Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
 IEx ICtbrts 
 
 SEYMOUR DURST 
 
 When you leave, please leave this book 
 
 Because it has been said 
 "Sver'thing comes t' him who waits 
 
 Except a loaned book." 
 
Office of the Committee of One Hundred. 
 1212 Broadway, New York, August, 1886. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Dear Sir : Will you kindly read the subjoined Address 
 of the Committee of One Hundred ; and, if you approve 
 the purposes of the committee, sign the roll of those who 
 mean to secure them ? 
 
 Citizens of New York : 
 
 The condition of your city government demands thought- 
 ful attention. The current expenses of the city of New 
 York for 1884, the latest year for which the detailed 
 accounts are accessible, are stated by Mayor Grace in his 
 message of January 4th, 1886, after deducting the amounts 
 paid to redeem debt, the State taxes, and sums properly 
 chargeable to former years, at $33,834,812.96, or for each 
 inhabitant, $25.28. 
 
 This is vastly in excess of the cost of governing any other 
 great city in the world ; and is from fifty to two hundred 
 per cent greater than the cost of governing any city with 
 which New York can fairly be compared. 
 
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 The rate of increase of the cost of government, and of 
 taxation to support it, is alarming. Thus : 
 
 In 1810 the current expenses for each inhabitant were $1.25 
 " 1836 " " " " " " " 2.00 
 
 " 1850 " '* ; " " " " 5.00 
 
 " 1877 " " ' " " . " M 20.OO 
 
 " 1884 " 44 14 " " " 25.28 
 
 WHAT BECOMES OF THE MONEY ? 
 
 No man has suggested that the enormous cost represents 
 a corresponding superiority of public service. The ineffi- 
 ciency of our city government is almost as notorious as its 
 extravagance. But the question is clearly answered by 
 every responsible and impartial inquirer who has in recent 
 years investigated the subject. 
 
 In 1875, the Governor appointed a commission to consider 
 the subject of city government in this State, and to report a 
 plan to the Legislature. After more than a year of labor 
 this commission submitted an elaborate report to the 
 Legislature of 1877, signed by William M. Evarts, Samuel 
 Hand, E. L. Godkin, John A. Lott, Joshua M. Van Cott, 
 James C. Carter, Oswald Ottendorfer, William Allen But- 
 ler, Simon Sterne and Henry F. Dimock. 
 
 These gentlemen say : 
 
 First, of the debt of this city : "It was abundantly suffi- 
 cient for the construction of all the public works of a great 
 
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 metropolis for a century to come, and to have adorned it 
 besides with the splendors of architecture and art. Instead 
 of this, the wharves and piers are, for the most part, tem- 
 porary and perishable structures ; the streets are poorly 
 paved ; the sewers in great measure imperfect and in bad 
 order ; the public buildings shabby and inadequate. . . . 
 In truth, the public debt of the city of New York, or the 
 larger part of it, represents a vast aggregate of moneys 
 wasted, embezzled, or misapplied." 
 
 Second, of the annual expenditure, that it has increased 
 far more than is apparent from the published budgets, enor- 
 mous sums being " every year exacted from the property 
 owners in the form of special assessments," though " a very 
 large part of it belongs to the account of ordinary repairs ;" 
 but that, as clearly shown by the general budgets, 44 we have, 
 during the past twenty-five years, . . . outrun all former 
 examples of wastefulness, extravagance, and corrupt ad- 
 ministration." 
 
 With this city particularly in view, they add : " We do 
 not believe that, had the cities of this State, during the last 
 twenty-five years, had the benefit ... of competent and 
 faithful officers, the aggregate of municipal debts would 
 have amounted to one third of the present sum, nor the 
 annual taxation one half of its present amount ; while the 
 condition of these cities . . . would have been far superior 
 to what is now exhibited." 
 
 More recently two elaborate investigations of the city 
 
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 government have been attempted by committees of the 
 Senate, one in 1880, the other in 1885. The report of each 
 of them, supported by a mass of evidence, confirms at every 
 point the conclusions of Governor Tilden J s commission cited 
 above. Those three important official investigations of city 
 affairs combine to show : 
 
 1. That more than one half of the taxes paid to the city 
 produce no public benefit ; that, after deducting the lega- 
 cies of past extravagance and corruption in the existing debt 
 and in the maintenance and repairs of property, more than 
 a third of these taxes are, through various channels, dis- 
 tributed among political managers and their adherents, sup- 
 porting a large and increasing body of men, whose business 
 is, by the machinery of the city government, to extract 
 money from you and appropriate it to themselves. The 
 amount of your money which is thus worse than wasted 
 every year is more than the interest of $500,000,000 at three 
 per cent, the rate upon most of the debt recently con- 
 tracted ; and the continuance of this system of organized 
 plunder is a greater burden to the city than a mortgage at 
 that rate and for that amount ; almost one half of the 
 assessed valuation of real estate in the city and county of 
 New York. 
 
 2. That this system is maintained and made possible by a 
 combination of causes, the removal of which will require 
 radical changes both in our laws and in the administration of 
 them. 
 
s 
 
 3. That the acts of the Legislature at any time in force, 
 which together constitute at that time the charter of the 
 city, form an immense and complicated body of law, ill- 
 digested and inconsistent in many of its parts, and every 
 year made more confused and more unintelligible by 
 changes or additions, framed under the dictation of special 
 interests. The nominal executive head of the city has but 
 an imperfect control of the several departments ; the heads 
 of nearly all the departments have a divided responsibility, 
 and the whole framework of the government seems designed 
 to protect incapacity and conceal corruption. 
 
 4. That the connection of municipal offices with national 
 and State politics gives the control of these offices to the 
 managers of the political parties, in their local factions and 
 associations ; that they are awarded in payment of partisan 
 or personal services, or in return for promises which make 
 our public servants the tools of irresponsible M bosses." 
 
 WHO ARE THE SUFFERERS ? 
 
 No long argument is needed to show where the burden 
 falls. The simplest consideration shows that if owners could 
 not get so much for the use of their capital in Xew York as 
 in Brooklyn or Philadelphia, they would go away with it. 
 In the long run, they must be paid as much for interest or 
 rent, on every thousand dollars, here as elsewhere. If. 
 then, the city takes nearly three per cent every year in 
 
6 
 
 taxes, this amount must be added, by the landlord to his 
 rent, and by the tenant who pays the rent to the goods or 
 services which he sells. Every man who has to find food 
 and home and raiment for his family in this city knows that 
 he has to pay more for smaller rooms, poorer fare, and 
 meaner clothes than in any other place upon the continent. 
 It is the wages of industry out of which the vast stealings 
 of city politics are taken. Thus, every workingman is 
 lodged less comfortably and less healthfully, his children are 
 worse fed, his leisure hours are shortened, and he is robbed 
 of a material part of the prosperity and happiness he fairly 
 earns. The whole community suffers, except those who 
 receive an undue share of the spoils, but it is the earner of 
 wages who is most cruelly wronged. 
 
 Citizens of New York, if an army of foreign invaders 
 should encamp in your public buildings and your streets, 
 threatening to extort from you the yearly revenues of an 
 empire at the point of the sword, how long would you en- 
 dure their presence ? Not one of two hundred thousand 
 New Yorkers would hold his life too dear to set at risk for 
 their destruction. But the evil now to be met is graver, 
 though the call is not to arms. The wealth that violence 
 could take from us might be replaced by patient industry. 
 But who shall restore to a community its lost honor? The 
 thirst for private gain has become the controlling and avowed 
 motive in seeking and administering your public offices. 
 Your city fathers sell their ordinances. Your rulers, with 
 
7 
 
 more power over your property and with more intimate re- 
 lations to your lives than feudal monarchs ever had among 
 their subjects, traffic in their appointments and public con- 
 tracts. Capitalists, householders, merchants, and laborers 
 are taught that, while there is no way to obtain justice, there 
 is a way to buy favor, now with money, now with votes. 
 Corruption spreads through all business and all society ; and 
 the name of your city is made a byword throughout the 
 world. To acquiesce in all this now is to prepare de- 
 generacy for your children, and to invite future generations 
 to find in New York a den of thieves. You have power to 
 put an end to it. Let every citizen who has nothing to lose, 
 but much to gain, by requiring that the business of the city 
 be carried on as a public trust, unite with us in a persistent 
 effort for reform, and success will be speedy and certain. 
 In the interests of no man, of no party and of no faction, 
 but of our beautiful and beloved city alone, we ask you to 
 enroll your names with ours, as those of men who will work 
 and vote together to secure in New York a city government 
 which shall be truly of the people, by the people, and for 
 the people. 
 
 The principles which will guide our efforts are expressed 
 in the resolutions adopted by your great mass-meeting of 
 June 2d. The particular measures to be adopted must be 
 determined when a sufficient number of citizens shall have 
 sanctioned these principles to make the final expression of 
 their will irresistible. The entire separation of our local 
 
8 
 
 affairs from national and State politics, the control of them 
 by the people of the city in their own interests, the con- 
 centration of responsibility, the simplification of administra- 
 tive duties and of accounts, and the selection of all muni- 
 cipal officers on the ground of integrity and capacity alone, 
 are the ends we seek ; and we ask you to join us in devising 
 and promoting means to secure them. 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 
 The Committee of One Hundred, 
 
 Henry A. Oakley, 
 
 Chairman. 
 
 Robert A. Van Wyck, 
 
 Secretary. 
 
 cusses 
 
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