere with them. He had no more
right upon this platform than I have. I was
Owr
WCINOT
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
119
requested to address this meeting by a call from
the body of this meeting, and by the invitation
of the lawfully-elected Chairman. I do not desire
to spend a great deal of time.'
PING NEVER TURNS HIS BACK.
“The Mayor—'I am your Mayor; I have fought
your battles, gentlemen, and, I beg of you, if you
have any respect for yourselves, listen to me. I
will never sit down, gentlemen. I am the Mayor of
the City of Detroit. I must be heard; I must be
heard. You cannot proceed with this meeting
unless you listen to the Mayor. I shall hold the
fort. I have been in a good many battles for the
freedom of this country; I never turned my back
upon the enemy. I can stand the fire as long as
you. I shall never leave this platform until I am
carried out, unless you listen to me. I only ask five
minutes.
“Mr. Baker~ Will you stop at the end of five
minutes ??
“The Mayor-Oh, you are the paid attorney.
Gentlemen, will you listen to me? I ask you as
men, as citizens, as honest men.'
“Mr. Baker— Fellow citizens, I have been
called by the legally-elected officers of this meeting
to address you. He has no more right to the floor
than I have.'
120
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
"The Mayor (pointing his finger at Mr. Baker)-
"You have never been anything else but a street-car
man. Gentlemen, that is true. These are times
that try men's souls, and I only ask five minutes of
you. I ask your attention for just five minutes.'
"Mr. Baker—Just wait a moment. Will you
stop at the end of five minutes ??
“The Mayor-'Oh, you can't make any arrange-
ment with me. Gentlemen, I have fought your
battles. Have you not got any respect for your
selves?"
inv
CALLED THE MAYOR A DISORDERLY PERSON.
" Senator Thompson- This meeting has been
called to order by the citizens of Detroit, and the
Mayor has no more right here than you or I. You
have elected your chairman, you have elected your
secretary, and now let us go on and transact busi-
ness. Why cannot we go on and transact business?
Why cannot we go on and transact business?
Because the Mayor here is a disorderly person.
The Mayor of the City of Detroit has his cohorts,
the members of the Board of Public Works, the
members of the Board of Health; he has brought
them here-
“Dr. Webber—_Go on, Mr. Thompson, I am
with you.'
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
I21
a na
den
“Senator Thompson—'Now, why is this great
earnestness? Why is this great awakening of the
public spirit? It is because the people of Detroit
have lost faith in the present administration. It is
because, fellow citizens, the Mayor and his adminis-
tration have broken down every vestige of
.“ The Mayor—' Is there a man in this hall who
can say that I ever wronged him? If so, let him
stand up. If there is such a man I beg him to
come forward. I beseech of you, gentlemen, do not
allow these people to mislead you. I will not sit
down. I called this meeting, and paid for this hall,
and I will call it to order. Gentlemen, these men
are not your friends. I am the Mayor of the City
of Detroit. You gentlemen know not what you are
doing. You know that no man is a greater believer
in equal rights than I am. Will you listen to me?
You know not what you are doing. Haven't you
got any respect for your Mayor? Have I done
anything but what was for your good?
“Chairman —You are out of order, Mr.
Pingree. .
: - The Mayor-'I have worked for you for five :
long years. I have seen the time more than once
when this crowd standing by me here would be
willing to buy me and pay me $50,000. This man
knows it (pointing to Baker). This man knows it.
I hope to be struck dead on this spot if I am not
) Ini
122
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
telling you the truth. He has tried to buy me. To-
sign away your rights. Your rights, gentlemen. I
I am telling you God's truth. You do not know
what you are doing. He has tried to buy the
Mayor, and has offered me $75,000, that man
there.'
“Mr. Cheever~Mr. Mayor (tapping him on
the shoulder and securing his attention), if you will
allow me to call the meeting to order as I have
been requested, I will get you a hearing at once.'
“ The Mayor-'No, no, no, no! You know I
never started to do a thing and stopped half way.
I never saw a place in my life that I was afraid to
go. Never! You gentlemen (pointing to the
policemen) call these gentlemen to order (pointing
to the men on the stage). Be men, be men. Make
them sit down and hear the chief executive of your
city. Call those men down. They are hired attor-
neys; they are robbers. They are not your friends,
gentlemen. They are not your friends, believe me.
They belong to George Hendrie and the street car
crowd.'
“Mr. Cheever (pulling the Mayor's coat and
attracting his attention)—'Don't be provoked at
me for calling on you. Let me call the meeting to
order-
“The Mayor—No, I won't. I will take care of
myself. Let me alone. Maccabee! Mr. Maccabee!
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
123
This man standing there is your enemy (pointing to
the Chairman). He is one of those who are sucking
the life blood out of the city. His prayer is God
bless the rich. That has been his prayer for years.
Gentlemen, that has not been my prayer. You
know it, gentlemen. I beg of you, if you have any
respect for yourselves, listen to me. I represent
your beautiful city. I am not business-Pingree, the
shoemaker. I am the representative of your city,
“Col. Atkinson came forward, and there were
loud cries for speech. The Colonel said he could
not talk while the Mayor was speaking. “I would
not be guilty of such discourtesy. Here there was
a rush for the stage. Senator Thompson thought
that the Mayor applied an epithet to him, and
rushed for Mr. Pingree with uplifted arm. Several
gentlemen caught the Senator and restrained him,
averting a disgraceful scene.
CAPT. MILLEN IMPROVISES.
"Ping, Ping, Small-pox Ping,' was a new song
set afloat by Capt. Millen. The crowd caught it
up, and it went all over the hall. The Mayor was
frantic.
: “Hear Capt. Millen calling me a small-pox
thief!' he cried. Turning to a policeman, he said,
Don't let that man call me a small-pox thief again.
His Honor was assured that he had made a mistake,
but even that did not seem to pacify him.
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FACTS AND OPINIONS.
125
"You corporation lawyers,' he said, addressing
the stage, 'you corporation doctors, you franchise
grabbers, will you be quiet ?'
“But they would not. While the Mayor was
speaking Senator Thompson climbed upon a chair
and imitated his gestures, to the intense delight of
the crowd, which screamed for joy. Then the
Senator tried a new method for shutting off His
Honor, and it worked to perfection. As the Mayor
would begin a sentence the Senator would wave his
hat, and the crowd would yell like demons. It was
an opposition that Pingree could not endure. Turn-
ing toward the stage, he fairly screamed:
"Hooray for Thompson! Hooray for the Mag-
dalene!?
“ The Senator smiled, and the Mayor's face was
livid with rage.
PINGREE APPEALS TO THE STUDENTS. ·
“The Mayor (addressing the policemen)-Be
men. Stand up. Be men, and make these men be
seated. I call upon you as citizens; do your duty,
make these men be seated. And you students,
stand up. I know your minds have been poisoned
by some of the doctors in this fight with the Health
Board. Dr. Hutton, a United States officer, is on
the platform, and I will ask him to talk with you, if
you ask these men to sit down. Will you listen to
126
.
YN
FACTS AND OPINIONSlan
me five minutes? You may shoot me on the spot if
I do not say the truth. Students, you will regret
your action. I knew all about this to-night. I
knew every one of you were to be here. I have
had more than one detective in your college to-day.
I knew all about this. I know just who asked you
to come here. This gentleman standing here is
W. G. Thompson. He never can outlive what he
has done. He has disgraced himself by supporting
the men that do not want to pay their taxes. He
has gone to the Legislature so that he will not have
to pay his taxes.'
"Dr. Mulheron—He has gone to the Legisla-
ture to help get rid of you.'
“ The Mayor-- You have told the truth. I
thank you for your kindness, Dr. Mulheron. Why
does he want to get rid of me? Because I make
every corporation pay taxes like the poor citizens of
our city. I have fought your battles for five long
years, and I will continue to fight your battles just
as long as I am your chief executive. They have
not got money enough to buy me. I take no credit
on my part for being honest. Gentlemen, I am
built that way. Don't you forget it. My mother
was an honest lady, although this lawyer here
insulted me (pointing to Baker), and when he
insults your chief executive he insults you. Gentle-
2
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
127
men, he asked me if my mother was crazy, this
man, this man standing here.'
" Mr. Baker-'I got it right, too.'
NEVER DESPISE LITTLE THINGS.
“ The Mayor — My mother told me, the last
words she spoke: “Never despise the days of small
things.” And I will call your attention to my
record as your chief executive, and I will stand here
until the sun rises in the east before I will be cried
down by corporation lawyers. That man standing
there is trying to blind you, and that is what he is
paid for. Tell me what he has ever done for you.
He has asked you to pay the taxes of the Brush
estate, and that gentleman there, he has gone to
the Legislature to evade paying taxes.'
“ The Mayor — Gentlemen, you must come to
order. I shall stay here all night. You placed me
in this position
56 Voices— We will keep you there.
“ The Mayor-You will never be men, not
until you stand up and ask these gray-haired
corporation heads to take their seats. They are
not men. Stand up, now, gentlemen. You will
never forget it. Now, please, gentlemen, come to
order. In the name of organized labor of the City
of Detroit, I call upon you as a friend, to ask this
corporation Baker to sit down.'
128
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
-
“Chairman Moore-The gentleman is out of
order.
“The Mayor-'He is trying to deceive you,
laboring men of Detroit. You have it in your own
hands. There is not one laboring man in the City
of Detroit can say but what I am your friend
Now, please come to order. George Hendrie's
paid attorneys are here. You will have to pay
their bills. Stand up and demand-demand these
corporation lawyers to come to order. There isn't
a man upon that stage but what has got a job he is
trying to pass upon you, and these men are news-
paper men, retained newspapers, that are trying to
blind the public. And here is a corporation doctor
(pointing to Dr. Maclean). I ask you, gentlemen,
if I have done you any wrong. I have tried to do
my duty for five years. Dr. McLeod has resigned.
(Cries of good, good, good.) A United States
surgeon (reading Dr. Hutton's card) of the United
States Marine Hospital, is commander-in-chief of
the Health Office in the City of Detroit.'
“Finally, more from sheer exhaustion than any.
thing else, Pingree yielded the floor to John Atkin-
son, who succeeded in persuading the audience to
sit down. During, the hour and a half, and over,
the Mayor had been trying to talk, the crowd had
pushed forward until the people were jammed in a
helpless mass. When they were seated, Mr.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
129
Atkinson proposed that they give each side half an
hour. This seemed to meet the approval of the
crowd, and the proposition was readily assented to.
“Senator Thompson was named for one side,
and the audience yelled its approval. Charles
Flowers was named for the other side, and was
repudiated instantly.
“We don't want any paid attorney of Dr.
McLeod,' they said.
“Will you hear me, then ?' asked Mr. Atkin.
son. “Yes ! yes !' they shouted.
vas
THOMPSON TAKES THE PLATFORM.
“Mayor Pingree tried to talk at this point, but
was hissed down. Senator Thompson was intro.
duced amid wild enthusiasm. He said the bill he
had introduced was not his own production, but had
been sent to him by the leading tax-payers. But he
was willing to assume the responsibility for it. So
far as the Health Board was concerned, its blunders
were so fresh in the public mind that he need not
mention them. In the Senate next week he would
prove it to be a personal machine, organized by the
Mayor under the guise of a Health Board. It was
organized to control the primaries, and had squan-
dered $75,000 of the people's money. We have
small-pox and other contagious diseases in Detroit
because the machine was organized to promote
130
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Pingreeism. Agents in the employ of the Health
Board have traveled over the State to promote
Pingreeism. The sanitary inspectors were appointed
for that purpose. They were a set of men who
could smell a bottle of beer six blocks off, but not
one of them could detect sewer gas. "The Mayor of
the city can't be trusted,' Mr. Thompson said.
• The Health Board shows he can't. Michigan is
interested in the health of Detroit.. It is the
metropolis of the State. When disease breaks out
here it is certain to spread to the other cities. The
Governor would appoint a Health Board composed,
not of Canadians and aliens, but of freeholders.'
“Mr. Thompson paid his attention to the Board
of Education, and characterized the ward primary
system as a failure. He denounced Mayor Pingree's
methods of attempting to manipulate the Police.
Commissioners, declaring that Pingree had wilfully
neglected to fill two vacancies for months last
summer. The Board was left without a legal
quorum, and only the superb discipline kept it
together. The power of appointment could be
wielded more easily by the Governor.
NO
FRED. A. BAKER TAKES THE FLOOR.
“After talking fifteen minutes, the Senator
wanted to yield the balance of his time to Mr.
Baker. The Pingree men kicked, but Mr. Atkin-
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
131
son finally induced them to listen. As Mr. Baker
began his speech, the crowd ran amuck again.
Pingree stood up and asked for order, but that only
added to the confusion. Mr. Baker said he was in
favor of local self-government, but that we owed
something to the State of Michigan. The State
had a right to exercise its influence over the health
regulations and the public schools, and will assert
that authority. Some Pingree men on the platform
howled dismally at this, and were warned by the
police to keep quiet. Mr. Baker warned them that
if they thought they could spend the city's money
as they pleased, they were mistaken. "Since Pingree
had controlled the Health Board, small-pox had
increased ten-fold,' he said. "They go to the pest-
house by tens to die. They don't receive decent
treatment. The State won't allow Detroit to
scatter that disease when it has it in its power to
give the city a Health Board that is competent.'
“At the close of Baker's speech, Moore, Atkin.
son and Pingree were on their feet at once. Atkin.
son read a long telegram from Don. M. Dickinson,
who was in New York, and advocated home rule.
MR. ATKINSON'S SPEECH.
“Mr. Atkinson began his speech by denying
that the city could not administer its affairs as
honestly as the State. Two-thirds of the State
132
.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
officers had been tried for criminal offenses during
the past year. He and Baker are defending most
of them, he said. He objected to control by a few
prominent citizens. The School Board was said to
be dishonest. Pingree was the first Mayor to catch
a School Board thief. He imagined that many
favored the new bill in order to keep the Mayor
from catching others. He paid his respects to Dr.
McLeod amidst the groans of the crowd. The
speaker said the attacks on the doctor had been
the most cowardly he ever knew. The Health
Officer had asked for an investigation, and it had
been refused. He had been condemned without a
hearing. There are lots of persons in the city,' the
speaker said, 'who would be glad to see twice as
many cases of small-pox in Detroit in order to get
a case against Pingree. Dr. McLeod was not to.
blame for the spread of the small-pox, after the
second case. All the mischief had been wrought
by the pets of McLeod's enemies. Men who don't
want to be governed by the city have State institu-
tions provided for them at Jackson and Kalamazoo,'
said he, in closing.
"Mr. Atkinson then read a resolution declaring
the citizens of Detroit in favor of local self-govern-
ment and opposed to the Thompson bill. He asked
everybody in favor of it to stand up. Everybody
was standing when the resolution was read, and
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
133
Mr. Atkinson declared it carried. The meeting
then adjourned, no man any wiser regarding local
self-government than he was when he went there,
for almost nobody except those near the stage had
heard the speeches."
cir
I have given here the report of the meeting as
printed in one of the newspapers, and which is sub-
stantially correct, except that it is shaded to suit the
policy of the paper. Let the reader be the judge of
the part I played and that played by my enemies.
To me it was an evening which I will never forget,
but of which I will always be proud of, for I feel
that I stood for the right on that platform, although
alone. Having packed the platform with corpora-
tionists, and filled the first rows of seats with their
adherents, the people who opposed the bill, and
filled the remainder of the hall, could not make
themselves be heard.
Taking it all together this Health Board agita-
tion was probably the most ludricous entertainment
that has ever been furnished gratis to a people.
The galleries thought the play was in earnest, and
like the Indian who goes for the first time to a
dramatic show, felt like jumping upon the stage to
scalp the villain, poor Dr. McLeod. The actors,
however, and those in the secret, kept their faces
straight and went on with the play in a serious
1
134
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
manner. The audience did not appreciate the
object of the performance. The plot of the play
was about like this: A certain man engaged for
this purpose, and one who could be trusted for the
work, was to be elected to the Senate of the State.
He was told to lie low until the day of the
primaries, and then capture them by the usual
means which men employ whom honest people do
not want.
This was in this case rendered the more neces-
sary because he never could have gotten the
nomination fairly. He was elected by a narrow
majority. This person was selected to father the
bill.
Well knowing that any arrow directed at me
would only bound back upon themselves, the gen-
eral gave the signal to attack Dr. McLeod, the
Health Officer.' The doctor belonged to one pathy
and this made it sure that the doctors of the other
pathy could be depended upon to lead the van and
give respectability to "remonstrances” of so-called
“indignant citizens."
The public mind here in Detroit and throughout
the State was duly prepared by means of inflam-
matory articles with “scare” headlines in all the
newspapers duly retained for this particular enter-
tainment. A steady 'fire was kept up on Dr.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
135
McLeod for about two weeks, until the public, who
were not in the plot, were ready to tar and feather
him.
Each day he was represented as worse than he
was the day before. In bringing the people to this
condition of frenzy the newspapers here copied the
Chicago papers during the troubles there. Each
day the key was pitched to a higher note. And
what was all this for? Why simply for the purpose
of stampeding the Legislature then in session, and
especially the country members, and making them
believe that the public health of Detroit, and conse-
quently of the entire State, was in danger, due to
the criminal incapacity of Detroit's Health Officer.
It was an excellent opening gun on the part of the
corporationists. The Doctor was the whip with
which I was to be lashed until I would cry for
mercy, or the end gained of passing in Lansing a
measure which I opposed.
The Legislature was whipped into line by this
bill, which was to be the prelude for other measures
which were passed some to put money in the
pockets of these manipulators, and some for my
particular benefit.
The so-called “indignant citizens," much the
same crowd who were on the platform at the meet-
ing, constituting a train-load, went to Lansing upon
the day of the hearing of the bill before the Senate,
136
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
all expenses paid. This crowd had a song, to
which, as a refrain, they sang—“Ping-Pang-
Pung "_past, present and future of Hazen S.
Pingree—He was, he is, he's gone. Some of the
chorus singers from the Auditorium meeting were
aboard, who sang, “Ping, Ping, Small-pox Ping,”
but so many of the so-called “best citizens" of
Detroit were on the train, that in order to preserve
the semblance of respectability, one gentleman was
permitted to sing a song, entitled “The Sword of
Bunker Hill.”
Could they succeed in passing this bill, there
was no doubt of being able to pass other measures
which would effectually and permanently dispose of
this much-hated Ping.
The wedge must not be driven butt foremost;
the Caucus Bill wouldn't do to start with.
During all this time the newspapers continued
to pervert facts, and manufactured small-pox articles
out of whole cloth. Throughout the length and
breadth of the land was it made to appear that
small-pox was rampant in Detroit, while as a matter
of fact there were but a few cases. Upon the day
that the bill was passed, there were not over five
cases in the city, and when Dr. McLeod turned over
his office to his successor, appointed under this law,
there was but a single case. Since this time there
has been small-pox in Detroit, but being no longer
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
137
retained for this object, the newspapers, of course,
make no mention of it. This is praiseworthy, for to
advertise such a disease is to injure a city in a busi-
ness way, and unnecessarily alarm people.
CHAPTER V.
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP OF RAILROADS.-RESULTS
IN SCOTLAND.-A FIGHT FOR CHEAPER GAS.
But long ago the sober second thought of many
of the men who took part in the disgraceful scenes
in opposition to the purpose for which a public
meeting was called at the Auditorium has con.
demned their own hasty and unthinking action; but
many more of them of the rabid, ultra-corpora.
tionist stripe are as ready to-day to tear down the
institutions of the country and substitute the mob.
raising corporationist rule. There are millions in
corporations. While the inauguration of the three
cent fare for street car service in Detroit was a
victory, in view of the persistent lying and fighting
of the Citizens' Railway Company; while many
good citizens of Detroit were downforced by these
men into the belief that the Company could not run
on less than a five cent fare and opposed me to the
uttermost in their reliance upon the cool and calm
lies of the corporationists; while the majority of the
Common Council were opposed to the disturbing of
the old company, and doctors and lawyers and
business men kicked and fought against it-in
138
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
139
view of all this opposition three cent fares were
something of a victory, but I believe now that better
terms could have been obtained from the new com.
pany if the people had not been ill-informed by the
newspapers on the possibilities of the money-making
capacity of street railways. The newspapers did
not fight for the city or their city subscribers; they
fought for the corporationists and against me.
They refused to credit my statements as to the
money-making power of street railways, and they
either refused to investigate themselves or covered
up such investigation. They played into the hands
of the corporations, and they forced concessions
that ought not to have been made. Here is a
report from Glasgow, Scotland, which may open
the eyes of municipalities who are contemplating
giving away franchises. It is quoted from the
official report of the Town Council of Glasgow.
The city owns the street railways, and discloses the
expenses and earnings of the lines: “The result of
the first eleven months' workings of the tramways,
as a corporation department, shows that the gross
revenue has been £226,414-35.-4d., and the gross
expenditure, including interest and the maintenance
and the renewal of permanent way, buildings,
machinery and plant, horses, harness, rolling stock
and equipment, has been £202,209-95.-2d. This
leaves a credit balance of £24,204-145.-2d.” In

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FACTS AND OPINIONS.
141
other words, in eleven months this municipality pays
off everything, and has a net balance of over
$140,000.
It is time that this enormous stream of money
flowing from the pockets of the people into the
enough for people to lose these enormous sums, but
when it is pointed out that these immense profits
are used in part in the Congress and in the Legisla-
tures of the States to subvert the plain principles of
the republic, it goes from bad to worse. It is time
that the people take the State governments and the
Congress back to themselves. In order to do this, I
repeat that the remedy lies in the caucus. When
people, either through parties or in masses, domin.
ate the caucuses of the land, and force the nomina-
tion of their own choice, it is a matter of indiffer.
ence how much of a vote is cast at the subsequent.
election. The process of political action in respect
to this overwhelmingly important matter must be
reversed. The primaries must be advanced in
importance far and above the importance of
elections. The caucus is the essential point. And
when the people arouse to this important question
and maintain the integrity of the caucuses, the battle
is won against corporate power.
The enormous profits of corporations enable
them to hire the services of the ablest of lawyers,
142
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
retain regularly salaried staffs of these legal gentle-
men, hire outside special talent whenever necessary,
and deluge our courts either for offensive or
defensive purposes. Backed by laws, in which
their agents in Congress or in the Legislatures have
had a hand, and no slight one, with both the
capitol of the Nation and the capitols of the States
flooded with lobbyists to back up their agents, they
are in full control of the machinery of the Govern.
ment, and when they have been defeated hitherto,
that defeat has been more or less of an accident.
They have ruled in cities with absolute sway, and
in the greater number of the cities of the Union
they are in position to continue that rule. .
The history of gas companies in Detroit
is the same as that of the railroadsman unvary-
ing history of the combines of money grab-
bers. One of the strange features of Detroit
municipal history, in view of subsequent events and
the present situation, is that in the war with gas
companies the Common Council majority was with
the Mayor. Usually, the corporations in cities
manage to make a split by the use of money
between the Mayor and the Council, wherever it
happens that the Mayor makes a stand for the
people against the power of taxation in the hands of
corporationists.
When inquiry was instituted in regard to the
was
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
143
status of the Detroit Gas Company, and it was,
found that they were having their own sweet will
and way, it seemed to astonish the gentlemen who
composed the Company, rather than give them the
slightest alarm. They had been having their own
way so long that they seemed to regard their own
way as a vested right. They lifted their eyebrows
in amazement. They were getting two prices for
second-class gas, against the plain terms of their
franchise, but they regarded the man who wanted
to put the law in force as an anarchist. They had
reversed the process of plain and fair dealing, and
supposed that everything else was reversed. They
had had their own way so long that they thought it
was the only way. They were like some staid old
citizens of Detroit, who still believe that Detroit is a
cluster of cabins around a log fort. They appeared
to have settled into the belief that it was something
in the nature of the beneficent to furnish Detroit
with gas, even at two prices. Every corporation,
according to the corporation papers, is such an
essential to the city, that the city would dwindle
away and the country go to the dogs if it didn't
exist or moved out of town. Well, if it moved out
of town it would have to move into some other
town, and the process of moving be kept up
indefinitely before the desired place was struck.
Some of the smaller kind of corporations work
144
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
* upon the anxiety of the smaller cities for population,
and secure bonuses for removing thereto; but the
bonus system seems to be dying out, and natural
selection seems to work as well in the case of cities
as it does in the realm of nature. Of course, the
proper method to assist in a discreet way the choice
of cities for new industries, is desirable. But
there is such a thing as going too far in
giving all of the credit for population to cor-
porations, since population is a strict essential
to the maintenance of any industry. It is popula-
tion that ought to have the political power, instead
of the few that compose the corporations, but this
has been reversed; the people allowed it to be
reversed by their apparent apathy, and the corpora-
tions have settled down to the belief that this is the
natural order of things and that individuals who
oppose them are the enemies of natural order.
Under cover of their position they swindle, cheat
and deceive. The rule of the corporations is found
to be unjust, oppressive, and abusive of a republican
representative form of government. They ought to
be subject to the control of the people through their
proper representation; their books should to open to
these representatives; their functions should be
subordinated to the government, and themselves
strictly confined to the specific objects for which
they were created; their charges should be under
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146
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
the supervision of such representatives, to fix, alter
and define, and their lives should be in the hands of
such representatives subject to corporate behavior.
Either this, which so far as my experience and
observation have gone, is a practical impossibility
to control, or municipal, state and federal control,
which I am convinced is the ultimate solution. It
is all very fine for such men as Spencer to
unerringly define the principle, and respect is
due to such definition, but involved interests and
the persistent war for profits literally force the
expedient. Were one to consider the possibility of
that activity of change on the part of the people
which would snatch a franchise from the usurping
corporation, or combination of corporations, which
could declare a kind of martial law, and restore it
to the people in the expectation of the returns to
the principle of private ownership under fairer
auspices; were this considered even for a moment,
it would lead to a declaration of a means of
control that is alluring, but which human con-
ditions, present or prospective, do not warrant.
Change of but a mere phase of the customary
means, the means to which 'the people have become
habituated, is the only resource. There is no other
practical way for it, therefore, in the present age, by
by means of a resort by the great body of voters to
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
147
the caucuses. And the caucus is the only way
through which workingmen can obtain justice from
employers and place business on a secure founda-
tion. Shake wages and business falls, Desultory
skirmishing with individual corporations and em-
ployers, such as mark the present methods of work
ingmen's unions, while perhaps it may secure some
of the purposes of discipline, is not an effective
means of carrying on an industrial war, which is a
war directly in the interest of sound business, as bad
wages means bad business. The attack should be
made along the entire line, and the first point of
attack is the caucuses, because if that stronghold of
corporations is not secured the war is extremely
doubtful. In other words, while workingmen can-
not, as their experience shows, maintain a political
party, they must still be united upon the ballot, in
order to perfect their unions. Their complete unity
alone means success to themselves and the stability
of business interests. Business depends upon the
evenness of wages. A gambling trade depends
upon the inequality of wages. Wages are affected
by public acts in favor of corporations and other
business interests. Trusts and combines throw men
out of employment and enrich the conspirators.
Those who are thus thrown out of employment
compete for and reduce wages, and the forced raise
of prices by trusts and combines lessens the power
148
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
of purchase of wages. Control of the caucuses by
the workingmen of the United States, or a large
influence exerted therein, means much to them in
the way of assistance in obtaining justice.
I called a special session of the Common Council
June,. 1893, and sent a message to the session, which
covered all of the points in the fight up to that time.
It is as follows:
: “ The fight for cheap gas is on. It is that of
the people against a gigantic monopoly. Trusts
and monopolies are against public policy, and have
been so declared by the courts all over the country.
The residents of Detroit are entitled to have gas
furnished them in their homes and business places
as cheaply as the residents of the neighboring cities.
It is our duty, as representatives of the public, for
the time being, to do all in our power to see that
these advantages are secured to the citizens. Our
neighbors in Cleveland have gas furnished to them
for eighty cents per thousand cubic feet; and
the two companies enjoying the franchises, in
addition to furnishing the public with cheap gas,
pay the city an annual revenue of 612 per cent. of
their gross receipts. The city of Milwaukee gets
gas for an average of 90 cents per thousand. In
Grand Rapids gas is sold for 80 cents, 90 cents and
$1 per thousand, according to the quantity used.
The inhabitants of Boston, where coal costs twice
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
149
as much as it does here, get gas for $1 a thousand,
and it is sold to the city for public lighting for 70
cents per thousand. It is admitted by Boston gas
men that all over 46 cents per thousand is clear
profit.
“In Cincinnati, gas has been sold for many years
for $1 per thousand, and the stock of the company
there is quoted at 94 per cent. premium. The
Cincinnati Common Council recently passed an.
ordinance fixing the price of gas at 65 cents per
thousand. Other cities all over the country are
getting out of the clutches of the gas companies as
as legislative authority permits municipal action.
“The Legislature of this State was importuned
to pass a law similar to those which exist in Ohio
and other States, allowing municipalities to reason-
ably regulate the price of gas. But the influence of
the monopolistic corporationists enjoying special
privileges seemed to be of more weight there than
the public good; and the Legislature refuses by
inaction to grant the authority. This throws us in
Detroit upon our own resources, and makes it
necessary for us to do what we can to protect the
interests of the people without legislative aid.
- You have been advised by one of the ablest
lawyers in the State that the Detroit Gas Company,
claiming franchises in the streets by the purchase
.
150
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
1
from the three old companies, has practically no
legal standing whatever. First, because of the
expiration of the contract with the city of the old
Detroit Gas-Light Company; second, because of
the repeated and open violation of its franchise by
the Mutual Gas Company; third, because the fran-
chise to the Michigan Gas Company was for natural
and not for artificial gas; fourth, because the city
has never granted the new company any rights in
the streets.
· "Acting on this advice, and on the recommenda-
Board of Public Works to refuse to grant any per-
mit to the new company to connect with any of the
mains of the old companies. Notwithstanding this
action, the new company wrote a threatening letter
to the Board of Public Works, announcing its inten.
tion of taking the control of the streets out of your
U
of tearing up pavements, etc., according to its own
sweet will and pleasure. The city's legal officers
applied to the Wayne Circuit Court for a temporary
and permanent injunction restraining the Company
from such action. Judge Reilly to-day refused to
grant a restraining order, leaving the question of
issuing a permanent injunction to future proof and
argument. Upon this the officers of the Company,
in defiance of the Council and of law, and in sub-
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
151
version of the good order of the community, started
to tear up the pavement in several places on Wood-
ward avenue. I understand that the Board of Pub.
lic Works prevented them from doing this.
"In the light of the existing condition of affairs,
the city's legal advisers recommend the passage of
several ordinances which will be presented for your
consideration.
ADVISES PROMPTNESS.
“In conclusion, let me advise that your action
protecting the interests of the public be prompt and
effective. The matter rests in your hands to give
or not to give the people cheap gas. This new
company, instead of defying the whole public, should
come to the Council and ask for a franchise, under
conditions favorable to the public interests. An
offer is now before your honorable body from
responsible parties to furnish gas at 75 cents a
thousand, if a franchise is given them. If this can
be done by a company that has no pipes nor mains,
surely an old company with a complete plant can
furnish gas at a profit for a much less sum."
CHAPTER VI.
A STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM FROM MONOPOLY.-
CHEAP GAS FOR THE MASSES.
IN all of the fights conducted in Detroit, the dis-
closed enemies of the people were the corporation.
ists. All of the future serious troubles for Detroit,
and for the State of Michigan, and nearly all of the
States of the Union, is secreted in the breasts of
conspiring corporators. Much has been said under
the breath by men; much has been written by
the essayists; editorials have been written by the
cord; here and there the pulpit has even mentioned
a protest. Much has been said and little has been
done. Civic federations are well-meaning, and
have done good work; but they do not strike, or
have not the power to strike effectively, at the head
and front of the offending. It is too big a job for
one man. It is too big a job for any special com-
bination of men. It is the peoples' work under God.
And it is the work of years. The enemy is well
entrenched, and is well provided with the sinews of
war. The future scenes of the struggle are the
primaries and the courts. The greater part of the
battle is plainly in the primaries. Without the
primaries the battle is lost. Without the primaries
152
IL
wa
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
153
the courts are but a crutch. Nothing short of the
flooding of the primaries by the whole people can
wash away the foul accumulations of the filth of
the primaries, as the sewers are swept clean and
sweet and pure by the wholesome rain from heaven.
The real danger of great cities does not lie in the
purlieus; it lies in the cunning brain of the million.
aire and the corporationist. I bespeak the serious
thought of the people. I am not asking any hole-
in-corner political action. I have sorely experienced
the real danger. I have felt the hand of steel of the
corporationist. I point out the real and imminent
danger, and I say that it is the work of the whole
people to meet it. Nothing short of that can suc-
cessfully cope with it.
Here is a recent extract from the Free Press,
setting forth the comparatively newly disclosed
phase of the influence for immorality of corporations.
It will be noted that the Free Press, while giving
the views of the speaker editorial space, and thus
indirectly giving them editorial endorsement, the
paper, with its customary colorless attitude, has no
word of its own to commend, to defend, or to
approve :
111
INFLUENCE OF CORPORATIONS.
« An address, which Rev. Washington Gladden
recently delivered to the Oberlin Summer School of
154
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Sociology, is attracting considerable interest. His
theme was the influence of corporations upon
public morals. Lord Coke defined corporations as
'invisible, immortal, having no soul, and not subject
to the imbecilities or death of the natural body. It
was Herbert Spencer who said that a body of men
will commit as a joint act that which every
individual would shrink from, did he feel himself
personally responsible.' Basing his line of discussion
upon these statements from such eminent authori-
ties, Mr. Gladden thinks that this impersonal person,
which is gifted with a fictitious immortality, will
bear close studying and watching by the people
of the country. It has no soul, and the responsi-
bilities which it incurs rests upon no one in par-
ticular.
“Early in his discussion the reverend gentleman
came to the conclusion that this conscienceless
creation of the law exerts a deleterious effect upon
the morals of the general public. It dulls the moral
preceptions and lessens the moral stamina of those
who do as members of these organizations what
they would not think of doing were they left alone.
Some of the most rascally deeds on record have
been done by corporations acting under cover and
protection of law. These things have grown so
common that they have ceased to impair the social
credit of the men involved, and they have sympa-
FACTS AND OPINIONS155
1
.
thetically injured the entire community by breeding
familiarity with such dishonesties on the part of the
men with standing and influence. This result mani-
fests itself in individuals who are less scrupulous in
dealing with corporations than they are when other
individuals are concerned. Many a man will cheat
a street railway or a railroad who would be horri.
fied at the idea of defrauding his neighbor in a like
manner. It has become almost impossible to main-
tain honest relations between man with his con-
science and the money-making legal creation that
is devoid of conscience.
“Mr. Gladden also points out the dangers which
corporations put in the way of equal freedom.
They greatly aggravate the natural condition of
inequality among men. They give almost unlimited
addition to the strength of the strong and add in a
like proportion to the burdens of the weak. Even
the most powerful of men have but a little while to
live, and when they die, their accumulations are
liable to dissipation; but corporations are not subject
to these vicissitudes of mortality. Their power grows
with years and their plans are continuously carried
Gut through generations. They force millions into
the ranks of employment, cheapen labor, and tend to
deaden the activities which would be exerted were
every man placed upon the terms afforded by free
and open competition with every other man.
156
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
“For these evils Mr. Gladden has remedies to
suggest. Among other things he urges compulsory
publicity and supervision. The State grants the
power exercised by these corporations, and he holds:
that the State not only has the right but is bound
to know how such power is used. The State does
not exercise this kind of supervision over the individ-
ual, but with corporations it has stepped in and
created a new kind of person with enormous powers
and limited responsibilities. The people are parties
to the contract by which these powers are ceded
and they have a right to scrutinize with the utmost
care the use of the extraordinary privileges which
they have granted. They have the right to demand
adherence to the same standard of morality that is
insisted upon in the case of the individual. If the
great corporate aggregations of wealth have neither
conscience nor a moral sensibility, it is the duty of
the Nation and the State to provide these absolute
essentials to general prosperity and happiness in the
country.”
The first practical step to get at what this
speaker is aiming at is for the people to control the
primaries and eject the corporators who are now in
quiet possession.
As a Detroit court upheld the gas companies,
there was nothing for it but such a fight as could
hastily be put up.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
157
The companies immediately went at it to tear
up the pavement, preparatory to putting in their
mains. Under all the circumstances, and under the
advice of counsel, I concluded to stop it by the inter-
vention of the police. Promptly responding to the
request, Police Superintendent Starkweather sent
men to the work, and several persons were put
under arrest. The grounds of this intervention
were, that the Board of Public Works, under instruc-
tion from the Common Council, had refused to issue
a permit to the companies to tear up the street and
lay the mains. This course had the ultimate effect
of predisposing the company to a settlement. I
suggested an ordinance, granting a ten-year fran-
chise, with gas at ninety cents per thousand and
ten per cent. off for prompt payment. This was
modified by the Committee on Streets and Ordi.
nances, who recommended that the company be
permitted to charge $1.10, with ten per cent. off if
paid within thirty days. But it was finally fixed at
$1 per thousand feet for illuminating, eighty cents
for fuel gas, with a sliding scale, fixed so that event.
ually illuminating gas was to be eighty and seventy-
five cents per thousand, depending on the volume used
by the city. Thus the price, it ought to be said,
was forced down from $1.50, through the exercise
of the force of public opinion and a well put-up
fight on side issues, although the court went against
1
11
158
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
the city on the main issues. These were reasonable
prices for gas, and the company did not suffer. An
incident in relation to this struggle is, that one of
the gas companies had been operating for years
without any franchise from the city at all, and that
an ex-Mayor of the city was the president of the
company. It was the usual course of the corpora-
tionist in office, placed there to see justice done the
city, but operating on the quiet to make money out
of the city or State, as the case might be, and
urging that departments and boards of the govern-
ment be non-political.
CHAPTER VII.
MUNICIPAL FARMING FOR THE POOR.-
66 PINGREE POTATO SCHEME."
The relation of the story of the potato scheme,
of which so much has been written and said, I will
leave to Captain Cornelius Gardener, stationed at the
Fort here and who has been connected with it since
its conception, and who, together with the staff of
earnest and efficient workers, has made possible the
somewhat surprising success of the project. Captain
Gardener, a gentlemen interested in economic ques.
tions and having a fund of practical knowledge in
matters pertaining to the possibilities of the cultiva.
tion of land, gained in a practical way, at the various
posts at which he had been stationed while in ser-
vice with the United States Army, was the first
person with whom I conversed in relation to culti-
vating the waste land in the suburbs of the city.
Largely from information gained from Captain
Gardener I was influenced to push the project. 1.
prevailed upon the Captain to take charge of the
whole work, which he cheerfully did without money
and without price, and in the same manner all the
rest of the gentlemen who participated, but were
not required to devote the whole of their time to it.
159
25

The Name i the
System will be
chande down to Posterity
Originated this
A Polish family's potato patch-from a photograph.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
161
m
In the following address, delivered before the Pan
American Congress at Toronto, July 22d, 1895, the
Captain tells the story of the "potato patch” scheme
much better than I can.
Captain Gardener says:
“Relief by Work" is the name given to a practical
philanthropic movement, which has for its object the assist-
ing of the poor and unemployed, by permitting and encourag-
ing them to cultivate idle lands in and adjacent to cities.
The City of Detroit last summer was the first to try the
experiment, which has since been copied, and is now in
operation in a number of cities in the United States. To
the Mayor of Detroit, the Honorable Hazen S. Pingree,
belongs the honor of having conceived of this plan, and by
his encouragement and assistance it was successfully carried
out in Detroit last year, and again this year is in active
operation. In view of the fact that it is now being tried in
many cities, and that it differs so radically from the usual
forms of charity in this country, it may be of interest to
review this experiment in Detroit from its incipiency. It
was about the 10th of June last year that it occurred to Mr.
Pingree, while driving along the Boulevard in Detroit, that
could but the poor and unemployed get a chance to cultivate
some of the vacant and idle lands there, it would give them
something to do, and what they would raise would be that
much saved to tax-payers, who, as it was, would be called
upon to help, besides the regular poor, many families of the
unemployed, through the winter. There are in Detroit some
ten thousand Polish and German laborers, who have, gener-
ally, large families, and whose average rate of pay does not
exceed $1.00 per day when working. Due to the financial
11
162
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
crisis and to other causes, nearly all of the manufacturing
establishments were at a standstill, and but few public
improvements were being prosecuted. Being principally
employed at day labor by those establishments and by the
city in its public improvements, and having been, for a long
period, thrown out of work, it became a serious question
how to assist those people so that they could pull through
the winter. With a view to bringing the people and the land
together, the Mayor appointed a committee, of which I had
the honor of being chairman. As active manager in the
summer of 1894, and again as honorary member of a similar
committee this year, I became thoroughly conversant with
all the details of the plan of "Relief by Work,” which bids
fair to take the place, to a great extent, of the existing
methods of charitable relief. I make mention of my
connection with this experiment, in order to explain why it
was that I was requested by the President of the Congress to
address you upon the subject of “Relief by Work,” some-
times known as the “Detroit Plan,” and by newspapers,
which are fond of alliteration, is spoken of as “Pingree
Potato Patches."
METHOD OF PROCEDURE.
. After the Committee had been duly organized, about
the middle of June, 1894, it advertised in the newspapers for
money and seeds, and asked for the use of land for the pur-
pose of cultivation. Quite a sum was subscribed by
charitable people, which was added to by voluntary contri-
butions from the Mayor and from city employees and by
other methods, sufficient to defray the cost of the experiment.
Land was offered in more than sufficient quantities by
owners and real estate agents, in parcels from the size of a
single lot to a hundred acres in a piece.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
163
Detroit is a city more compactly built than is the case
with many other cities in the United States, yet within its
limits there lie idle and unused, and held for purposes of
speculation and for other reasons, over 8,000 acres of land.
A tract of land known as the “ Brush Farm,” lying transversely
through the most populous part of the city, still contains
over 100 acres of land which has never been occupied. The
Committee accepted, of the lands offered, such as were
nearest those portions of the city where the majority of the
unemployed lived, and in blocks ranging from one to sixty
acres. A great portion of the land accepted consisted of
subdivisions laid out into lots. The soil was generally poor,
having been formerly used for truck gardens and abandoned.
It being so late in the season before the work was begun,
to-wit: the middle of June, the only crop that could still be
raised and mature, was late potatoes, and perhaps beans and
turnips, and the plowing, harrowing and preparing of the
ground was, owing to thc extreme drought, attended with
more than the usual difficulties and expense.
The Committee opened an office and it was announced
in the daily papers that applications for land would be
received, and that seed potatoes and other seeds would be
furnished by the Committee, and that persons not availing
themselves of this offer would be denied assistance from the
Poor Commission during the remainder of the year.
The land was plowed, harrowed and staked off into
parcels of from one-quarter to one-third of an acre by the
Committee's foreman, and these lots were assigned to the
applicants living in the vicinity. About three-quarters of the
applicants were such as had previously received aid from the
regularly organized City Poor Commission, and by whom they
were referred to our Committee. The remainder were people
164
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
who had never received such aid, but being out of work,
were in want, and anxious to avail themselves of this oppor-
tunity to raise food.
Some 3,000 applications were received, but for want of
sufficient funds and time, the Committee was unable to
provide land but for 945. These were all people with
families, many of whom had not had work for months, and
even did they have continuous employment, had a hard
struggle to get along; among the number being thirty widows
with half-grown boys. As fast as pieces of land were ready
for planting, assignments were made to it, and the potatoes
and other seeds were planted under the direction of a fore-
man, the potatoes and seeds being delivered on the ground
and immediately planted. Some persons spaded the lots
assigned them, whenever the land was too small to profitably
plow, and furnished their own seeds and plants, while large
numbers bought seeds additional to those furnished. Follow-
ing the example of the city, quite a number of persons gave
pieces of land, upon private application, to poor people or
to their own employees, for purposes of cultivation. With
the exception of such persons as were unemployed by the
Committee, the entire arrangement was gratuitous, and the
cost of the experiment was about $3,600, or, deducting cost
of plows, harrows, etc., purchased, $3.45 per lot. Each
occupant planted at least two-thirds of his piece with
potatoes, and the remainder with such seeds as were pre-
ferred. Nearly all kinds of garden truck was raised and
from dire want, were obliged to dig up for consumption
portions of their potatoes before they had attained any size.
Nearly all the land was unfenced, and at first there was some
trespassing, but after the police, who materially assisted us,
had made a few arrests, this annoyance stopped.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
165
D
The summer of 1894 was a season of unusual drought,
lasting in Michigan for about nine weeks, which caused some
of our people to become discouraged; yet in spite of this
fact about nine-tenths of the plats were well taken care of.
Such as failed to properly care for their plats, were notified
to do so at once, or their plats would be assigned to others.
When the rains came, in September, the crops began to do
well, and prospects became bright for a fair return for our
investment. It was understood from the beginning that each
person would be permitted to harvest what he had planted,
and none were in any manner interfered with who took
proper care of their crops. The work was done upon the
land at any and all times, most often in the early morning
before working hours, by such as had.subsequently obtained
employment, and in many cases by women and children, who
would bring their babies and their lunch to spend the day
upon the place.
In all cases it was not practicable to assign plats near
to where the applicants lived, and many lived three or four
miles from their plats. This, however, did not seem to
make any difference as to the care that was taken of the
crops.
From what has been stated it will be seen that to have
kept the exact account of what was raised was impracticable;
what was being raised was daily to a great extent being con-
sumed, and only an approximate idea of the final amount of
potatoes harvested was possible. The average of those for
all the pieces was about 1572 bushels per family, some
harvesting as many as 35 bushels, while others, on poorer
soil, obtained only eight or ten bushels. Large quantities of
white beans, squash, turnips, etc., were also raised. It is
fair to say that the venture netted to the cultivators food to
the value of $14,000, at a cost to the committee of $3,600.
166
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Considering that the land used was in many cases an aban-
doned truck garden or very poor soil; that there was an
unusual drought during the greater portion of the summer;
that in every case the land was covered with a thick sod or
with weeds when plowed in the month of June; and that no
organization existed to carry the plan into effect until the
second week in June, it can be said that the experiment was
attended with much success. Although this experiment
partook somewhat of the nature of a charity, yet each person
obtained the fruits of his own labor, and it is certain that
the expenditure of a like amount of money in any other way
for the benefit of the recipients would not have accom-
plished as good results. A large portion of the cultivators
had already some experience in raising vegetables, yet a
great many learned something about gardening and truck
raising. Such as worked at day labor, for which, because
of the hard times, they were paid only from 80 cents to $1
a day, were materially benefited during the summer, and in
most instances enough potatoes were harvested to last them
through the winter.
The Committee found from experience that about one-
third of an acre is enough land for a family to raise suffi-
cient potatoes on to last them through the winter and furnish
vegetables through the summer. Those familiar with garden-
ing appreciate how much food can be raised on a small piece
of ground. There seemed to be many cases where the appli-
cants, though being in need, dreaded to go to the Poor Com-
mission for help, who, by being aided by this plan, did not
lose their self-respect, and would be able, together with what
they could earn, to provide for themselves and thereby be
prevented from becoming permanent objects of charity.
This year in Detroit we have gone at it more system-
atically. A committee of citizens, of which Mayor Pingree
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
167
is chairman, and Mr. John McGregor is secretary and actual
manager, has the matter in charge and have begun earlier
in the season. We have 455 acres, as surveyed by the city
surveyor, under cultivation; nearly all of this lies within the
city limits and which land is divided up into parcels, some
of one-third and some of one-quarter acre, making a total of
1,546 allotments to heads of families; of this number 1,218
have been on the books of the City Poor Commissioners
either this year or the year before. Of the remainder, 101
paid fifty cents each for the use of their lots. The cases of
those not recommended by the Poor Commissioner were
investigated and found to be worthy of assistance. The
allotments are well taken care of and are as free from weeds
as market gardens. The people exhibit a degree of thankful-
ness for the opportunity afforded which can only be appreci-
ated by those who come into contact with them. The city
appropriated for the work this year $5,000, of which proba-
bly about $4,500 will be expended, which will make each
allotment cost $2.90. All kinds of vegetables are being raised
and daily being consumed. The principal crops, however,
are potatoes and beans. The yield of the former promises
to be very large and will average over 150 bushels per acre.
In conversation with the cultivators it appears to be their
intention to trade any surplus potatoes they may have with
their grocer, for groceries and other necessities.
The experiment in Detroit has demonstrated the follow-
ing facts: Since the largest item in the cultivation of
vegetables is labor, furnished by the people themselves,
much good may by this plan be accomplished with small
expense to charitable people or to taxpayers.
That the wholesale robbery and trespassing predicted
even upon the land unfenced, is not the fact.
168
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
That it is best to get tracts of as many acres in a piece
as possible, and if the same be poor land, to collect, dur-
ing the winter, in central localities, the sweepings of the
streets to be put upon the lands in the spring, or carry
it upon the land to be cultivated from time to time as col-
lected, in order to enrich the soil of those poor lands. That
the poor are glad to get land for cultivation, even where it
lies three or four miles from their homes.
That many poor and unemployed in cities are glad to
avail themselves of an opportunity to raise potatoes and
other vegetables for their own subsistence, provided the
land be furnished and they are assured the results of their
labor will accrue to them.
That, especially to day-laborers with large families, the
opportunity to cultivate a small piece of land is a God-send,
as it enables them, together with what they can earn, to get
along without other assistance, and that, to the class who
are constant recipients of charity and are practically con-
tinuously so supported, the cultivating of the soil and obtain-
ing food other than by gift, is a valuable lesson, which tends
to wean them from pauperism and restore instincts of self-
dependence and manhood.
In beginning this experiment, in order to encourage the
people, and because of their great poverty, the Committee
thought it best to plow the land and furnish part of the seed,
but I am convinced, should this method be permanently
employed, that it would not be necessary to do so except in
cases of extreme destitution. It is, however, of great
importance that foremen should be employed to teach those
not familiar with it, the first rudiments of truck-gardening
and to superintend the proper care of crops until harvested,
and that the active manager be a person who will give the
plan his constant attention during the entire season.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
169
The result of last year's work in Detroit has been that
a large number of families, as testified to by one of the
members of the Board of Poor Commissioners, have gone
out in the country and are working small, abandoned or
untilled farms on shares, for the purpose of raising potatoes,
beans, and other crops.
A gentleman writes from a small village, not far from
Detroit, that twenty-five families have moved to that
neighborhood, which had cultivated our lots last year.
These took land lying idle to cultivate on shares, being
convinced from experience here that a good living could be
obtained from a few acres, if properly cultivated. He says:
"I know that these families came here directly as a result of
your potato scheme.”
It has further resulted that a large number obtained the
use of land within the city limits from the owners, and are
cultivating the same this year.
Detroit's plan has been, after careful investigation,
adopted in a number of cities in the United States, modified
according to circumstances. The Mayor of Omaha, Neb.,
the Hon. Geo. P. Bemis, writes me as follows: He says:
“ The use of vacant land was solicited, and we received
offers of the free use of land, aggregating about 800 acres,
all within the city limits. Applications for land were
received and thoroughly investigated ; land was plowed and
furnished for 571 worthy applicants, free of cost, and a
competent gardener employed for sixty days as superin-
tendent. From one-third to three-quarter acre was given each
family, with proviso that one-half the ground be planted
with potatoes. About three hundred acres were thus dis-
tributed, and besides this, seventy acres more to others
under an agreement to turn over to the commission one-
fourth of the crop produced. In addition to this, the
170
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
associated charities has under cultivation a tract of thirty-
four acres, planted with beans and potatoes, and cultivated
by those who apply for relief. It was made known early in
the proceedings, that persons who had been receiving aid
from the county must apply for ground, or be refused aid in
the future. The scheme gives every promise of being a huge
success.
“All the gardens are in excellent condition, and we
have had copious rains. It is impossible to estimate the
saving which will be made to the county and to citizens
generally, but it will undoubtedly amount to many thousand
dollars. I believe this plan of relief-by work-is one of
the most practical and satisfactory that has been devised,
and gives promise of completely revolutionizing the prevail-
ing method, which is chiefly noted for the number of paupers
which it creates, and for the small return on large invest-
ment." The money in Omaha was raised by subscription.
The gentleman in charge of the work in Buffalo, Mr.
William A. Stevens, writes as follows: “The work of our
associations goes bravely on and promises a great success.
We are using about 220 acres of land, allotted to 550
families. The land was prepared and staked and three
bushels of seed potatoes furnished each family. The crops
are doing well, and are well taken care of. There will be
used about $2,000,• and we expect to show at least $5 for
every dollar invested.” In an interview in a Buffalo paper
this same gentleman says: “In very few instances has it
been necessary to reprimand the gardeners for carelessness and
neglect of their plats. Willingness has generally been shown
to hard work. The people have shown the greatest interest
in their work and have quickly picked up points on success-
ful farming.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
171
" The men have worked hard, but the women have
worked harder. Fully two-thirds of the work has been done
by women. This is owing to the fact that in most instances
the men now have employment to occupy their time during
the day, while the women get through their household duties
early and have time to devote to a work which will enable
them to live through the winter in fairly comfortable
circumstances.
“One woman put it in this way: 'I guess we'll have
enough to eat this winter, anyway, which is more than we
had last winter.'
“Besides potatoes, beets, cabbages, corn, cauliflower,
radishes, melons, beans, peas, etc., are being grown and the
crops are promising. Many of the people have already had
one good crop of radishes, and have sown the seed for a
second crop.
“The crops in all parts of the great municipal farm give
excellent promise.
“So interested are many of the people that they spend
not only their evenings in working on their land, but also
walk out to the scene of their labors on Sundays and spend
hours beside their plats, exulting in the sense of proprietor-
ship and pride that comes to them as they see the vegetables
they have cared for springing up with a luxuriance that
promises a rich reward for their labors.
"Many times a day Mr. Stevens is asked: “Do you think
we can have the plat again next year?'
“The stories of privations told by these poor people, and
the humble thankfulness they evince for the chance to do
something for themselves are pathetic in the extreme. Most
of them are simple, honest people, who have toiled and suf-
fered all their lives. They can be managed as easily as
children, and are grateful for all assistance and advice.
O
7
172
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
U2
“Many of them expect such crops that they are already
making arrangements to dispose of the surplus over what will
be required for their own consumption during the winter.
"One widow, who has a family of five and who has a
quarter of an acre to work, estimates that she will have sixty
bushels of potatoes and a quantity of other vegetables from
her plat. She, with others, intends to make a deal with
their grocers, to take part of the produce.
"Greater success than we ever anticipated has crowned
our efforts,' say the officers of the Industrial Association.
“Many a poor family in Buffalo will rejoice over the
fruits of its labor next winter."
Mr. Stevens here reiterates our experience in Detroit.
: The Mayor of East Saginaw writes me under date of
July 5th, as follows: “I think that the example set at Detroit
has borne fruit, as it seems to have been an incentive to
many of the laboring classes to cultivate pieces of land on
their own account and has shown them that they had means
at hand to help support themselves, that they had not appre-
ciated heretofore."
Mr. E. E. Haskell, secretary of the committee in Minne-
apolis, after relating the details of the experiment there,
writes as follows: “Summed up, Minneapolis has 226
Pingree farms, aggregating about 175 acres, at an average
cost of $1.35 for each family. In nearly every instance
the gardens are being well cared for and the prospects are
that good crops will be realized, which means that 226
families will have a winter's supply of vegetables that proba-
bly they could not otherwise have secured."
New York, St. Paul, Boston, report favorably upon the
scheme and its great success. Some cities report that the
plan failed to be put in operation for the want of a person to
manage it. It cannot be denied that much depends upon a
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
173
proper manager, one who can organize and oversee and is
willing to work hard in order to carry it to a success.
A number of cities which have become interested in the
plan too late to adopt it this year contemplate doing so next.
Although this method of assisting those who, in the struggle
for existence, have difficulty in making both ends meet, is
new in America, yet it is not so in England and upon the
Continent. The City of Nottingham and the Corporation
of London among others have long maintained workingmen's
gardens, purchased originally at public expense, but for which
a fair rental value is paid for use by any working man with
a family.
As regards the merits of this Detroit plan: Were we
not so wedded to the existing conditions and methods, we
would at once see the incongruity of the situation, which
makes it possible for thousands of people in large cities
to live in a state of semi-starvation in times when thrown out
YA
so, and at the same time often thousands of acres lying close
by for no other purpose than those of speculation.
As all means of subsistence must, in the first instance,
come from the soil of the earth by the exertion of man's
labor, it would seem just and according to natural laws that
no man who is in need, and willing to labor, should be
denied the opportunity of raising food from land not in use
for this purpose. Were it legal for him at any time to do
this without depriving his neighbor of anything rightfully
his, it would seem that his being permitted to cultivate idle
land would go far towards solving the question of wages,
which, political economists say, tends constantly toward the
lowest limit of subsistence. The squeezing could only go so
far, and no further, and the employee would go to truck-
raising or farming. But aside from this line of argument,
174
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
CD
the method of “Relief by Work” teaches men to rely upon
the results of their own labor for whatever they obtain, and
instead of being a charity in reality, is but an opportunity
offered.
It has the advantage over what is commonly known as
"poor farms" in that the cultivators do not become known
as paupers and do not lose their self-respect, with all that
this condition implies. It further makes the people adept
and interested in gardening, so as to open a way for them
or their children to become truck raisers for a living, and in
this manner relieve the congested pauper districts of large
cities. It is upon this plan that New York is working and
there is no doubt that those in charge will be able there, at
the end of this year, to show an object lesson of what can be
done in this direction, worthy of being copied by other
cities. With intense cultivation there is no difficulty in a
family subsisting from what can be raised and sold from an
acre of ground. It is well known that in China families
often live from what is raised upon a piece 100 feet square.
The gardens cultivated for the use of the troops at Fort
Wayne, Detroit, are less than four acres in area. For the
three years that I was in charge, we raised vegetables each
year to the value of between twelve and thirteen hundred
dollars at wholesale market rates. The cost of the seed did
not exceed thirty dollars, and there was no deduction on
account of labor, this being furnished by the troops.
When Mr. Pingree's plan was first suggested in Detroit
and began to be carried into operation, there was no end of
ridicule thrown upon it and the prophets of evil came out in
great numbers. The Pharisees and those interested only in
themselves stood aghast. It was a method of doing good too
commonplace for their comprehension. Like to Naaman,
the Syrian, the remedy was so simple that they had not
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
175
seen it, and hence did not believe in it, but the common
people, like the servants of the Syrian, saw at once the
possibilities, and the poor people of Detroit almost fought for
the opportunity to obtain a piece of land for cultivation.
Ridicule was so keen and sarcasm was so sharp that, but for
an abiding faith in the good sense of the scheme and
recognizing the good that could be done by this method,
members of the Committee often felt inclined to resign from
the responsibility they had assumed.
Although at present in and adjacent to every city in
America there lie idle lands sufficient for carrying out this
plan, as it may grow and develop, and which land may per-
haps for some years be obtained for such use free of, or at
a small expense, yet the time may come when such will not
be the case.
It seems to me that a city could make no better invest-
ment than to purchase, in its suburbs, or even lying out some
miles, as has been done in England, sufficient ground to give
each worthy poor person with a family, who otherwise would
need assistance from organized charities, a piece for cultiva-
tion. With electric roads radiating out in almost all direc-
tions, land at some distance could be used by the cultivators
without much expense to them, when we consider that one
day's labor a week is generally more than sufficient to prop-
erly care for a small lot. The land could be bought by a
city and paid for in say fifty years, by adding to its rental
value an account for ultimately funding the original invest-
ment. As citiés expand, these lands could be used for parks,
and lands for cultivation could then again be bought further
out. Looking at the plan simply as a business investment it
could not be excelled. The money yearly appropriated and
spread upon the tax roll of cities to support the poor, is out
of all proportion to the good thereby accomplished. Half of
IT
176
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
these amounts, if expended in assisting the poor to get out
from under the wheel of grinding poverty by offering oppor-
tunities for self-elevation would effect permanent relief. Mr.
Carnegie, in an article in the North American Review, says
that out of every $1,000 directly given away, $950 do abso-
lute harm. I am convinced that more good can be accom-
plished by this method of “Relief by Work” with the
expenditure of $1,000, than by $10,000 in the ordinary
methods of charity.
Should reasonable rains continue in Detroit it is fair to.
expect returns to the value of $30,000, and at the lowest cal-
culation of potatoes alone, there will be raised at least sixty
thousand bushels. This amount, or the greater portion of it,
will be saved to the tax payers and to benevolent societies.
No applicant at the office of the Poor Commissioner now
receives aid, who, being able-bodied, refused at the begin-
ning of the season to take a lot for cultivation; the motto
being, "He who will not work shall not eat."
Not only those thrown out of employment by reason of
panics or bad years, can be thus assisted, but such poor
people, as we “have always with us," can be educated and
benefited by this method of relief, and gradually be made
self-supporting. But some will say this plan smacks of
paternalism. Yes, it does; it has some of the ear-marks of
a father's care; yet it also suggests the brotherhood of man.
It would do something towards lifting heavy burdens from
our fellow-man, whom want of opportunity has made less
fortunate than ourselves, and to whom the struggle for
existence with large families is now so hard. That men
should die of hunger for want of opportunity to labor for
food, is not according to God's natural laws, which are
manifest about us everywhere. There is no rational sanction
in our civilization of sympathy and plenty, for the conditions
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
177
in which are bound down so many of our fellow-men in the
sweat-shops and factories of our large cities, and from which
conditions there is no escape for them. I believe this
method of “ Relief by Work” has before it great opportunities,
and that out of the feeble and partially successful efforts
made in Detroit last year, there will in the future come much
good to our laboring poor. Poverty is more often a question
more of lack of opportunity than it is of indolence. Those
interested in the welfare of the submerged portion of
humanity can do more by opening up for it opportunities of
self-elevation than by direct giving and abstract teaching or
preaching
I am convinced from my observation of the effect of our
work in Detroit and from conversation with the people who
were benefited by this plan there, that “Relief by Work” is a
practical charity of far greater value than support without
work, and that, if carried on in the way now begun, it will do
much to relieve distress in workingmen's families and help
along those who, with large families and low wages, can now
but barely get along, and that, as regards the permanent
poor and those supported entirely by the community, it will
wean them and their children from relying upon this method
of obtaining a living, and instead teach them habits of
industry and thrift. Direct charity creates paupers.
“Relief by Work” tends constantly to reduce their number.
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What ails us farmers, anyhow? Wheat less'n sixty cents a bushel,
can't get $50.00 for my best horse, but it costs just the same to
ride on them cars, or ship these potatoes, when dug.
CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT AILS THE FARMERS?
The average farmer is a very earnest man, who
gives no little thought to the consideration of public
affairs and considerable time to their discussion, and
is always glad to hear such questions debated.
Whenever an important question of the kind comes
up, like the silver question for example, he is all
attention to it, and for months, and even years, is a
patient searcher after the facts. There was a time
when he could get the facts. He can rarely get
them now unless he is a keen reader between the
lines of interested newspapers. Like most men, he
is the creature of settled habit, and, honest himself,
he does not lightly question the honesty of others.
He belongs to a party to whose views he has
become habituated and is loth to change, lest he be
regarded as a whiffler, and he thinks upon the whole
that he might as well belong to one party as the
other. And this kind of philosophy is not at all out
of the way, unless he apathetically allows others to
assume the duties to that party which he owes.
When he is cheated, or has cheated himself, he
sometimes leaves his party, as he did in Kansas,
and turns Populist, thus jumping from the frying-
179
180
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
pan into the fire, for he no more attends to the
proper duties of that party than he did when he
belonged to the Republican or the Democratic party.
He may know precisely what he wants, but his
habits have fixed him in such a manner that he
does not know how to get it. He votes for it
regularly at the regular election and is astonished
that it does not come, although he has persisted in
voting for it. He has even elected his man time
and again at the election and still he does not get
what he wants. He gets all sorts of explanations
that are called reasons which he believes, and still
keeps voting on. Thus, he knows that his farm has
gone down in price and his friend, the banker,
furnishes him with an explanation that all farms
have gone down in price and that over-production
has done the job. And if he asks why interest has
not gone down with the farm, he is satisfied with
the explanation that there is no over-production in
money. He sees that while his bushel of wheat
has gone down in price he has to pay the same rate
of freight upon it, and he has to pay the same rate
of passenger fare, but he is loth to attack those
great public benefactors, the railroads, because if
the railroad was not there he could not get his
produce to the distant market. He doesn't seem
to argue that if the farmers were not there the rail-
road would starve to death, because his mind has
1111
del
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
181
been stuffed by his newspaper and the great orators
all about immense improvement in transportation,
the cheapness of the railroad car compared with the
old-time ox-cart, although all of the time he may
be living short while the transportation man is
piling up millions, and probably getting a mortgage
on his farm. Or, if the mortgage is not there, he
has a hired farm and short commons. Three per
cent. is a good return for farming, take it all around,
and he pays from six to ten interest if he happens
to borrow; but if the land happens to raise he can
sell out, or sell part and rent the rest and live in the
village in a modest way and pitch quoits. If he
rents to some other fellow, then the other fellow has
to do tall humping to keep even. · The risks of
farming are as great as the risks of banking, with a
less possible margin. The risks of farming are
much greater than that of operating a railroad,
especially if you happen to be the manager and not
a stockholder; but the margin in favor of a railroad
is handsomer and wider than that of farming.
Everything in opposition to the farmer in the way
of transportation and in all products which he uses
which are susceptible to the manipulation of trusts
and combines, can walk into the Legislature and
the Congress and have all the risks upon the busi-
ness reduced to the minimum, or get laws passed
practically taking away all risks. If the farmer
182
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
could walk into heaven and get rain when he wanted
it to prevent droughts, to prevent swarms of grass-
hoppers, to prevent the attacks of rot; in short, if
he could get from nature the exact thing that a
farm needed, he would then be on an equality with
the corporationist. The farmer cannot get anything
in the Legislature that will reduce his risks or fix
the prices of his produce so as to make it staple and
unvarying. But the corporationist can do it—and
does it. In this way the farmer does not play even
with the corporationist, because the Legislature fixes
the tax in the shape of the rates of freight and of
passenger service, which the corporationist can take
from the farmer, and as the farmer does not want
to go back to the ox-cart he pays it. Some of the
farmers are well off, but they would be better off, if
they knew enough to avoid unreasonable tax. It
has always been in the power of the farmer to avoid
it, but the remedy for it is so simple that he does
not see it, and possibly were it mentioned by his
neighbor, he would laugh at his neighbor's foolish-
ness for suggesting it. Corporations are so great,
and so learned, and so wise, and so beneficient, and
so handsome, and so alluring in their wealth and
eminence, and own so many newspapers, that they
can make a farmer believe almost anything, hence
why should he believe the simple thing his neighbor -
tells him. Farmers ought to be able to know that
CI
V
mers
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
183
the more money a man has the more he wants, as a
very general rule; that the higher a man climbs the
higher he wants to get; that a man who has a
million, runs faster after the other dollar than a poor
man, and clings tighter to the one he has got.
The farmer relies too much on others, and
should wake up to the work of doing something
for himself.
The farmer should work less and use his brain
more. His first and greatest need is for more
knowledge. He works too much and thinks and
reads too little. He should gather light from all
possible sources, study the probable prices of his
own products with the best light obtainable, and sell
at the most favorable time.
Farmers allow business men to do too much
thinking for them, and depend too much upon
reports printed in corporation newspapers through
the influence of grain manipulators and grain specu-
lators, rather than gain their own information con-
cerning matters of direct interest to them.
Every manufacturer and business man knows
more of the condition of crops, the acreage and
the "probable prices” than the farmer, and this
should not be so. If one wants to know anything
about a particular line of business, he goes to
some one engaged in that business. The shoe
manufacturer knows about what the output of any
TY
184
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
shoe factory in the country is; the car manufacturer
knows the output of every car shop in the country;
the mowing-machine manufacturer knows the out-
put of every other mowing-machine manufacturer,
and so on; and the farmer should know, and can
know, if he will take a little pains to find out,
about what the acreage is and what the prospects
are for a good or fair yield of the crop in which he
is most interested.
He must also search keenly into the list of the
men who have been in the position of leaders
and candidates for his party, and not rely so
implicitly upon the promises of platforms and
the ante-election promises of men. He should
make the men who represent him in the Legisla-
ture his servants instead of his masters. He must
not rely upon his vote at the November or the
spring elections to do the work for him. The
farmer has received an object lesson in putting
too much faith in his mere vote at the election, by
the recent Legislature, which refused to pass bills
regulating rates and other matters on railroads.
He must do something else. The time has come
when the corporationist has the complete rule in
the Legislatures, because bad men are chosen at
the caucuses. Men who see a chance for boodling
at the Legislature gather together a few people at
the caucuses and capturing the convention are
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
185
necessarily pretty generally voted for at the en-
suing election. The corporationists, too, are very
much interested in these primaries, and their friends
make it a point to be present and influence the
selection. Compared with the elections, the attend-
ance at the caucuses is always lamentably short.
This plain negligence on the part of the farmers
is quietly taken advantage of by the corporation's
quiet friends; the primaries are captured in a quiet
way and the whole foul work is done. Farmers
do not want to quit their work to attend the
caucuses, but they make a holiday of it and take
a day off on election day. Better take a week off
for the caucuses. But they will not take an hour,
unless it happens to be close by. They let others
attend to it, and it is attended to, and very gladly,
by the corporationist. The corporations could
well afford, from the benefits derived from them,
to pay a thousand dollars per township for the
privilege of running the caucuses. As a rule
they get them for about seven dollars, except in
some particular cases, where the delegate gets
twenty-five. The individual farmers of a town-
ship, as a rule, do not feel that they can afford to
attend conventions, and in very many cases they
pitch upon a man who says he would like to go
or happens to have the money to spend, and he
goes because he sees something in it or he is
186
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
already in the interest of a corporation. The
corporation representatives, the doctors and the
lawyers in the village, who carry passes, are usually
in attendance on caucuses...
Were a fair calculation made, covering all of
the exactions of corporations in the State of Michi-
gan for which power was given them through acts
of the Legislature, it is not too much to say that it
would show that it has cost every township in this
State a thousand dollars per delegate for each and
every delegate to each and every Legislative con-
vention held for the past thirty years or more. If
townships were obliged to tax themselves twenty-
five dollars per delegate to attend those conventions,
there would be a howl heard that would bring the
United States troops rushing up from Washington
to stop the revolution. Put at a loss of one thousand
dollars per township for each of these long years,
every farmer in Michigan must be conscious that
this indirect expense has been put ridiculously low.
But if the farmers knew the startling figures at
which it might be fairly placed, the Chicago riots
would bear no comparison to the uprising of the.
townships. In sober earnestness I say it. And in
sober earnestness I say, that the negligence of the
farmers in this respect, let it be looked at from the
dollars and cents point of view or the higher and
more patriotic side of the question, amounts to the
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
187
UU
shockingly reprehensible, and in time, if that time
has not already arrived, it will amount to a crime.
Much is said of the immoral influence of corpora-
tions, and most truthfully, but what is to be said
from the moral side of the question of men—the just,
noble and upright men of Michigan-who shirk
their plain duty to their party and allow such vice
to creep in as was exhibited at the last Legislature
of one of the grandest States in the Union. Respon-
sibility for these shocking immoralities cannot be
evaded by making the corporations, bad as they are,
the scape-goats of these monstrous iniquities. The
just and upright men of this State must bear their
full share of it, and if there is manhood enough left
in the State, and I know there is, this duty must be
done.
Better not belong to a party at all than not to
perform one's whole duty to it, and the greatest of
these duties is the attendance of every voter at the
primaries. Inattention to one's duty at the primaries
simply means disfranchisement. The fèw at the
primaries tie the hands of the many at the election.
The corporations dominate the primaries of both
parties, and of the third party, and votes at the sub-
sequent elections are mere blank paper or simply a
record of the will of the few, who made a business
of controlling the primaries. Do you want silver ?
Control the primaries. Do you want gold? Con-
188
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
VO
BU. V
1
trol the primaries. Do you want honest and reason-
able control of the railroads? Control the primaries.
Do you want stamping out of the trusts and com-
bines? Control the caucuses. Do you want the
single tax? Control the primaries. Do you want
a clean Legislature? Control the primaries.
There is not the slightest use of discussing and
arguing public questions of moment, if the usual
criminal neglect of the caucuses is to prevail. Such
talk is idle talk, when the elections are sold and
bought at the primaries and in the conventions.
The delegate system ought to be broken at any
cost by any honest party, and I firmly believe that
the mass of the party to which I belong are fair-
minded men. It is time that the party be controlled
by its members, the masses, and that control can
only be obtained by all of the voters turning out to
the caucuses.
The proper control and management of corpora-
tions by the State that created them, can only be
done by taking the primaries out of the hands of
those corporations who are now in absolute control
of the State. If it is desired to verify this state-
ment, look around you. It is vain to look to indi-
viduals for reforms of corporations. The task is too
gigantic for any one man or band of men. Only
the entire people of the State, both upper and lower.
peninsula, are equal to the work to be done in
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
189
Michigan. And there is but one way open for it,
and that is through the caucuses. I believe that the
battle of the caucuses can be won, but I do not
believe that only a part of the people can do it,
because, as I look at it, it will be a difficult fight for
the whole. I know what the corporations are. I
know that they are in possession of the organizing
inachinery of the noblest party on earth. I know
the nature of the opposition that must be expected.
They use the black flag. They spare neither pri-
vate character nor public name. They fight with
stilletos and poison-the stilleto of bribery and the
poison of defamation. Great as the task is, the peo-
ple of Michigan are greater, and if their capabilities
of organizing in their townships are as great as their
name, they must win.
There is one thing that has occurred to me in
connection with farmers who largely depend upon
the cities for markets in this or in other countries.
I may be mistaken, but I have what I regard as
excellent grounds for belief that the farmer's attitude
relative to workingmen of the cities is one of antago-
nism, largely growing out of mis-information spread
by the newspapers, which are conserving the special
interests with which they are connected; for all
newspaper owners (and I refer to the larger dailies)
have now other business to attend to besides making
newspapers. As a plain matter of fact, such
190
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
.
.
antagonism on the part of the farmers is in direct
antagonism with their own interests. The stability
of the farnier's markets, precisely like the stability
of general business interests, depends upon the
stability of wages. Farmers and growers in Michi-
gan, generally, who market in Chicago or Detroit or
Milwaukee, are aware that these three cities have
been comparatively poor markets for the past three
years. They have been told that it is on account
of the panic; on account of over-production; on
account of hard times. As over-production means
under-consumption it may be that, or it may be the
panic, or it may be hard times. But the people
who are under-consuming, the people who are
affected by hard times and the panic, are the work:
ingmen, by a vast majority. And the reason why
they are under-consuming, the reason why there are
hard times is, that money manipulation has stopped*
wages in part, and in part lessened them in amount.
It is because there is a limited amount of wages to
spend that the city markets are bad. Notwith-
standing the fact that wages and the markets have
been bad, it has not stopped the accumulation of
millions in the hands of the few by speculation of
various sorts. Industry has been partially stopped,
bnt successful gambling, backed up by laws, has
gone on just the same.
The millionaires are no help for farmers. They
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
191
are a positive injury to markets, beeause they make
nioney dear by the added interest, and this in a
measure stops consumption because it affects wages.
These great economic questions require active work
in the Legislatures and in the Congress for-their
proper development and practical application, but so
long as the farmers and the workingmen, who are
natural allies, neglect the caucuses, no fair under-
standing will be reached and no fair adjustment
made to all. That understanding must be reached
before and not after the primaries and elections.
The question must be settled practically by the
ballot at the primaries, and not by petitions and
lobbyists after election. As it stands now the
political bosses settle who is to be nominated at the
primaries. At the last Democratic primary for
Congressman in Detroit, first Michigan district, a
man was chosen by the activity of the henchmen of
the boss, numbering some two hundred, in accor-
dance with the request of two prominent bankers of
the city, one a Republican and the other“a Democrat.
As soon as the bankers had decided upon a man, the
boss, who is also a banker, nodded, and the work was
done, simply because the people did not go out to
the primaries. The bosses, the millionaires, the
trusts, and combines, and the corporationists
generally, know the immense value of the primaries,
and have really secured possession of every party
192
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
that party caucus they let go by default, because
of tying the hands of the party voters at the polls.
They are aware that the people can crush them out
of the primaries, but they also know that the people
have become habituated to neglecting the primaries.
I hope I may be able to open the farmer's eyes to
these plain and simple facts, and to have them see
the plain truth, that, owing to the activity of the
corporationists, any citizen who does not attend the
primaries these days, disfranchises himself, and
although he may try to persuade himself that the
mechanical dropping of a ballot at an election is
voting, a little reflection will show him that it is no
vote at all.
Corporationists do not go to the trouble or the
expense of capturing primaries for nothing. They
do so because there is money in it, and under
the economic rule every dollar of that money
must come out of workmen's wages and farmers'
crops. Control of the indirect taxing power is
what they are after. Every city and State in
the land have paid millions of this indirect tax to
the corporations. What the people should aim for,
on securing the primaries and fair play representa-
tion in Congress and in the Legislatures, is the proper
regulation of railroads and other corporations,
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
193
but if it is found that the corporations, by a pro-
longed contest in the courts, and the use of the
power of money, seek to force the people through
their own judiciary, then there is nothing for it, as it
seems to me, but public ownership of railroads to
start with. While I am inclined to the general
principle of the private ownership of railroads, I
have been pushed, by confronting the practical facts,
to the serious consideration of public ownership. I
see plainly that railroads dominate States, and prac-
tically regulate affairs between themselves and the
public. I see also the growth of trusts and com-
bines, and with these transportation is becoming
daily more and more involved. It is difficult to say
where one corporation's interest ends and where the
other form of corporation begins. Thus railroads
own some of the transportation lines upon the lakes.
They do not exercise ownership of vessels by right
of incorporation as railroads, but the individual
incorporators of railroads form another corporation
for the construction and operation of vessels. In
this way, competition upon the transporation lines of
the lakes, as against the railroads, is seen in the
light of something farcical, but the farmer's news-
paper does not say anything about it. Such facts
as these are worth many thousands of dollars to
farmers; but there is another fact, that along the
lake cities, the Lake Carriers' Associations have
13
194
.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
n
.
their newspapers, and many of the farmers pay for
the privilege of reading these newspapers, thus
placing themselves in the odd position of con-
tributing money to cheat themselves. Any paper
that defends trusts and combinations and com-
bines, or is silent upon the subject, is simply
in league with the Railroad Lake Carriers'
Association, to the manifest financial injury of the
farmers, the workingmen and other producers,
who contribute their money to support them.
But this condition of things is not confined to
Detroit and the State of Michigan: it prevails, in
every great city and State in the United States.
The principal papers of the United States are
directly or indirectly in the hands of the corpora-
tionists, and they sell flippancy, insincerity, stories,
funny things, flip reports, and “purely scientificº
or stuffy editorials, and leave the principal affairs
of the United States in the hands of the corpora-
tions. Every man on the various staffs of these
papers who seriously regards these anarchical
conditions, this utter disregard of the rights of
people, this effrontery to law and decent living,
is tied neck and heels and refused the opportunity
to speak his mind or record the facts. It would
fill another book to point out these facts. It is
enough to suggest the work, and a hard labor it
is, that must begin at the primaries, if it is to
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
195
more
begin at all. It is to the caucus, therefore,
that the people of Michigan, the people of all of
the States of the Union, must look for the remedy
for relief from the control of political corporations
My position on the question of corporations
has been made the subject of sufficient misrepre-
sentation to make a fortune for half a dozen
corporation daily newspapers, and leave enough
over to supply Satan for a fall campaign.
Corporations, more especially transportation
corporations, are essential to modern civilization,
Without them the work of the modern world could
not be carried on, except under disadvantages that
are too obvious to need mention. There is not a
man, with a grain of common sense, in the United
States, that ever entertained for a moment the
absurd idea of destroying corporations, and yet one
of the judges of the United States Court, as though
frightened at the bugbear of mere mobs, had the
impudence to intimate the other day that corpora-
tions were threatened with forcible extirpation.
The great danger to corporations does not lie in
mobs. It is in the methods of the managers and
the stock manipulators where it lies. It is in the
corruption that the corporations themselves are
spreading. The corruption which they sow outside
will, and has, spread within, and it festers there,
breeding as much mischief inside as outside. It
196
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
a
е
1
gets in its deadly work at your primaries, it festers
in your Legislatures; it dry-rots the hearts of your
public men; it defrauds the producer and it robs the
stockholders; it debauches your newspapers, and
its baneful influence palsies the tongues of the
ministers of your sanctuaries.
No, there is no danger to corporations from
mere mobs. Mobs are only the symptoms of the
deadly disease which has infected your primaries
and spread thence in every direction. And I am
forced to say again, farmers of this country, that you
have not helped stay the spread of this vile infec-
tion. Your door-yard of the primaries has not
been cleaned. It is still foul and vile. But I do
say, if the expedient of the riddance of the people
from the foul rule of political corporations becomes
necessary, then their extirpation will come through
the ballot at the primaries. There is no other way.
I repeat I am in favor of the maintenance of
corporations. Most especially should the great
transportation lines remain in private hands. But
I do say emphatically that better take them out of
private hands than allow them to stand as the
greatest corrupter of public morals that ever black-
ened the pages of history. And what I do insist
upon is, that corporations be properly regulated
and supervised by the State governments, their
creators. I desire that the control of Legislatures
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
197
and the Congress be taken away from the corpora-
tions. That the present order of affairs be
reversed. That the entire people rule, and not a
class. I firmly believe that the people know best
how to regulate corporations. If the proper regu-
lation of corporations is had through the State and
Federal governments, that is all that can be asked
by any judicious person. Certainly that is all I
ask. Under such conditions, I would gladly leave
them in private hands. But such regulation will
have to be compelled, as the transportation
wreckers and the political party wreckers are deeply
interested in present conditions and will not sur-
render without a fight. That fight must be made
at the primaries. There is no other practical way.
While it is one of the functions of government
to protect property in all its rights, and in every way
to encourage enterprise by rendering sacred that
which a man has honestly earned, it is no less its
duty to protect and do justice to its laboring popu-
lation. It is generally not the wealthy man who
needs much protection, for he is amply able to take
care of himself, nor is there much danger that he
will suffer long from injustice, but what becomes of
the poor laborer, if both the greedy men of wealth
and the government turn a deaf ear to appeals for
just treatment and decent wages? Shall the govern-
198
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
ment treat him on every occasion where he asks an
humble share in this country's prosperity as if he
was a revolutionist or an outlaw? Yet of late years
the tendency has been that way. Is it a crime to
belong to a union for mutual protection? It seems
to me that for the welfare of our country, it is of
more importance that our laboring classes shall not
be brought to a condition of industrial slavery, than
that the number of millionaires shall increase. If
the United States is not to be a country where the
average man can live in comfort and the pursuit of
happiness, it is a failure as a Republic. If the people
of the United States are to come under the dominion
of a monied aristocracy, let us then rather invite a
Romanoff from Russia to come over and govern us.
He at least would believe in “noblesse oblige."
Power and wealth have duties towards their fellow-
men from which no one can relieve them.
The condition and welfare of the laboring classes
is a question of wages.
Greed will ever try to reduce wages. The only
weapon of the laboring man is to strike; he has no
other recourse against injustice and oppression. To
me it seems that arbitration is a better solution
than bayonets and bullets. Let the government
encourage that method to settle questions of wages.
As long, however, as the oppressor is assured that
troops will come to his rescue, provided he can
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
199
cause to be committed some overt act which can be
laid at the door of the strikers, he will say “there is
nothing to arbitrate.” There are always men so
poor, so hungry, who will work for less; these come
in and take the place of the strikers, and the strike
is settled, but honest labor has been crowded a step
downwards; wrong has been done to humanity and
has been backed by the government. To supply
the places of the men who strike, the monopolist
imports and encourages the paupers of Europe to
come over. This is a wrong to ourselves, and
should be stopped. The welfare of a country lies
in the welfare of its laboring classes, and not in the
prosperity of its millionaires, and this is especially
so of a republic,
. In wage disputes, the side which will not arbi.
trate practically admits that it cares not to do what
is just, but relies on its power to coerce; might is
right; I can, therefore I will. This was the motto of
men in barbaric days, before the days of courts.
Civilization demands that disputes between man
and man be settled by the rules of equity and justice,
and not by stones and sticks on the one side and
gatling guns on the other.
CHAPTER VIII.
YA
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP OF CITY LIGHTING PLANTS.-
WORKINGMEN'S TICKETS.
PENDING the fight upon the gas question, the
subject of public lighting came up with redoubled
force. Plans innumerable had been submitted and
rejected, as impracticable or too expensive. The
electric light had come in as a competitor with gas,
and had driven the old illuminant from the streets
of the city, through franchises obtained from the
Council and approved by the Mayor. It was a
new thing, and had been heralded as a great thing
by all of the newspapers. Of course, the electric
light men, profiting by this push, and the enthusi-
asm of the city, desirous of being abreast with the
modern idea, were not slow in making their charges
proportionate to the enthusiasm. Electric lighting,
that is, the public part of it, showed up to be some-
thing expensive. It did not appear to me to
warrant the cost. There was any amount of testi-
mony, going to show that it was very cheap in pro-
portion to its lighting capacity. It was a splendid
light, but the prices were perfectly gorgeous-
$96, 308.47 per year. Entertaining the idea of
200
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
201
in
municipal ownership of a lighting plant, a bill was
taken into the Legislature, to enable the city to
go into the business for itself. The bill went
through what is known as the “ Squaw Buck"
Legislature, and that much of good came out of
the State capital. The city went at it, purchased a
site, built and placed the plant, and is to-day
illumined at night by its own lights. Com-
puting entire cost, interest and running expenses,
the reduction on the price of the public lighting is
$32.68 per light per annum, or a total saving of
$49,020 per year upon 1,500 lights. Further
reduction is anticipated, and with a plant kept up
to the highest degree of efficiency.
Some time ago there was talk of boodle among
the members of the Board of Education, but noth-
ing could be traced definitely, any more than it
can be in an ordinary way in the Common Council.
The talk ran under-ground that certain members of
the Board were giving their votes in consideration
of what there was in it, in the matter of all con-
tracts for school furniture. It was common gossip
on the streets and in places of public resort, and
the gossip grew to include toll on everything that
passed through the Board. Allowance being made
for the usual exaggeration of flying rumors, it
appeared that there must be some fire where there
was so much smoke. An agent of a Manitowoc,
202
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
Wis., company of manufacturers of school furni-
ture, put in an appearance, and from con
had with him, I ascertained that certain of the
School Board members were making advances for
boodle on a contract for furniture, which he was
trying to get through the Board. An arrangement
was made in connection with the detective depart-
ment of the Police Department, to entrap the bood-
lers. The members of the Board of Education
engaged in the boodle business, appointed a day to
confer with the Manitowoc agent at the latter's
hotel, and meantime, through the consent of the
proprietor of the hotel, an aperture was made
through the partition, through which, from another
room, the detectives, who knew the members of
the Board of Education, could see the men and
overhear the conversation.
On the eventful day, the boodlers appeared
before the Manitowoc agent, and the detectives
were in position with a stenographer. The boodlers
were identified, and the boodle conversation taken
down. As soon as the affair became known
through the newspapers, there was a general run
for cover. The thing was thrown into the courts.
One of the people arrested got off because he
proved an alibi that he was at a funeral. One of
them attempted suicide, and out of the gang, but
one was sent to State prison. A third disappeared
from the city, having been bailed out.
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
203
Bail should be no more taken from public men,
charged with receiving bribes, for which they give
their votes in the disposal of public money, than it
is for murder. I doubt as to which of the two
crimes is the highest. There is a third crime
which, in my estimation, equals in magnitude either
of these two, and that is the tampering with the
votes of the people, either at the primaries, the
elections, or in the final official count; for even in
the final official count, by the State authorities, the
vote has been falsified-at least it has been in
Michigan, if it has not been perpetrated in other
States. Corruption, under political corporation
influence, beginning at the caucus, thus attains a
very high growth, and poisons the highest branches.
The vigilance of the people being relaxed at the
primaries, the rot enters and spreads all over the
body politic. Much space might be covered in the
suggestion of methods, by which the primaries
might be guarded; but nothing will be to the pur-
pose until people are aroused from their lethargy
to attend in person, and not by any agency what-
ever. The presence of the people is the first
requisite, and without that initial essential it is
absurd to enter into details. To-day, even, in the
discussion of the greatest of questions, no thought,
much less, discussion, is given to this all-important
subject. It is very like talking about going
II
204
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
*
through a door, with the door locked, and the key
in the possession of some absent person.
One of the innumerable fights on the side with
the corporationists, was for the enforcement of the
sale of workingmen's tickets on the cars of the
Citizens' Street Railway, in accordance with one of
the provisions made in the franchise-tinkering with
that Company. Other tickets were sold on the
cars, but the workingmen's tickets could only be
obtained at the distant offices of the Company.
This provision allowed eight tickets for twenty-five
cents for a couple of hours in the morning and a
couple of hours in the evening. The prime mover
in this struggle was Alexander I. McLeod, then
Mayor's secretary and now the County Treasurer of
Wayne County. The fight was carried into the
Common Council, where Alderman William B.
Thompson led in the struggle. Of course, with its
customary Bourbon tenacity, the Detroit City Rail-
way used every means to defeat the sale of these
workingmen's tickets. When the job-lot of fran-
chises was given to the City Railway, the Fort
Wayne and Elmwood and the Grand River Railways,
who had joined forces against a new company which
had applied for franchises and offered to put in
electrical appliances for rapid transit on routes
nearly identical with those occupied by the present
Detroit Railway, one of the main considerations
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
205
was the agreement by the companies to sell eight
tickets for a quarter during certain hours, morning
and evening. These became commonly known
as “workingmen's tickets.” In the practical opera
tion, however, of the agreement, the Company
succeeded in very greatly curtailing the sale of
these tickets by limiting the places where they
could be obtained; in other words, a workingman,
or anybody else, in order to get hold of a quarter's
worth of these tickets, had to go to the general
offices of the Company, or to the branch offices at
the barns, or to some out-of-the-way saloon or
grocery. The result was that comparatively few
of the workingmen's tickets were in actual circula-
tion, and the people were deprived of the benefit
supposed to accrue from this concession forced
from the companies.
When the famous ordinances of 1890 (which
I vetoed after the indignation meeting of citizens
held at the Auditorium), were passed, efforts
were made by several aldermen who had the
good of the people at heart, to procure the
insertion of a provision requiring the companies
to place these tickets on sale in the hands of
conductors, so that they would be easily acces-
sible to patrons of the lines. But at the dictation
of a gentleman, who sat in the lobby, and
controlled by a movement of the hand the adoption

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Scenes like this are brought about by unfair treatment, but not
approved by the great masses of workingmen,
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
207
or rejection of any amendments offered, these were
invariably voted down by the Gang. The public
demanded free access to these tickets, and being
requested by many citizens to do so, I asked the
companies to place them on sale in the hands of
conductors, which request they scornfully refused
to grant. It seemed to me so important that these
tickets should be placed on sale in the cars, that I
was continually speaking and thinking of it, and
looking for a way to compel the Company to com-
ply with the spirit of the ordinance. At my
request, Secretary McLeod tackled the Detroit
City Railway ordinance one day, paragraph by
paragraph, going through it very carefully, with
the single purpose in view of ascertaining if there
was not some clause or construction that might be
made of the language contained therein that would
bring about the desired result. After pegging
away for a long time, he finally discovered this
section:
"SECTION 19.-It is hereby reserved to the
Common Council of the City of Detroit, the right
to make such further rules, orders or regulations,
as may, from time to time, be deemed necessary,
to protect the interest, safety, welfare, or accom-
modation of the public, in relation to said railways.'
He pointed this out to me, and said that the
common acceptation or reading of the words con-
Wais
se
208
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
tained in that paragraph would be that the Com-
mon Council had the right to compel the Company,
as a matter of accommodation to the public, to
place these tickets where they would be accessible
to the public, and not hide them away in some saloon
or backwoods' station. I immediately summoned
Professor Kent, hoping that the thing was right,
but fearing that some legal technicality or quibble
would put some other construction on the words
than that which were given. Much to my grati-
fication, however, the great Street Railway lawyer
said that the Secretary's construction of the language
was correct, and that the Common Council had
the undoubted right to make this useful regulation.
At that time, a great many plans and schemes and
ideas for good government, which emanated from
the Mayor's office, first saw the light of day from
the hands of some friendly member of the Board
of Aldermen. One of the aldermen from the
Eighth, although a Democrat, was on the Mayor's
staff, so to speak, at that time, especially in the
Street Railway, fight, and when, at the Mayor's
direction, the proper ordinance was prepared by the
Secretary, with Prof. Kent's O. K. as to its binding
effect, it was handed to Alderman Thompson, and
he offered it in the Common Council that Tuesday
night. Of course, none of the aldermen dared to
go against the adoption of an ordinance like that,
1
1
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
209
which appealed so directly to a very large class of
voters in the city, both Democratic and Republican;
besides, the City Railway crowd poo-hooed the
thing as being of no effect unless it had the Com-
pany's consent, and they knew, of course, the Com-
pany would never consent to anything of that kind.
The result was, the ordinance was passed; a test.
case was carefully framed in the Recorder's Court,
where it was tried by City Attorney Rasch and
Prof. Kent on one side, and defended by Otto
Kirchner, Fred. Baker, and all the Street Railway
galaxy of legal luminaries, on the other. A con-
'ductor, against whom the test case was made, was
fined; the Company appealed the case to the
Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court affirmed
Judge Chambers' finding in the matter, thus settling
the validity of the ordinance. The Fort Wayne
and Elmwood Comparly acquiesced in the decision,
and since that time workingmen's tickets have been
for sale by the conductors on the various roads.
1111
V
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT ?
Near the close of the war, in reply to a letter
from a friend'in Illinois, President Lincoln said:
“Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that
this cruel war is nearing its close. It has cost a
vast amount of treasure and blood. The best
blood of the flower of American youth has been
14
210
FACTS AND OPINIONS.
a
Nep
S.
freely offered upon our country's altar, that the
Nation might live. It has been indeed a trying
hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future
a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country.
“ As a result of the war, corporations have been
enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country
will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon
the prejudices of the people, until all wealth is
aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is
destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for
the safety of my country than ever before, even in
the midst of the war. God grant that my suspicions
may be groundless.”
What a wonderful prophecy, and how terribly
it is being fulfilled!
H. S. P.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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