lEx HibrtB SEYMOUR DURST When you leave, please leave this book Because it has been said "Ever'thin^ comes t' him who waits Syccept a loaned book." Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library Gift of Sfymour B. Durst Old York Lii^rar^' SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY THE O'CONNELL PRESS 176 Park Row, New York PRICE TWO DOLLARS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/whatsmatterwithnOOhenn WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? A Story of the Waste of Millions Told by JOHN A. HENNESSY Published by THE O'CONNELL PRESS 176 Park Row, New York City ■Conyright. 1916, by JoHN A. Hennessy INTRODUCTION 3 A BIT OF INTRODUCTION. This book is not written to expose all the evils of State government, but to uncover a few. Its main purpose is to show how with small effort several millions of dollars may be saved the taxpayers each year and with a rising standard of efficiency. Several important departments are left un- touched, so that concrete abuses easy of reach may be accurately presented for the information of those ready to do what they can in having the business of the State run on lines nearly parallel with the successful trade achievements of individuals. The Author thinks it wiser to take six or seven State de- partments and point out what is wrong than to go into every avenue of the State's activities and pile up a mass of material which, for the time at least, might miss legislative scrutiny and relief. The lines of reform will surely broaden into other channels if what is put down in these pages forces business changes in certain departments. The taxpayers of New York City have a vital interest in what is here written. They escaped a direct tax this year, but probably for the last time in many years to come unless their civic leaders set out resolutely now to put in force working methods in government which vdll decrease expenses, create revenue and upbuild the functions of the State. As these pages unfold the seriousness of the case will appeal to all. Failure to bring about reform by rapid stages will not only continue the misuse of public money, but inevitably force the State budget to an increase of $20,000,000 in the next five years. The abuses, many of them grave, in State institutions, have no place in this volume, interesting as they would be to good citizens. The interlacing partnership between con- tractors and State officials does not come within the province of this book. The activities of men who have things big and little to sell at prices to suit the moral atmosphere in State departments will not be related ; neither g^aft nor blackmail ; 4 WHATS^THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? neither shady work against the State Treasury nor the plastic attitude of men in office will be discussed. If there be any hint of these things it will be only by indirection and to garb some special point with illustrative meaning. The chief purpose is to cut away administrative abuses, stop useless waste of money and bring about efficiency that will count both in the development of the State and the protection of the Treasury. This book will deal concretely with the expenditures and the management of State printing, State Highways, State Hospitals, State Prisons, charitable institu- tions, the Departments of Agriculture and of Conservation. Of necessity, the proper treatment of these subjects, showing looseness and other faults in government, will bring in some co-related subjects, such as the sinking funds, bond issues and direct taxes, but the special treatment of State taxation has no place here and is indeed worthy of deep consideration apart from the aims of this volume. Business control of our State institutions is a very big question for all who pay the bills. When we find ourselves near the $10,000,000 a year mark for maintenance alone in the hospitals for the insane and other State charitable homes, it is a duty to look closely into the methods in use, and to justify proper criticism of wasteful expenditures by presenting the facts from the official records. The extravagances of government so plainly established in this volume are only a part of our troubles. The failure of government to take advantage of revenue-supplying sources, of benefit to the taxpayer and to the general development of the State, is another factor of importance when we find the State budget increasing, in the period from 1905 to 1916, from $24,642,721 to $58,659,421, exclusive of all bond issues for canals, highways and other improvements. The figures established in this book relating to New York are reported by the institutions and verified by the officials in Albany. They account for every appropriation, so that they tally to the correct point, and may be accepted as conclu- sive of extraordinary lack of business management in many of the State departments. That the New York State budget can, with efficient reorganization, be cut within a year by INTRODUCTION 5 $5,000,000, and within three years by from $7,000,000 to $8,000,000, even with increased activities, cannot be success- fully questioned; nor will it be accurately denied that a con- tinuance of the present system will lead us, not later than 191 7. to a direct tax which will remain with us year by year in ever-growing volume. In these pages will be found some personal views of the Author which may not be at all necessary to a recital of gov- ernmental conditions, but these views do not over-run those chapters which call for precise treatment of the subjects described. The aim is to be both non-partisan and non- political, but at times it is necessary to paint with some flavor incidents v/hich must appeal to the just criticism or the lighter views of those most interested. Should the publication of this volume do nothing more than bring about changed conditions for good in certain specified departments, several millions a year will be saved, not to speak of business-like progress in government. > 6 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? OUR STEADILY RISING DEBT. Story of How the State Debt Has Climbed More Than $200,- 000,000 in Twenty Years Told in the Official Figures- More than $100,000,000 in Last Five Years. 1895— In this year the State debt was only $660, old bonds never offered for redemption. 1896— Beginning of New Canal and Adirondack Park debt. $2,320,660 1897— 5,765,660 1898— 9,340,660 189a— Including $900,000 Spanish war debt 10,185,660 1900— 10,130,660 1901— 10,075,660 1902— 9,920,660 1903— 9.665,660 1904— ! 9,410,660 1905— End of the Spanish war debt 11,155,660 1906— 10,630,6*^0 1907— Beginning of the Highway Bond debt 17,290.660 1908— 26,230,660 1909— $10,000,000 Canal and $5,000,000 Highway bonds.... 41,230,660 1910— $11,000,000 Canal and $5,000,000 Highway bonds.... 57,230,660 1911— First issue of Palisade Park bonds, $2,500,000 79,730,660 1912 — First issue of Saratoga Reservation bonds, $630,000; the rest Canal and Highway bond issues 109,702,660 1913— $19,000,000 Canals and $8,000,000 Highways 135,355,660 1 9 14_$1 1,000,000 Canals and $13,000,000 Highways 159,260,660 1915— $17,000,000 Canals and $10,000,000 Highways 186,400,660 1916— $17,000,000 Canals and $10,000,000 Highways 211,400,660 In addition to this debt there is yet to be issued $47,000,000 of Canal and of Highway bonds authorized by the people which will be done with little delay, so that the entire bonded debt of the State soon will be $258,400,000, against which there is in the sinking fund $48,897,080.89. So we may well call ourselves beyond the $200,000,000 mark in net debt. HOW STATE EXPENDITURES HAVE CLIMBED 7 HOW STATE EXPENDITURES HAVE CLIMBED. This chart shows how the Treasury Department pay- ments compare with the growth of the State's assessed valua- tion of real property and its population from 1901 to 1915, inclusive. Increase in the expenditures for all purposes in 1915 over 1901 is 286 per cent. In 1901 the total was $24,597,841; in 1915 the outlay was $94,902,371. 'Increase in the assessed valuation of Real Estate in New York State 1915 compared with 1901 is 119 per cent. Increase in population 1915 over 1901 was 34.5 per cent. 8 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? TERMS OF OFFICE. The basic trouble with the State Government is the short terms of office by men at the top in the big departments. A Superintendent of Prisons is hardly in office before he is out. The Conservation Commissioner is learning something of con- structive value for the people when he and his immediate staff are projected into private life. In six years there have been three complete changes in the Highway and Public Works Departments, bringing chaos in the spending of more than $150,000,000 in that period on the roads and canals. The Agricultural Department has been made the football of poli- tics. No sane man would run a $60,000,000 a year business this way, yet the people who pay and get 60 per cent, of service for this money look on placidly while good men go out of the public service and raw recruits come in. Reformation of the State's business from the top down is the most vital work that can be done by those good citizens whose voice is heard in the City of New York through th€ Chamber of Commerce, The Merchants' Association, The City Club, and other civic agencies. Were they to join with similar bodies throughout the State, reform in tenure of office would come, an abler class of men would seek office, and the standard of efficiency would steadily rise. Only the honest extension of civil service can bring this about. This policy is as essential to economy and development as sunshine and moisture to the growth of a forest. Failure to bring this about is indictment of our desire and ability to have representative government. The head of a State department is actually in charge of a business running from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 a year in out- lay. His term of office ought not to be less than six years, and every man under him ought to be in the civil list. These men, of course, can be retired for cause, but as their successors would come from an eligible list, there would be no temptation to get rid of a useful man. The eligible lists for the deputies would rise to a high standard because of the ample salaries and life term of office on good behavior. The examinations in the Agricultural Service, for instance, would get men skilled in farming in all its branches, with special knov/ledge of TERMS OF OFFICE 9 forestry, water courses and soils. A similar standard would •come in other branches of the government and we should not have, as now, men of hobbled minds, whose chief vocation is to be of political value to the boss who holds the whip, and to be of only fugitive service to the State. This reform is all the more earnestly to be desired when we stop to think that New York State is only in its develop- ment in almost every branch of Government, except the Departments of Banks, Insurance, Law, and Excise, and that decent men of trained minds are as essential to the State as they are to the man in private business. That our shell fish- eries, for instance, have been in the hands of three different men in three years is a terrific indictment of the way business is done. The first two incumbents were low-grade politicians. The present holder of the job is unknown to me. The place of Shell Fish Commissioner should be in the civil service and no man should be eligible for examination who had not engaged in the raising of lobsters, oysters, clams and scallops. The value of the shell fisheries on the Long Island coast could be increased by millions of dollars, but this never will be done while the job of Shell Fish Commissioner is a prize of politics, the incurrfbent going out at every turn of the political wheel on Long Island. No matter how able the next Governor and his successor may be, the work of the State will lag and, in many important places, fall behind by changing the deputies in the great departments. The Highway Division, for instance, has had three different secretaries in three years, and three separate sets of deputies in the same period. The present secretary, Mr. I. J. Morris, is the ablest and best equipped man who ever held the place. He saves his salary of $5,000 fifty times over for the State, but out the door he will go next year for some scallawag type of Democrat should the Republicans lose the coming campaign. Even the auditor of the Highway Depart- ment, Mr. Seph. D. Gilbert, who has in his mind — and an able mind he has — every detail of expenditure, is subject to re- moval at will. One of the first great steps in efficient govern- ment will come when these classes of men are firmly estab- lished in the civil list and their successors taken therefrom. 10 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? THE CIVIL SERVICE. Failure to protect employees in the past by decent Civil Service regulations has had much to do with the lack of efficiency so plain in many branches of State government. The men at the top in exempt positions, that is most of them, feel their duty is to the special political interests they repre- sent and not to the State. They take the medium line between plain virtue and open jobbery, letting in political pull, or indolence by employees, on the side lines of the day's work. It never crosses their minds that their relation to the business of the State ought to be the same as their relations to the business of a private employer. Not themselves dishonest, their accession to authority in a public position changes the moral atmosphere they would carry with them if not employed by the State, and so they permit the doing or the non-doing of things which are a discredit to government and a sore on the taxpaying public. The complete extension of Civil Service is the big thing that will bring about specific reform in general State affairs. It is greatly to the credit of Governor Whitman's administra- tion that, despite many political difficulties confronting him, where a bit of patronage would count in the party milestones of a county, he has stood resolutely behind his very progres- sive Civil Service Commission. In this respect, Governor Whitman has done more good for the betterment of govern- ment than any man in his position since the day of Colonel Roosevelt. He has begun the real emancipation of State employees, and soon they will all begin to see they are not working for cross-roads politicians, but for a corporate organ- ization of 10,000,000 persons, of which they are a paid part. They are being surely released from control of political organization, which means a jump in efficiency and in the personal need of that morality required by the State of its citizens. The organization method is to win fealty by paying State money to a man of flexible conscience and, having put him in office, to use that flexibility for personal adventures with the THE CIVIL SERVICE 11 Treasury. It is this sort of political larceny that suggested to Mr. Fitzpatrick, the Democratic boss of Buffalo, then and now, that he could plant a receptive friend upon the State payroll and there use him in his most immediate private busi- ness, which was the building of a fraudulent State road in Erie County. It was this partnership between politics and crime that controlled Mr. Baird, the Democratic boss of Mont- gomery County, in speculating with the virtue of a State official and political payroll friend, that he, too, might build a fraudulent road in his own county, getting a special money allowance for the road's upstanding virtue, but since that time pleading guilty to diverting the State's money to his own pocketbook. It was this comradicity of feeling which put an employee upon the Highway payroll who helped a few Democrats with a Republican partner to take the State's money with larcenous intent on the Lake George-Bolton State Highway; this money is, in part, now back in the State Treasury; it was this non-civil service method of attaching a man to an unbound conscience that put Fogarty, of Long Island City, in jail because of his desire to let Bart Dunn, a Tammany Hall leader, unlock the State Treasury by means not recognized in law; it was this plan that let Democratic gentlemen cheat the State on the Glens Falls-Lake George Highway, and as this is written the news comes that a jury has found against them for $14,754, it being one of many suits begun on proof found by the author of this volume; it was this defiance of Civil Service that caused Whyard, the Democratic boss of Rockland, to pretend to build a road and take the State's money, for which he has been convicted. He managed to have a political friend assigned by the State to check up the work. That poor fellow, now convicted, served Whyard, but won the penalty for getting an exempt job — which is guilty subservience to his master. Many other instances could be recited, but the point is made good, I think, that when you separate the average employee from political control, he will go right if he be honest; and that when you don't separate him from that control he may go wrong, disregarding his plain duty, to find 12 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? favor with his most immediate sponsor in the public power of the day. The work of the present State Civil Service Commission is sure to tell in the days to come, and must always be to Governor Whitman one of the elements in his administration not necessary to defend. In this Civil Service Reform Mr. Whitman is reaching toward the highest efficiency in government, but of course has still a long way to go. In retaining Mr. Lewis F. Pilcher, the State Architect, Democrat, the Governor for once at least has risen above party demands and has kept in office a man of great ability, who has stood between the people and the politicians and steadily protected the State from raids on its treasury. With a few more Pilchers we could have a smaller tax budget. NON-EFFICIENCY IN STATE THE WAYS OF OUR GOVERNORS. The thing which New York needs most, and which the voters never think of giving it, is a business Governor — a man who will regard it as his plain duty to oversee all the State institutions and keep them up to date in efficiency. The duties of a Governor in this State in recent years have been, first, to quarrel with the political bosses who discovered and adopted him ; second, to aspire to the Presidency ; third, to visit county fairs, church fairs, and attend banquets ; fourth, to neglect the growth of the State's business and let departments run auto- matically. A real Governor would be the people's business man in Albany, keeping in his head firmly his obligations to the State, visiting all institutions, studying the payrolls, calling his heads of departments together, enforcing efficiency as well as economy, and bringing the work of the State abreast of our steadily rising civilization. Our last business governor was B. B. Odell, Jr., of New- burg, Orange County. The percentage of politics in his mind caused a little mildew to gather in certain departments, not unknown, perhaps, to this alert and able man, but permitted so thg^ the orderly processes of Republican caucuses might not be jarred by too much civic virtue. Mr. Odell knew the State down to its toes. If his administration lacked vigor, vir- tue, or economy in spots, the facts were not unknown to him. He lived in political times which demanded some elasticity in mcrals. Considering the infirmities of his day, Odell builded well and, in the more chastened atmosphere of these present days, would rank as a great governor. But Odell was a busi- ness man who knew his State. He promoted many reforms both in management and in revenue raising. He gave to the politicians the least he could and won from them for the State much in merit that survives to-day. Since his time we have had a great intellectual in Mr. Hughes, who knew less of the State and accomplished less than any man since the days of Cornell. Advised by certain editors, he spent most of his time in attempting to attain the then impossible, and left his party in such a wreck that the practi- cally unknown and colorless Dix led the Democrats to vie- 14 WHATS TBE matter WITH NEW YORK? tory. These editors got him in a great state of mind on the so-called Australian ballot, direct primaries and other electoral reforms. They flashed aureoles all about him as he fought the party leaders. He got more halos when he vetoed the full crew bill, as if any honest man would not have done it at that time. In all this turmoil the land sharks got in their work well. Two impossible prison sites and one fake rifle range were among the choice bits put over. The asphalt men fastened themselves upon the new Highway Department and began their famous clean-up. It was in these days of high intellec- tuals that the famous State printing law was enacted, and sandstone granite owned by Republicans of high renown struck the fancy of State Architects. Gravel beds not in possession of Democrats developed a usefulness in public works sufficient to enrich all concerned. Thus, while the Governor was pursuing his altruistic studies in statesmanship, the business instincts of his party's most active agents were working over- time in the great shadow of the virtuous garb worn by the Chief Executive. Not even the spectacle of convicts sleeping in cots in the chapels of State prisons could get Mr. Hughes down to a view of the State's real business, but he did have a ready ear for some good women who wanted cottage colonies for all sorts of unfortunate people, and he started that tide of reform which has committed the State to an ever-increasing per capita cost in institutional management. But whatever may be said of the Hughes administration, it had an air of respectability, and even of solidity. The charm of his great success as an investigator had made him a big figure, apart from his undoubted gifts as a lawyer. He sought for reforms in the law, demanded by one set of gen- tlemen or another, while the general administration of the State went to pot. The literary acclaim of him grew. He had houdenized the editorial mind. The raw work on the canals was passed by in the adulation for the public service bills. The editorial gentlemen who follow the god of fame and light the path of his virtues, found new praise every day for the Governor. This short and unfinished story of the Hughes administration is interjected here to point out that striving by a governor for good laws, or allegedly good laws, is well THE WAYS OF OUR GOVERNORS 15 •enough in its way if it doesn't interfere with the real business of the State, which is largely to conserve the public money, broaden the achievements of the administrative side and keep the constructive departments abreast of the hour. Mr. Hughes was distinctly not a business governor, and for the first time in years nearly every department was on the down grade when Governor Dix and his merry men came into office. That was the real beginning of the chaos and disorganiation, with result- ant waste and graft, which continued until Mr. Whitman had a good grasp on the general situation. 16 WHAT^ THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? THE MONEY SPIGOT WIDE OPEN. Democratic "Economy" Told in Figures Which Must Startle the Taxpayer— The Party "Leaders" Who Did This Now Ask to Be Returned to Power. The story of what happened in the administrative depart- ments of government from the time Dix came in on January I, igii, to the time Glynn went out on January i, 1915. These Were the first and the last years of Democratic control since January i, 1895. The party came into power on a plat- form assailing Republican extravagance and pledging the severest economy. *Total employees, Jan. 1, 1911 4,498 *Total employees, Jan. 1, 1915 6,364 Increase in four years 41% Average salary, Jan. 1, 1911 $1,473 Average salary, Jan. 1, 1915 1,848 Average increase 25% Salaries, Jan. 1, 1911 s $6,266,678 Salaries, Jan. 1, 1915 11,764,267 Increase in four years 87.78% Increase in all taxable wealth in four years, 1911-1915 3.3% Increase in population 4.8% *Thcse figures are exclusive of the "laborers" employed who, at timet, were as thick as raindrops in a thunderstorm. THE WAYS OF OUR GOVERNORS 17 AS DIX CAME IN. The Democrats who came in with Governor Dix found no fallow pastures. The ground had been well tilled for their operations. A new type of legislator came in, too. In the days of Raines, Coggeshall, McCarren, Nixon and Grady, the State Treasury was as well protected as the counting house of J. P. Morgan. These men did not have much respect for the feelings of capitalists, but there was a final amity of interest unless two rival corporations were trying to get the same thing. In such times a Northern Pacific corner in legis- lative votes took place, but under a cover of secrecy that never disturbed the agile minds of Albany correspondents beyond the shadowy state of conjecture. When it came to taking money from the State Treasury, Raines and his kind were bulldogs of virtue. They kept the expenditures down and knew no favorites. In the last term of Governor Hughes, the commercial crowd came into the legislature and took the State for its prey. The members had developed team work with the coming of Dix. They speedily reversed the policy of Raines, Coggeshall and Nixon. They dug deep into the vitals of tl^e State. They went into partnership with the heads of departments. Land speculators had fine bridges built over streams at State expense. The hungry bosses began exploit- ing property for all sorts of institutional uses, with a few stone quarries in reserve for ulterior business purposes. The payrolls were padded at the average rate of $200,000 a month. This brood of Democrats coming in with Dix could have taught refined larceny to envious convicts. The Civil Service Commission unlocked the door for all sorts of appointments. Canal and road contracts were made over night for the right sort. The uninvited and luckless fellow who broke through the Golden Circlet discovered too ^ late that even if he could get a bondsman on his contract he couldn't lay concrete to suit the engineers, or asphalt under the terms of the day. Barbers became specialists in roadwork and were thought more of if they did their inspection work at home. Election district workers became State deputies of one thing or another. A gentleman, by profession a dentist, in 18 WHAT'S YHE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? Herkimer County, was put in charge of State roads there. A gentleman, by profession the village bootblack and peanut vender in Norwich, Chenango County, became road inspector, he having taken the earlier precaution to get six relatives from Italy on the poll list. A gentleman, whose knowledge of assignation houses overshadowed his other business qualifica- tions, was kidnapped from the obscurity of his native town to tell farmers — at $io a day and expenses — how to raise crops. A man whose knowledge of oysters, lobsters and clams was gained in road houses while he was building political fences, took charge of the coast fisheries of the State. A gentleman, unfortunate victim of drugs, took charge of a State hospital for the insane. A gentleman whose only known crime was larceny, to which he had pleaded guilty, became the confiden- tial agent of a great State department. A man who uncau- tiously hung his overcoat in the Aldermanic room of the New York City Hall one day and lost a roll of $2,000 hurriedly slipped by him into an outside pocket, was employed to show certain contractors how their work could be best done with profit to themselves and others. One man thus interviewed took things so literally that he canceled an order for several thousand bags of cement on a rather small job and made so bad a mess of it that it took all the suavity of his most imme- diate political leader tc get him the money on his contract. It was an era of thought in the Democratic Party. State Hospital officials discovered and called for newly-patented articles. Another political scientist discovered that the useless waste product of a certain Democratic paper mill would make a good covering for roads as a dust layer. Certain gentlemen interested in up-State schools, who ever believed in agile thinking, found that prison-made desks and chairs, good enough for New York City schools, lacked height and breadth, and, curiously enough, private manufacturers, with foresight amounting to genius, stood ready to supply the exact kind wanted. The prison shoe industry went down as the private sales went up. This was due in part to the aesthetic demands from State institutions for varying styles. Blankets made in State institutions lost all sense of economy and cost more than superior goods made by union labor. Even office boys AS DIX CAME IN 19 of Democratic parentage were ambitious to share in the recrudescence of their famous party, and one of them stamped the O. K. of the Governor on many big accounts against the State, thus permitting the Chief Executive to attend to those social duties which required him to pay $ioo a dozen for napkins and to acquire a line of thermos bottles sufficient to strain the manufacturing facilities of a modest plant. Little wonder, therefore, that the plumber of the State Capitol reconstruction, knowing the expensive complexities of Greene and Ulster County politics, should join the expansion of thought in the Democratic Party and read his own ideas into the Capitol contract. That he was discovered in Sulzer's administration with some other Capitol contractors was, of course, unfortunate, but he had the solace of knowing he had the respect and sympathy of the new school of his party. He was not committing larceny on a small scale like the gentle- man from Montgomery County who, not being provided with a job, convinced the Court of Claims that the canal had over- flowed his cabbage patch to the extent of $800. The fact that he leased this ground from the State at $50 a year, that he sublet most of it for storage purposes at $1200 a year, and that he cjid not grow cabbage, might ordinarily have entered into the m.inds of the Court, had the case been presented with clearness for the State, but one of the chief appraisers of canal land damages was a German baker whose love of pinochle had made him a brother in charity and good humor to all the world, and to the recognition of this fact may be credited the fictitious cabbage of the Montgomery County Democrat. As thought progresses by what it feeds on, the new and golden era of the resurrected Democracy under Dix found new channels to reward those who would go to the top of the mountain and look down into the valley of prosperity. The phrase "imported" stone was coined by a gentleman in the ^ Highway Department whose official salary was $5,000, and whose unofficial salary has permitted him, since that period, to indulge in luxuries which are forbidden to those who are not receivers in the class of commitments and obligations. "Imported" stone meant there was none good enough in the county, and an extra price of $2 a cubic yard went to pay for 20 WHATS The matter with new YORK? freight and for hauling to the proposed road. It is to the credit of the native contractors that they were able to find native stone, sometimes stone fences along the line of road, thus saving $2 a yard in the cost. The fact that the excess profit went to the contractor instead of the State must be charged to road inspectors of smoky vision and a system o£ supervision warped in its usage by that human intelligence which takes a nap when campaign collectors are around. With these many issues and others of prime importance on hand, and always well handled, it is not surprising that lax attention was paid to the development of State industries in the various institutions, the proper collection of corporation and inheritance taxes, and the development of a proper system of conservation. It was to this chaos that William Sulzer fell heir as Governor, and his attempt to reform conditions not only was blocked by the legislature, but led to his political execution. Mr. Glynn, coming: into office and with politics in the back of his head, decided wisely, as he thought, to drive into an ambitious and, in many respects, a meritorious line of legislation, and permit departmental conditions to remain undisturbed at least for the tentative term imposed by the court of impeachment. No reorganization of the mess left by Dix and not improved by Governor Sulzer was attempted. It was this condition and a bankrupt treasury that Gov- ernor Whitman faced when he took office. Governor Glynn had asked the legislature for a direct State tax, acknowledging that the ordinary revenues would not meet the vital obliga- tions of the State. Party leaders persuaded him to reverse himself because of campaign conditions, and he vetoed his own proposition. Then he asked for a big bond issue to take care of institutional necessities in the prisons and hospitals, but this, too, was abandoned. Then came some lightning financiering, money appropriated by previous legislatures but spent only in part or not yet under contract for necessary work in State asylums and charitable homes, was voted back into the State Treasury by vetoes of the re-appropriation, and a bogus surplus established. No provision was made in the fiscal budget for the State legislative printing, for the Capitol repairs, already finished but not paid to the extent of more AS DIX CAME IN 21 than a million dollars. No money was appropriated to take care of the Constitutional Convention nor the advertising therefor. No money was put in the budget to take care of the State Industrial and Compensation Departments for the last nine months of the fiscal year. No funds were provided to pay for canal contracts pending a legitimate issue of bonds; necessary and vital money requirements of State institutions were vetoed. The blaze of ''economy" went to the point where the Civil Service Commissioners coming in under Governor Whitman had to pay for the postage of the department out of their own pockets until relief could come. Glynn had given a low budget with a vengeance, a fraudulent budget, the evil results of which are yet shown in the failure of the legislature this year to meet all the essential money requirements of the State's institutions. 22 WHAT'S The matter with new YORKf HOW NEW YORK STATE'S BUDGET HAS SWOLLEN BY MILLIONS A YEAR TOLD IN OFFICIAL FIGURES Total expenditures, 10 years, from 1896 to 1905, $258,460,052.77. Total expenditures, 10 years, from 1906 to 1915, $673,462,496.72. Average increase per year, from 1906 to 1915, $41,500,244.39. Increase in the general administration of State Govern- ment, wholly apart from bond issues, canal and highway con- struction, interest on the public debt and sinking funds is shown by the following startling figures: 1906 — Total expenditures for departments $24,897,793.21 1915 — Total expenditures for departments 47,185,351.22 This shows an increase of practically 100 per cent, in 10 years for the ordinary expenses of government. OUR STATUTE MAKERS 23 THE LEGISLATURE. Much of the evil from which New York State suffers comes from the Legislature. Few able men who go to Al- bany care to remain after a survey of the situation. The present speaker of the Assembly, Mr. Sweet, of Oswego, stands out as a really able man of conscience and purpose. He has no rival across the corridor in the State Senate. A dozen such men as Sweet would lift the State to a decently proper place in Government. There are younger men such as Hamilton Fish, Jr., of Putnam, and Senator Walters, of Syra- cuse, who know how to do things, but the great majority in both the Senate and the Assembly have small conception of their duty to the State and less care for what happens in legis- lation not affecting their respective districts. The man who gets an appropriation for a bridge which his county or town ought to pay for feels happy with all the world and the real ills of the State don't cross his mind. The percentage of gen- eral intelligence has fallen sadly of recent years, even to the point where it has excited the comment of visitors. Most of the gentlemen coming to the Legislature are too busy looking after their own finances in a small way to bother about the State. On any really big subject they follow the lead of a few men for good or evil. Some of these nondescript members are not personally corrupt but are made equally bad by what may be called misfeasance by incompetence. There is a lot of motion picture morality about many others, shrewd, but small men, always playing to the people back home. They take atoms in the moral atmosphere and blow them into bal- loons of virtue by the skilful use of debate. Then while thus garbed in the civic goodness of rhetoric they get into the alleys of vice, gather the toll that is there for them and are back again when duty calls with all the open zeal of old -crusaders who had done their ablest moral duty. Not at all unclear are these fellows. Homelike of appear- ance as they eat their buckwheat cakes and honey, with nap- kins covering collars of ancient date, green enough apparently to be sold bonds of the confederacy, solemn enough to be deacons in a modest Methodisty, but alert enough to see a 24 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? division of legislative light &o narrow that the quickest camera might miss it. Small wonder that one of those gentry having been con- vinced to the tune of $2,000 when votes had a critical money value collected from the lieutenant of the day so to speak (although it was night) and then absentmindedly and in haste collected from the Lieutenant's boss, known as the Major, before the two pseudo military gentlemen could com- pare notes about the sad occasion. Although they were angry at the decidedly immoral and unbridled atmosphere thus created, they concluded it was really a lesson in finance, and so charged it to their principal who knew more about that sort of thing than they did. This legislator's method of doubling the normal price in an emergency had less wit than that of a gentleman with an Irish name and a long line of American ancestry. He helped kill a very important and graft-laden bill one evening; that is important to those behind it. He at once became the idol of certain reformers and of some other persons who had become "Reformers" because, owing to excess of applicants, the lanes of vice had been closed to them. But on the next night a motion having been made to re- consider the vote, the gentleman of the Irish name and long American ancestry made a speech assailing his conscience and thought of the preceding night — a sort of human self-reprisal, and carried the vote. It turned out later that his contemplative mind had figured to the point where he believed his virtuous reputation could overturn — and thereby deliver — 18 votes. Like a careful man he set his price upon them, graduated according to the personalities of the honorable gentlemen and held that he represented them en bloc. His speech of self- abnegation and distrust of his own opinions of the night before was so strong that he carried with him some men of surface sentiment he didn't count on, but with his agile mind work- ing he put them in the bill ot lading when he went to collect. He got the money, too, with a good pat on the back for being a real force in a crisis. The Napoleon of the Legislature, known as the Major, having his mind mainly on the future, jotted down the names of the men of elastic virtue so newly THE LEGISLATURE 25 discovered and kept them in his mind as glow worms of civilization. Kept them for the day when he could himself feed them the little bit of oxygen sometimes needful in the life swing of making laws. So when some big bugs in the Legislature put sky high prices upon a bill of a very few lines, but broad accomplishments, the Major said to them things that cannot be recorded and sent his lieutenant to get votes at cut rates among the men of moral thought with whom he had not dealt except en bloc through his American friend of the Irish name. The lieutenant was a gentleman so im- pervious to his own talents, or rather so professionally for- getful of them, that he could blush to the point of modesty if the occasion insistently called. In a delicate place he could be as hesitating as a frog surrounded by four black bass fisher- men and hesitating where to jump. After he had discreetly seen three of the moralists and flashed to their non-acute minds what he wanted to do, he discovered they were as im- peccable as the great granite rocks which frown forbiddingly at the sea wanderers on the East Coast of Ireland. Then the Major turned his hitherto uninterrupted genius upon a few more of the men he had paid for en bloc only to find that they too had ijnderlying morality to the point where mere human logic, even gilded, wouldn't uncover a scale of vice. It followed that the big bugs, all masters of legislative philosophy, got their top price. The Major and his lieutenant got experience, and the gentleman with long American an- cestry and the Irish name, who unfortunately had only one arm, had at least the splendid achievement to his credit of hearing, from a past master of the game, that with two arms he could carry the capitol from Albany. Of course, this recital has no real place in a volume devoted to the art of saving money for the State and is interjected wholly as a sidelight upon a prevailing method of making laws. It is related solely - so that the taxpayers who wonder at some things may know something of the legislative mind which never permits truth to handicap the business imagination nor tie the cautious medley of thought which sometimes undresses facts and robs them of the vital aspects which belong to them. 26 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? This little picture of the Legislature is not overdrawn. If in the correctional and chastened atmosphere of some public unheaval all legislators seem responsive it is simply a case where they are willing for the moment to have their thought fashioned by an ever moving people, who sometimes stop long enough to take stock of what is being done. The average legislator always keeps his inner mind collapsible, gauging it to the instinct of the hour. The real force for good behind a Legislature of recent days is an upstanding Governor and public sentiment properly developed by the newspapers. The two united cannot be overcome, plus the assistance of able men in the Senate and Assembly. Publicity of any public evil makes a rapid cure if there be any fair instruments of Government to work with, so we may not despair of proper remedies for State evils, bad as these evils are, if the best men at the top see their duty. MILLIONS IN WASTE HERE THE STATE HIGHWAYS. By far the most important problem before the people of this State is the Highway Department. It is not understood, and, until properly met, will be the most vexing of all issues for the taxpayers. About half the State highways now built are so much junk. They cannot be rebuilt out of bond issues, as will be hereafter explained, so they must, under the guise of "repairs," be rebuilt under direct appropriations by the Legislature which no later, I predict, than 1920 will be not less than $10,000,000 a year. This will be exclusive of about $5,000,000 more a year to meet the interest and principal of the $100,000,000 bond issue. We have committed ourselves to about 10,000 miles of highways, of which 6,500 miles are built or in process of building and, like the feeble-minded in our institutions, we shall always have them with us. One question is, shall we build roads that require a minimum of maintenance each year or roads that cost $1,000 a mile each year to keep in shape? Shall we put the Highway Department on a business basis, as in New York City under this fusion administration, or continue ?t as a profitable playground for men in politics? Shall we exploit one man's tar, another man's asphalt, decay- ing quarry stone and costly patent pavements? The Highway Department as it is to-day was organized under Governor Hughes to spend a portion of the first $50,000,000 bond issue. Let us give him credit for the very best motives, which were undoubtedly his, and for his lack of business instinct which put gentlemen of no road-building knowledge at the head. Governor Dix reorganized the depart- ment to make it the liquid asset of persons who called them- selves the Democratic Party. Governor Sulzer put at the head a painstaking lawyer who didn't know the difference ^between a Topeka specification and a bituminous macadam mixed by the penetration method. He called in as his advisors one gentleman of nebulous reputation as a road expert, another whose interest m a patent pavement disturbed the neutrality of his business repose, and a third whose salary of $50 a day from the State did not worry him into any sobriety of thought 28 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? in road building. The result was chaos. Governor Glynn, through a special commissioner, James W. Osborne, expended more than $25,000 to discover what everybody knew and, after this, Governor Whitman came in to overturn the depart- ment once again. With the coming and going of all these top-heav}'^ people, came and departed Division Engineers and a trail of men lower down. Some of these discovered virtue in Barber asphalt, others in Niagara River gravel, others in Cementatious Hudson River gravel, others in cement and in sandpits, others in Glutrin, others in brands of manufactured asphalt and road oils, others in patented pavements until rape was committed on the Treasury every day. That story is now at an end. There is not much left of this system, but the great question of good roads and economy in building and maintaining them remains. The answer is a wholesale reorganization that will do away with political pay- rolls, produce a repair system run by the State and a type of road suitable to the locality where laid. We are now on the verge of a direct annual tax for our highway system. What a joke upon the people it is to have roads resurfaced by contractors at thousands of dollars a mile! Their work is checked by inspectors at $4 a day, by district engineers, resi- dent engineers and division engineers. Then it is checked up in the Highway Department, one overhead charge after another. In the six years from 1909 to 1914, inclusive, the cost of maintaining 160 miles of waterbound macadam State roads was $1,444 per mile, per road, per year. Last year the cost of maintaining all the waterbound macadam roads in the State, old and new, 2,298 miles in all, was $1,055 P^r mile. This was 200 per cent, more than the cost of repair and main- tenance in Brooklyn and The Bronx, and 40 per cent, more than in Manhattan, on the heaviest traveled streets in the world. It cost in New York State for maintenance on 192 miles of gravel roads last year, $577 per mile. It cost in Brooklyn for sheet asphalt road maintenance $308 a mile; in the Bronx $313 a mile, and in Manhattan $836 a mile, all done by the City. There was in New York State last year a total of 2,387 THE STATE HIGHWAYS 29 miles of bituminous macadam, penetration method. The cost for maintenance was $510 per mile, but as many of these roads were practically new, the actual cost on the old roads was much more per mile. The cost on 295 miles of second class concrete State roads was $1,050 per mile. It does not need any imagination by the reader to think what will happen to this State financially unless new methods are put into force both in road-building and repairing, but, before discussing new road types, let us finish the repair problem. How different in England and Ireland — yes, even in such a little place as the Isle of Wight. In those places a well- equipped plant is kept moving over the roads in each county. No road is permitted to get to the point where it unravels, becomes rutted and needs serious repairs. There is a mixing machine, an asphalt heater on wheels and, always following behind, a heavy roller to bind the road. A crew of ten covers the highway. At specified points the men find various grades of stone, sand and tar. The machines and labor do the rest. The moment a road begins to go in any part, it is spotted and the county crew does the rest. The road is made as good as new and iE<^ 1900 38434 Increase in pop- ulation of State, 34.5 per cent., 1900 to 1915. Increases in the value of all real property, 119.24 per cent.. 1900 to 1915. Increase in all expenditures, in- cluding new high- ways and new canal, 266.66 per cent, 1900 to 1915. COST 00 ^9 PLAIN WASTE OF MONE\ 51 AGRICULTURE. No branch of the State Government has run out of finan- cial bounds with the speed of the Agricultural Department. What is much more certain obligations have been undertaken in the building and establishing of Secondary Agricultural Schools and other adventures in experimental propositions which threaten to swamp the Treasury if not stopped by re- organization and consolidation. In the last six years the land promoters, fad promoters and sinecure job promoters have landed with both feet in the Agricultural Department, and so it is not at all surprising now to find them teaching music, mathematics, higher English, home cooking and other interesting things to the young man and the few young women in these new secondary schools. It is not surprising either to find that young men from other States are taking advantage of what they can't find at home and are doing so without paying for tuition. Nearly every branch school outside Cornell is overloaded with sinecures, and there is no situation in the State that ought to appeal more to those who would stop wasteful expenditures and cut the steadily mounting budgets. In the ten years from 1896 to 1905, in which period there was steady progress in the orderly development of the Agri- cultural Department, the total expenditures were $6,200,000. The increase in the annual appropriation in 1905 over 1896 was $316,000, or about 73 per cent, in ten years. In the next ten years ending October, 1915, the total ap- propriations were $18,000,000. In 1905, the Department cost $746,000; in 1915, $3,221,000, and the end is not yet unless a business Governor puts his mind upon this proposition. Of course, politics is at the bottom of all that is wrong in the development of Agricultural work in this State. Even ^ where the money is appropriated for the just conservation of our farm products the proper results are not obtained. This great bureau has been the playground of politicians and there has been no real attempt to promote efficiency. In four years, that is from 191 2, there have been three different heads of the Department, and there may be another 52 WHAT'S The matter with new YORK? next year should the Democrats win the State. It is this sort of thing that breaks down Government in New York, causes the misuse of money and brings about the padded pay- rolls. Our next candidates for Governor will go up and down the State next Fall as valiant protectors of the Treasury, howling for economy, just as the last candidates did; but that will be about the end of it, for no man elected in recent years seems big enough to use his great powers in putting the knife in as far as it will go in cutting off the excrescence of State Government. After Governor Whitman was fairly settled in office the Legislature appointed a committee and gave it $50,000 to dig deep into the payroll waste, and the Bureau of Municipal Re- search in New York sent up some men to aid this supposedly honest job. After a short survey of the field a preliminary report was filed in 1915, stating that $2,000,000 in salaries alone could be cut away without hurting any agency of the State. This body of graft hunters was known as the Horton Committee and in March of this year, 1916, its members were telling how they had discovered men on the payrolls who never worked; offices duplicated and never necessary; labor- ers carried on department lists who didn't labor; sinecures everywhere up and down the State. There was real excite- ment in Albany when the story got out that the committee was ready to report a most startling expose of conditions. Telegrams flashed by the score. Republican leaders came hurrying to Albany by the dozen. They did their work well. In a few hours it was common knowledge in the hotels that the complete report of the Hor- ton Committee would not be submitted until after the appro- priation bills for the coming fiscal year had passed and been signed. It would never do in a Presidential and Governor- ship year to smash 1,500 men off the payroll and adopt a standardization of salaries by grades, which would mean real economy and the end of political favoritism. So the Horton Committee brought in a report suggesting how salaries should be graded and offices designated. Then it asked leave to sit again. But it did say this after more than a year of labor: AGRICULTURE 53 "The investigation and findings of the Senate Committee on Civil Service furnish convincing evidence that the business of the State is transacted with a CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF WASTE. The Committee estimated in its preliminary report of April gth, 1915, that the payroll cost could be reduced BY AT LEAST TWO MILLION DOL- LARS through proper reorganizaztion of methods and simpli- fication of work, of which five hundred thousand dollars could be immediately effected. The Committee, after exhaustive in- vestigation, finds that this estimate WAS CONSERVA- TIVE." No Republican and no Democrat in the Senate got up to ask why these offices should not be abolished at once and the payrolls purged. The $50,000 report of more than 800 printed pages was ordered sent out as a public document, the money was appropriated for all these unidentified and useless places and the Legislature adjourned. This little incident affecting the taxpayers so vitally serves to illustrate why the cost of administration in the Agricultural Department goes skyhigh. Let us take good Republican authority, the Hon. Eugene M. Travis, Comptroller of the State, who does his work well and would mak^ a tip-top Governor — a party man to be sure but bound to get results for the taxpayer as he is now getting them in the office he holds. He made, as was his right, an investigation of expenditures in several departments. Of course, all he can do is to tell the Legislature and the Gov- ernor what he finds. In the Department of Agriculture, that is, apart from the schools and other appropriations for farm work, he reported that there could be a saving of $100,436.50 out of a total item of $472,808.33 for purely administrative work. That is, more than 20 per cent, could be saved without hurting the efficiency required in government. "Unnecessary and unwarranted" was the way he described it. Well, let us show a little more taken from the official records in the Agricultural Department: Year. Investigators Laborers. 1910 $4,045.22 $16,501.74 1911 3»676.44 15,712.24 54 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORKf It need not seem strange then, going back to igio for comparison again, to find what has happened since. In igio all agricultural appropriations . . . .$1,575,956 In 1914 all agricultural appropriations .... 2,547,372 In 1915 all agricultural appropriations .... 3,221,613 For every dollar expended in 19 10 there was the sum of more than two dollars expended in the fiscal year 1915. That the financial condition of the State does not warrant this growth — and unregulated growth — in agri- cultural cost, hardly needs to be said, but in addition we have embarked in a course of farm education without any definite policy, which, if not checked forthwith, is sure to saddle us with costly buildings, land far above market values, and ad- ministrative expenses wholly indefensible. Let us look at what is happening in this largely patchwork system of farm educational work. In 191 1 the Agricultural Schools received from the State $463,988. These were Cornell University, Alfred University, St. Lawrence University and the New Morrisville School of of Agriculture, the latter in process of building, and destined to be the forerunner of others promoted by certain localities. This is the way these appropriations have grown: IN 1911 FOR AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS.. $463,988 IN 1914 FOR AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS.. 1,265,908 IN 1915 (WHITMAN FIRST BUDGET) 1,436,431 It will be seen that for every dollar spent by the State in 191 1 for Agricultural teaching in the special schools more than three dollars is now going over the dam. Cornell Col- lege had for its Agricultural work last year, which includes the veterinary course, $796,753, against $314,862 in 191 1. In 1912 1913 1914 5,060.91 11,763-13 19,850.54 32,839.52 70,878.07 74,342.95 AGRICULTURE 55 1914 Cornell got $930,000, and in 1913 a total of $887,000, but a good bit of this was for new agricultural college plant. In looking over the items of expense I find only 45 stenographers employed in the Cornell College branch of agricultural devel- opment; that is one to about every teacher and assistant teacher. It was in 191 1 and 1912 that the rapid development came about which is now on its headlong course to somewhere or nowhere. It was decided to have a school of forestry in Syracuse University to be paid for out of State Agricultural funds. The first appropriation was $36,000. In 1915 it was $145,000. In the same period the Legislature appropriated money for a school of agriculture in Schoharie. The Demo- crats of that tight little hop-growing County, finding a Demo- cratic Legislature and Governor, couldn't see why they should be overlooked inasmuch as Governor Hughes had given rock- ribbed Republicans of nearby Madison County a new farm school in Morrisville. So a tidy bit of land was bought in Cobleskill and while they haven't got steadily on their legs there as yet, this remote place in the smiling hills of the last Catskill ranges has in the appropriation bill this year items for a janitor who will eventually, with assistants, care for the buildings, a watchman, teamsters, laborers, travelling expenses for the trustees, a secretary and bookkeeper, a stenographer and an instructor in history, English and arithmetic. It is also proposed to start right into teaching courses as the bill calls for instructors in botany, animal industry, horse diseases and two teachers in horticulture. The item for care of the modest buildings is almost as much as for the teaching staff. Delaware County adjoins Schoharie and there were great doings in that picturesque bit of New York when it was found Schoharie was to have a farm school at State expense. So a bill was put through and made into law to have a State 'School of Agriculture and Domestic Science at Delhi, where there is a stub end of the Ontario and Western road, built to carry boarders in the Summer to the farms on the rolling lands along the Delaware River. This new school got $42,- 000 to start with last year, and in the coming budget there is provision for a director at $2,500, a stenographer, a janitor 56 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? and assistant, three laborers for the proposed farm, $10,000 for equipment, $1,200 for a farm superintendent and appro- priations for teachers of chemistry, dairying, biology, domestic science, farm mechanics, poultry raising, soil conditions and for a few assistant teachers. Thus is a nice foundation laid in Madison, Schoharie and Delaware, all three Counties in one small division of the State, for future pickings from a generous treasury. The teachers in Delhi are all rated at $1,200 each per year as a beginning. Let not the reader think this ends the race for schools in every county, nor the desire to extend the curriculum. The Morrisville Agricultural School, now five years old, has as items in the appropriation bill, an instructor in music, an instructor in piano, an instructor in domestic science and an- other in domestic art and one in shop work. The general director is down for $2,700 and his staff includes a secretary at $1,500, a clerk and secretary at $1,200 and a stenographer at It may be interesting to know that counting the laborers, teamsters, head janitors, watchman, farm superintendent and general staff there is almost one employee to every pupil and the several instructors get from $1,500 down to $1,000 each. The prize agricultural school, however, among the new ones is on Long Island. The canny gentlemen down there helped along the Schoharie and Delaware County propositions with the result that Governor Dix looked kindly upon the Long Islanders and some gentlemen with land to sell beamed their appreciation. The result up to date for the new school of agriculture on Long Island is: In the present appropriation bill there are items for one director at $2,700, secretary $1,500, stenographer $900, four heads of departments at $2,000 each, a dozen instructors be- ginning with $1,800, a janitor at $1,020, with two assistants, one at $780 and one at $720, a carpenter at $1,080, an engi- neer at $1,500, two assistant engineers and firemen at $1,020 $840. IN 1914 IN 1915 $101,249.64 273'05942 AGRICULTURE each and so down the Hst to laborers at $560 each. This Long Island farm is about the rawest job of all pulled off as Long Island is the very last place for anything in the way of farming outside of vegetables and peach growing. Much of the land already is going out of cultivation owing to purchases of big tracts by wealthy men and the constant growth of town and village population. Of course the promoters say the school is eventually to be a great institution for all the State; that the project had been discussed for years ; that the site happens to be on Long Island only because the people down there were wide awake; that, indeed, it will justify itself not for anything it may teach Long Islanders of potatoes, cauliflower and cranberry rais- ing, the three staple crops there , but what it will do here- after as a rival of Cornell. In the meantime, so as not to for- get the Northern tier, St. Lawrence County having a farm school. New York has now established a course of agriculture in the State Normal School, Plattsburgh, Clinton County. The greatest crime relating to these new farm schools is the creation of a Board of Managers or trustees for each, wholly independent of the State Agricultural Department, bent upoif putting their friends into the service at any price and in almost any old job; and few of them with any knowl- edge of either farms or the conditions that would really make for success in an object worthy of State aid as well as State pride. One of the latest of these farm managers appointed is well known in the White Light District of Broadway, plays poker almost as good as he plays pinochle, knows more as 3 first-nighter about plays, good and bad, than he will ever know about farming; and yet it is this class of people who are ap- appointed on the Boards of Managers not only in our Agri- cultural Colleges but our State Hospitals and our State Chari- table institutions. Some of them never or rarely attend meet- ings, few of them take any interest in the management; but the money, the discipline and growth of all these State insti- tutions is in their hands, with the resulting waste and lack of progress. Erxh of these costly schools of secondary agri- culture is run on its own hook by its own Board of Managers. There is no co-relation among the schools. There is no co- 58 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? operative effort on anything except a cumulative meeting of the minds every year to get all possible from the State Treasury. Is it not within the facts to say we have a lamb stew government? HOW THE STATE DEBT COMPARES WITH POPULA^ TION AND THE ASSESSED VALUATION OF ALL REAL AND PERSONAL PROPERTY IN NEW YORK FROM 1895 TO AND INCLUDING 1915 In 1895 percentage of net debt to valuation was nothing. The State then had no debt. In 1905 the net bonded debt of the State represented $845 in each million of assessed valuation and 83 cents per capita — net bonded debt, $6,548,202. In 1915 the net bonded debt of the State represented $12,300 in each million of valua- tion and $15.28 per capita — net bonded debt, $148,051,888. OFEX LARCENY OP MOXEY 59 THE STATE PRINTING. The printing situation in this State is an ever-glowing scandal. By printing is meant not only the publication of annual reports and the legislative bills, but also the stationery supplies, from letter heads and blank books to pencils and typewriting carbons. Governor Hughes attempted to do something at the instance of Senator Bird, of Buffalo, and there was put over on his usually alert mind a measure which he made law, and which actually was what the Printing Ring desired. Governor Sulzer attempted to save the State from open robbery and was plainly told, within the hearing of several persons, that his bill could not pass. The gentleman who told him was the Tammany legislative leader, and he did his work with a cold and brutal lucidity that at least did credit to his openness of mind. It was not to be expected that Mr. Glynn, Governor pro tern., would do anything to stop the annual raid on the Treas- ury. He had obligations of the past and possible commit- ments of the future which ironed his political soul into non- activity. But the failure of Governor Whitman and his asso- ciates to take up this vital bit of graft and destroy it passes all understanding, even if it be true — and indeed it is true — that more than one gentleman of legislative status might have his further public service cut short by exposure. The author of this book can speak of State printing first hand, and with good credentials. Mayor Gaynor having asked me to become the head of any one of three departments, I told him, in declining, that as I had been to much pains to convince him he should run for Mayor, I would give him some of my time and help him in any work I could. He accepted by asking me to investigate the New York City printing, includ- ^ ing the publication of the "City Record." When some assist- ance was suggested, he said: "Name your men and I'll appoint them as fellow commissioners." After the report was finished. Mayor Gaynor wrote: "This is the best bit of constructive work I have known." In addition to the recovery into the City Treasury of many thousands of dollars overpaid, a complete reorganization came 60 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? about, and Mr. David Ferguson was appointed as the new head. He had been an earnest, discreet, foreseeing and philo- sophical reporter on the New York "World," and with a directness of purpose worth a whole lot to any business institution. In the last year of Mr. McClellan's administration, the ex- penses of the "City Record," which embraces all city printing, advertising and stationery, was $1,766,951.98. Now let us look at the record which follows: DECREASE IN 1910 (GAYNOR) $693,361.06 " • " 1911 " 744,176.98 " 1912 " 648,531.33 TOTAL SAVING IN THREE YEARS. .$2,086,076.37 All the graft and waste was eliminated and is to-day under the same able Mr. Ferguson, to the point where, since Mayor Gaynor destroyed the City printing ring, the City has saved more than $4,000,000, and with increased service in stationery and other supplies. Governor Sulzer, immediately after taking office, asked the writer to investigate the State printing. On condition that my own service should be voluntary, and without payment, the work was done. The legislature treated the investigation, as well as the proposed new law based upon the inquiry, with that contempt which our Mexican friends are said to have for the "gringoes." Governor Sulzer's Committee of Inquiry into State departments, appointed on the day he took office, and when he was in close touch with Mr. Chas. F. Murphy, com- prised John N. Carlisle, Independent Democrat; John H. Delaney, Tammany, and H. Gordon Lynn, Tammany. Even the peculiarly non-altruistic mind of Mr. Delaney, friend and confidant of Mr. C. F. Murphy, joined in a unanimous report to the Governor, in which the Committee said: "The Printing Board is denied even the power to determine the character of the specification to be bid upon or the quali- ties of the printing to be ordered or contracted for. The present printing law of the State appears to have been speci- THE STATE PRINTING 61 ally well designed to promote extravagance and waste and absolutely to prevent any effort toward economy. The limita- tions upon the power of the Board to prevent any actual con- trol and the establishment of an official Board under such cir- cumstances is only a pretense at protecting the taxpayers of the State." What was reported above by three Democrats to a Demo- cratic Governor still exists and is tolerated, if nothing worse, by a Republican Governor in his second year, who went up and down the State, in his campaign, promising retrenchment and the thorough uprooting of graft. It may be true, of course, that Governor Whitman, with the many complexities in politics and State affairs which have come upon him, either has forgotten or doesn't know of this situation, but many people who frequently advise him do, gentlemen to whom a wink sometimes has all the lucrative character that makes a backwoods legislator lift a mortgage on his home. This introduction to the State printing may be regarded as a bit discursive, but is necessary so that the humor of the situation may unfold as the story goes along. The City Club of New York, sentinel of civic virtue, and a good sentinel betimes; The Merchants' Association, eager to promote the city's trade by reducing taxation; Mr. Percy Rockefeller, with his contribution of $10,000 last year to some unguided, if not misguided, people in behalf of discoveries for State retrenchment, could well take the State printing as one bit of a battering ram; but all these agencies, and others, seem to flounder in efforts for non-potential saving in State affairs, or in work for laws that look good, but simply clog the wheels of real progress. Marsden G. Scott, former president of Typographical Union No. 6 of New York, known as "Big Six," and now president of all the typographical unions of the United States and Canada, a man with live brains in his head, and contempt for grafters, big or small, was asked by the author of this book to investigate the State printing contracts. His report covers many pages, but a few of his conclusions will suggest to the taxpayer that neither the Highway Department nor any other has more class distinction in respect of waste and graft 62 WHAT'S The matter with new YORK? than the State printing. His work ran on parallel lines with that done by me and there was a complete agreement. Among other things, he says, in his report: "Every line in the Printing Law which Refers to the Legislative and Department printing contracts and specifica- tions should be repealed. There is no other way by which the abuses which do exist can be corrected. There is no escape from the conviction resulting from the investigation that: "First. — The authors of the Printing Law deliberately planned to place the State at a disadvantage under these contracts. "Second. — That the individuals who devised the specifica- tions in these contracts intended to conceal, rather than reveal, the quantities, qualities and description of printing to be done, and that ample room HAS BEEN PROVIDED IN THE CONTRACTS FOR ALL SORTS OF TRICKERY, DIS- HONESTY AND DECEIT. "Third. — That there is evidence of collusion of the most clumsy description between alleged competitors for these contracts." In one branch of departmental printing alone, Mr. Scott, who is a master of his art, wrote that $50,000 a year could be saved. How this plain larcency can go on year after year, deceiving a Hughes, passing by the somnolent Dix, the fugitive virtue of Glynn and the iridescent reform of Whitman is understood, and controlled, of course, by persons who cut their wisdom teeth by rubbing up against the rough edges of the world. These sort of persons have become marble-minded, as well as marble-hearted. They occupy a distinct place in the life we live. They have, in the hunt for money or advantage that will bring money, become so that before their mental activities there is always the shadow of some deal carrying with it money easily won from some non-personal source. This comes because gentlemen of refinement at home, of ultra-virtue in the church, of spasmodic liberality in open civic things, don't bother about plain theft in public affairs; don't worry as to whether they should protect the man less able to THE STATE PRINTING 63 bear the cost of the piling taxes. On the contrary, they elect their most smooth grafter, as in one case, president of a notoriously affluent, if not wholly moral, club, he having bank connections and a winking privilege in a few trust companies. Again it happens that these self-same gentlemen — that is, some of them — may be somniferous members of a great civic committee, their ayes or naes delivered by wide-awake office boys while they are skirting just above the surface of crime in a grasping hunt for somebody's money. It is this situation which gives us a printing ring in New York State so strong that no Governor has been able to disturb it, and so big that only one Governor — Sulzer — sought to destroy it. C4 IV HATS fHE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? THE TREASURY SPIGOT OPEN. There is no real competition, of course, for printing, but the most blase thief of the old days, when green goods men were plentiful and receptive "cops" looked eagerly on the percentage of business, would be dazed by the ingenuity of the State printing crowd. The legislative contract hasn't been changed since the days of Governor Hughes. It provides that the successful bidder for legislative print- ing, which includes all bills and documents, and all reports of the State Departments, shall not receive any additional com- pensation for alterations and corrections. Could anything be fairer to the State? The poor printer sets the pages and then some unholy legislator mangles them to suit the boiling opinions of the hour. He amends the bill in the Assembly, and a brain-burning Senator amends it a bit more. At each amendment it is reprinted so that the always-watchful representatives of the people may know what is doing in the reshaping of the laws. Then the judiciary committee, or maybe the cities committee, or some other body of the legislature amends it again, perhaps to put in a semi-colon instead of a comma, and it is reprinted under the rules. Then some gentleman with a financial glint into the future, small though it may be, amends the title, so as to conform to the most recent rules of strict legislative pro- cedure. Then the bill is again reprinted. In the committee of the whole some profound lawyer in the legislature points out the grammatical distinction in law between "shall" and "will" and further amends the bill, which, under the rules, is recommitted to committee "to be reprinted with corrections." Now, under that contract with the printers which provides that he SHALL NOT RECEIVE ANY ADDITIONAL COMPENSATION FOR ALTERATIONS AND COR- RECTIONS, the average reader would assume that this particular printer had been born wrong, and brought up with a bifurcated mind, when he bid on a contract so far astray from common sense. Not at all ; the poor printer is sitting in the golden seat and shoving greenbacks into shadowy but corporeal hands. THE STATE PRINTING 65 He interprets the contract to mean that when he sets up the type and prints the job that his work is at an end; that as he isn't to be paid for corrections and alterations, then all he has to furnish is a completed first job; that nothing in the contract requires him to keep his type standing, that is, in place; hence, when alterations come he is entitled to be paid over again for all the type in the bill. That is, he holds that having set up the legislative docu- ment correctly, he can distribute the type, which, of course, he doesn't do; that when alterations or amendments are made, there is no visible type to amend, so he alleges he sets it up all over again. Each bill, he holds, when finished, is a com- pleted job for which he charges under the terms of the contract, and there is no obligation on his part, as he is not paid for standing matter, to keep the type together. Therefore, when a correction comes over with the legislative edict that the bill shall be reprinted, he charges each time for new composition. He holds that, technically, he has distributed the type. Then this happens. A wise agent of the State printer causes somebody to introduce a bill amending the charter of the city of Utica or Rome. ThGP document, let us say, is 240 pages. Then another wise agent amends the printed bill on page 9, and it is "reprinted" for both houses of the legislature. The contractor is paid for resetting the type on all the 240 pages, although he has only reset one line on page 9. Then a distinguished senator gravely points out an ambiguity of language on page 131, and the bill is recommitted for reprinting and the 240 pages are paid for over again, while only one page of type is touched by the hands of the compositor. Finally the bill, as intended, dies in committee, but the ghost walks several times in the State Treasury for these several amendments and, as befits a ghost, there is silence — as well as addition and division. Some bills are amended as often as seven, eight and nine times. One gentleman in the Legislature who has become the immodest owner of real estate — I say immodest because of his yearly purchases on a salary of $1,500 per annum and no other known business — in one week made ten motions to print public documents that even the feeble-minded patients in 66 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? Letchworth Village wouldn't read in their most non-lucid moments. The report of the Superintendent of the Capitol is ordered printed, telling the Trustees of Public Buildings — that is the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of Assembly — how many chairs, book cases, oil paintings, carpets, desks, electric lights, gas jets, etc., were in the building. Some genius put it into law that the Superintendent should report each year to the Trustees the sum of visible property, not counting the elevators, stairways, rooms and department scandals. Then some other genius made it necessary to send the report to the legislature and, so that it might not be too brief, it is required that the unsold junk in the cellar shall be enumerated. After that, the obliging legislator moved its printing and distribution as a public document, which is not at all so bad as the printing at legislative expense in a book of several hundred pages this year, just as every other year, of farms for sale by canny people who mortgage them for twice the assessed value and then offer them for sale at three times the mortgage vplue. Let me concede that this last paragraph is a bit obscure, but the explantion will clear things and add a bit of humor for all except a particularly grievous taxpayer. The Depart- ment of Agriculture — the cost of which has jumped 300 per cent, in recent years — gathers statistics of farms for sale, puts them in attractive form, has them printed at the expense of the State in the manner of a new novel or *'the best seller," sends them by mail to real estate dealers and other speculators at State cost and, once in a while, succeeds in finding an "angel" for the farmer. It is questionable whether this is done for the farmer or the public printer, but it can be said, in all truth, for the Agricultural Department that their many publi- cations on farm methods, including the usefulness of music and mathematics as studies in the lonesome places of our country areas, are always up to the year in time, while nicely- bound reports of some other departments are sometimes a year astray. If this printing of junk, and paying for it, really interests Governor Whitman from a taxpayer's point of view, he will be more impressed by the fact that most of this junk never THE STATE PRINTING 67 goes anywhere. There are 10,000 volumes of nicely -bound annual reports in the State Capitol to-day, less than three years old, taking up room, menacing the fire safety of the building, useful only to the point that the State Printer deliv- ered them, and that when he was paid he acted like any com- mercial man would with an official pistol at his head. If the Governor will walk down State Street to the Depart- ment of Agriculture, there he will see a mountain of bound volumes piled up in the basement corridors, visible proof to the former successful district attorney that the State, as an agent for the protection of the taxpayers, is asleep. Should the Governor take life less seriously from a political viewpoint and study the openings for economy in printing, let him get his blood warm and his mind awake by a visit to the third- class junk shops of Albany. There he can buy volumes of State reports at five cents a pound, some of them printed since he took oath of office. They represent the cumulative efforts of a few agents who made the legislative printing of bills and department reports alone amount to approximately $350,000 in the first year of the Governor's reform administration. These i^eports, it is true, make but a small part of the $350,000, but they are essential weaves in the whole corrupt garment, one strand standing with the other; and the legis- lative printing, rich as it is, only a live asset in the sky-high bills for other department printing. No one doubts that Governor Whitman has a keen mind and that he can see a bit of fraud standing clear to his mental vision, as sharply as any one of us may note an aeroplane against the sky. The specifications for printed stationery are so drawn as to ruin any printer bold enough to break in on those who have this State graft. The man on the inside bids low — sometimes under actual cost price for certain stationery. He knows that little, if any, of this will be called for, and that certain other things, bid as in lots of 100, will be called for thousands of times over. The lowest bidder on certain specified items when the contract is let gets, without bidding, all other types of stationery that may be demanded. He may print a million at a time, knowing that even if only 5,000 are ordered, this is 68 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? preliminary. The entire law is drawn to discourage proper bidding. There is not any standardization of stationery supplies. One department will pay more for a certain type of blotting paper than another. It is so of typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, ink, pencils, legal cap pads and the hundreds of other items from pen-holders to steel letter openers. Some of the prices paid are from 40 to 70 per cent, more than in New York. There is no proper control of departmental stationery, and accelerators, of course, are around with all sorts of patent articles to sell. The remedy for all this is simple. The crooked State Printing Law should be repealed. That is the first necessity. Then there should be a Printing Board modeled after New York City, to standardize all supplies, and, by honest and open competition, get what any big business house would get — real value for the money. All the Departments of State and Bureaus would be furnished all supplies through this Printing Board, and every year they would be required to estimate as a whole the approximate quantities required. This would do away with all extra charges and all collusive bidding. Aside from all this, money otherwise could be saved by having department records and standard forms of blanks printed in State institutions. A printing shop in one of the prisons, properly managed, as in some other States, would save much money. The whole thing is purely one of adminis- tation. If the Governor and the Comptroller will take hold of the subject as business men, another year will see the State relieved of this odious printing and stationery proposition. It is now a reflection upon the intelligence of State government. The job, when done, should be done thoroughly and embrace the protection of the State Treasury in every item, from legis- lative printing to the purchase of wire letter trays and writing pads. MONEY FLOWS INTO TREASURY 69 INDIRECT TAXES IN STATE How Indirect Revenue saves the Taxpayers in part from the burden of growing expenditure in the State: Receipts in 1915 from indirect taxes, $41,746,634. Tak -T>x, $3,559.42-5 Tax $9,099,355 N\oToR Tax ak^ rAisteiLAMtoos * 9.l5l.6\l Nobody connected with the financial administration of the State believes that our indirect revenues can be increased by more than a few millions. These revenues will remain near the $50,000,000 mark. This means a steadily rising direct tax hereafter unless there can be a thorough reorganization of State expenditures. 70 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? THE STATE PRISONS. Beyond all question the greatest administrative blot on New York State Government is the management of its State Prisons and correctional institutions. There is no manage- ment. The prisons have been in the control of larcenous poli- ticians for years past. Men of shady characters have had positions of trust. Men of no breeding and who couldn't spell penology have had the welfare of the prisoners in their cus- tody. Men in the pay of outside contractors have had the industrial development in their control. Every effort to make the penal . institutions self sustaining has been hobbled by political influence. Fraud in land purchases and in building contracts are a part of the record. As I write this the news- papers carry the story that a prison grafter, indicted by Gov- ernor Sulzer in 19 13, has after one non-determinate trial pleaded guilty. His larceny was committed in the construc- tion of the Great Meadow Prison, an institution which is a standing monument to the partnership in crime between Re- publicans and Democrats in the State Service. While other States have been going steadily on with prison reform, making for the improvement of the convicts in health, morals and industry. New York has not stopped still, but has gone back, except for the occasional personal efforts of an Osborne in Sing Sing, a Rattigan in Auburn and a Homer in Comstock, But these men have been tied in their work by State red tape, by hostile prison officials, by indifferent Gov- ernors and Legislatures, and by powerful political influences seeking control of the expenditures. A plain recital of the story of Sing Sing in brief form will give the reader a glimpse of misgovernment hardly believable of a great commonwealth filled with so many decent citizens, powerful newspapers and earnest preachers of the Gospel. In 1906 the people almost unanimously demanded that a new prison be built to take the place of Sing Sing or, at least, relieve the overcrowding there that caused two men to be put in cells not big enough for one, cells insanitary, unlighted and unventilated. Governor Higgins, under the terms of a a bill carrying an appropriation, appointed a new prison Com- THE STATE PRISONS 71 mission. The new prison under the terms of the bill was to be South of Poughkeepsie and have "A sufficient quantity of trap rock for use in the improvement of highways." So far were we behind in prison reform that the Legislature gravely be- lieved there should be mountains of trap rock to keep weak men, ailing men or feeble-minded men working in stone quarries. Anybody in the department of State Geology could have told those solons that there was no trap rock in the State except for a limited number of miles on the west bank of the Hudson, and wholly in the district now in the Palisades Park. In another year the Commission reported they could not find any land required by the terms of the act. The law was amended and the Commission empowered to buy a site con- tiguous to hard rock suitable for the State Highways. The Prison Commission went to the west bank of the Hudson and took land on what is known as Bear Mountain. Governor Charles E. Hughes approved the place which called for an ultimate expenditure of $2,000,000 apart from the labor of convicts in laying out the grounds, building roads and making ditches. There came the first bit of political pap. The State Archi- tect and his staff were not regarded as good enough to draw plans for a prison and an outsider was hired, he to get five per cent, on the cost of the whole, a trifle of $200,000, with addi- ditional charges for any resulting changes. A gentleman of Republican antecedents in Poughkeepsie, who was friendly with the Republican owners of a sandstone quarry, and on generally good terms with the gilt edged leaders of the State machine got the job. To make things pleasant for everybody there was competition for it. Two years had passed in the meantime and convicts were sleeping in the chapel of Sing Sing. The Commission had discovered, however, after paying ^the architect $10,000 on account that there would be great ex- pense for grading and excavation and so asked for $200,000 additional, or $2,200,000 in all. The Commission had gone along and expended $268,399.35 when Governor Hughes in 1910 notified them to stop as in all probability the Bear Mountain Prison site would be taken 72 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? into Palisades Park. There had been expended in Architect's fees $50,000; for the expenses of the Commission about $30,- 000 ; for the maintenance of convicts in excavation work, $60,- 000; for a boat to take them to and from Sing Sing, $17,000; for building a train road up the mountain, $32,500; for the site, $78,000, but for an actual prison, nothing. Then Gov- ernor Hughes and the Legislature abandoned the site and so in the year of 1910 nothing had been accomplished in any practicable way since 1906 when the Prison Commission was named first by Governor Higgins. In the meantime prisoners were going mad in Sing Sing while the State looked on at its own incapacity. Then came the second chapter in the meanest story that ever disgraced the State. The Commission went hunting again for a site. Governor Hughes was too busy fighting the bosses to watch the land sharks, although he was well aware several realty deals that still smell had been put over on him. The Commission bought a site at Wingdale, Dutchess County, full of swamp land and quicksand. It was not far from the Poughkeepsie home of their prize architect and in the same county. Wholly apart from the marshes and other unavailability, it was unfit for an industrial and farm institu- tion worthy of the State, and there was by no means sufficient tillable land to keep prisoners busy on garden, dairy and other agricultural work that would make them self-supporting and give them healthful labor. But contracts were let and stone all the way from a St. Lawrence County Republican's quarry was decided upon by the architect as the best looking ma- terial. It was a delicate compliment to a former speaker of the Assembly and if the freight rates were stiff and the cost high, with the resultant profits on the stone, there was at least the knowledge that "no finer fellow than Ed. Merritt ever lived," which was proved by the St. Lawrence County people when they sent him to Congress after he had been speaker of the Assembly. But in the meantime Hughes had gone out and Dix had come in. Some Democrats told him there were unholy pur- poses behind that Wingdale prison site. There was an investi- gation of the quicksand. The architect obligingly offered to THE STATE PRISONS 73 move the buildings a bit and change the layout so that the foundations surely would stand. The Brooklyn Contractor on the job went merrily about his work. Mr. Merritt and his friends signed a contract to deliver the sandstone. Then Dix and his men in the Legislature stopped the job on the ground that the site was not fit for a prison. Dix went out and Sulzer came in to gather a cloud of troubles. Sing Sing waited, but a grand jury meanwhile made a terrific arraignment of the moral conditions in the prison and declared the sufferings of some inmates to be worse than death. Sulzer departed and Glynn came, but appeals to him, in his march of economy, for any sort of relief, were vain. Not even a modern cell block for the old prison could be won from the Governor pro-tem. Mr. Whitman came. Two factions of his party battled for the new prison site. One faction with aims against the peace of William Barnes, Jr., and alleging profound respect for the Governor, demanded the revival of the old Wingdale prison contract, swamps and all; the other faction savagely intent that no such thing should come. Against both of these factions were the decent prison reform- ers and upstanding men in both parties, who demanded a complete progressive programme and a new deal all around. The first year of Mr. Whitman passed. Now in his; second year we are no further along except with two bills passed, one committing the State to Wingdale, the other leaving the question optional with a Commission to be named, but neither doing one thing toward civilizing the prison situation. The Governor has signed the bill putting this whole thing into the hands of a Commission, just where we were in 1906; and so the Government moves. From 1906 to 1916, a period of 11 years, the net result has been nothing except a raid on the Treasury. The Wingdale Architect has so far received $104,000 and has a further big ^ bill in the Court of Claims. The sandstone men get their money under a legal contract. The Brooklyn Contractor went to court and got his prospective profits on his $1,600,000 job. The State has lost eleven years and counting principal and interest about $750,000 in money. Compare this shameful record with Indiana's way of doing things. 74 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? That State in the Autumn of 1914, less than 18 months ago, purchased a prison site for short term convicts to be known as the Industrial Farm. A tract of 1,605 acres at less- than $37 an acre was found 40 miles from Indianapolis on which there was forest land, limestone, water and soil fit for grazing as well as gardening. This farm colony is open now, not dotted with expensive buildings, wasteful heating plants, nor with acres of ground good for nothing. It is meant for health and economy and industrial usefulness, not for show, heavy overhead expenses and lack of efficiency. Did Indiana get a $200,000 architect and other persons with supervisory charges and materials to sell? No; Indiana sent down one man as superintendent who was a contractor, knew how to put up a sawmill, build roads, make concrete, dig a cellar or run up a house. In 30 days he had one batch of long term prisoners from the State prison and another set of men from the Indiana Reformatory. They were men whose terms would soon expire and who could be safely trusted not to spoil their near chance of freedom. Th^^y were picked mechanics or lusty laborers and glad to live out- doors in tents borrowed from the adjutant general. Trees were felled and lumber was soon coming from the saw mill. A crusher was put up and hundred of yards of limestone soon ready. Convict carpenters made the window sills or fashioned the joists for the long and airy dormitories. Garden patches were laid out, concrete walks built, horse barns finished and then a complete sewer system, all by prison labor. The dormitories built, next came the mess room, the kitchen, the laundry, the farm storage house. In exactly six months the superintendent was ready for his first batch of misdemeanants. When they arrived he put them hard at work building a railway switch over two and a half miles of rough land. Others started on a power plant, others on a broom factory, some on making handles for their tools, some in building toilet facilities, installing shower baths, making concrete drain tiles, bricks or posts and in producing agri- cultural lime for the farm. The thirty miles of fences are nearly finished and in August last there were 600 short term prisoners on this new industrial plant. They had added 40 THE STATE PRISONS 75 acres to the tillable land, put no in corn, 75 in clover, 75 in oats, 60 in garden produce, 40 in hay, had built a chicken ranch and were feeding the kitchen swill to 82 hogs. With 100 Milch cows the work is completed and 14 employees care for these men. All this was done in less than a year. The buildings are of concrete and native wood and exactly what is required for short term colonies of men. This Industrial Farm is the last foremost step by Indiana in her penal progress. She will build three or four more of them. They are to take the place of all county jails. Instead of keeping men idle for 60 days, 90 days, a year, or longer in these jails, they are at once shifted to the farm where they earn their way by hard work, get health and nourishing sleep, serve the State and themselves, while enormously reducing the old cost of keeping them. But more radical still is the new and successful bit of penology which puts as guards over these men — they are called employees — long-term prisoners who have from 3 months to 6 months of their minimum terms to serve. Work and more work is the order of the day. There can be no loafing on any job whether on the farm, in the house work or making utensils either for use or for sale. Should a 'short-term prisoner escape then his recapture will automatically give him from two years to five years in the State prison. Here we have, all summed up, discipline, econ- omy, hard work, fresh farm food, good medical care and a gen- eral course of treatment that will reclaim many men by giving them rugged health and time for sober contemplation. But let the reader return with me to the Sing Sing ques- tion before we go further into our lack of business efficiency if nothing worse in our main penal institutions. Sing Sing was good enough 50 years ago, as a prison of those days went, and when nobody thought of 'appealing to or improving the moral side of a convict. Then the brutal appeal, always brutal, was to the mental side of the man, to make him fear isolation or the dark cell or the fierce assault of the jailer. He was made seemingly good by compulsion, his heart all the time being slowly done to death. We have passed those days but not with the speed of other States and not at all with the intelligence good government demands. This very day we 76 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? are committing crime against the feeble minded, the poor fellows temporarily ill of mind and the criminal insane by treating them ignorantly as normal persons, trying them for crimes, and committing them to prisons. Sing Sing reconstructed in part, which can be done, the State architect tells me, at a cost of $600,000 should be made the great receiving and distributing house for all persons con- victed of crime, the length of their stay there to be from ten days to three weeks, long enough to determine their status, to get their history fully and to give them such medical treat- ment that they would be no longer a menace when sent away to serve their sentences. They would be examined by specialists in all mental dis- eases. They would be searched for all physical defects. The weak and the strong in heart, or lungs, or mind, would be found with medical certainty. The pathologist would be there for duty well done. Psychiatry would have its useful place within this clearing house. Whatever psychology has found in crime would be in use. The outstanding thing would be the reformation not the punishment of men and women. Then would follow the classification of prisoners by the very highest medical tests. Their classification would also come in respect of their business training, mental alertness and physical strength. The feeble-minded, the consumptive, the criminal insane would be eliminated from the race of those fit to labor in the prisons. Then from this great human clearing house those com- mitted by the courts would go to the places best fitted for themselves and the State. Some would go to be cared for and mentally patched, perhaps, as wards of the State ; others would go to take the punishment for their offenses and to become useful in farm, industrial or other pursuits. That this State, an empire in itself, has not done this before comes largely from the curse of low politics and the indifference of electors to their plain duty. The love of the ordinary voter for his party's political label has given us most of our poor govern- ment or lack of government, something which the taxpayer learns only in times of great public stress. THE STATE PRISOXS 77 What would happen after this were done. Our industrial and farm prisons — we should have industries and outdoor work in every penal institution — would become self-sustain- ing, and the moral atmosphere created would do more for the reformation of the convicts than any other agency created by the human mind. Near Sing Sing, for nearly 70 per cent, of those committed come from New York City, there should be the greatest of all industrial and farm prisons, not any swamp land and non-arable soil as at Wingdale; but a tract big enough for all purposes from the making of garbage cans and school furniture for New York City to the growing of all vegetables needed for the prison. We would send men to this nearest institution who could fit themselves to the indus- trial products required by the City and the County institutions of New York. Now the State pays freight on furniture shipped from Auburn to the City and on metal ware freighted all the way from Dannemora Prison to New York, losing the profits in railway charges. Now the State scatters the compositors, pressmen and others of the printing trades instead of having them in one shop where they could do all institutional and departmerftal printing. It is so with men who can make furni- ture, have factory training or are machinists. We have a hodge-podge system that has no good reason to exist. But A we are to reform the system the way to begin is at the base, by first opening a receiving and distributing station and next building a modern prison near the City. When we have done that we shall be in the way to bring the Auburn institu- tion up to modern times in buildings and facilities, and by enlarging and improving those at Comstock and Clinton, solve the question of housing with the moral care which is implied. All this could be done in three years with red tape and politics cut away and in the hands of earnest men we could start an industrial development to make our penal in- stitutions self-sustaining, while at the same time paying the inmates either by percentage or by the day wages enough to make them feel they were more than mere atoms on the dark edges of an unforgiving world. 78 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? Pennsylvania in the last ten years has been making big progress in prison reform and development and now has an act which provides that the prisoners shall not get less than 10 cents and not more than 50 cents a day. Warden Osborne in Sing Sing went into a prison wholly demoralized and by pure kindness and a steady swing of high human action in- creased the output of the industries by from 1 5 to 30 per cent., handicapped by imperfect machinery and supplies, halted by lack of co-operation from higher officials and helped only be- cause the moral instincts of his prisoners were touched by the acts of a Warden who did not regard them as brutes. How much more, then, can be accomplished with well fitted shops worked by men who know they need not go out of prison penniless, by men who are willing to go out penniless if they can help with money a mother or some other dependent, or having none to help they can buy additional commutation by the extent of their industry? Of course, the whole trouble lies in the lack of manage- ment. It seems incredible but it is true that New York's prison government has no State superintendent of industries. With its thousands of convict tradesmen there is no director of the work; no man in authority to see that machinery is up to date or sufficient for demands; no man with authority to regulate the industrial work of the convicts. So the penal institutions, great employers of skilled labor, lack a super- intendent in the most vital money-producing institutions we have, vital for the health and training of the patient as well as for the State Treasury. Each prison runs on its own hook. There is a chief of the industrial plant at each penal institu- tion, always as a rule picked for his political influence; always as a rule incompetent. These men should be taken from ex- amination lists in the Civil Service and directed by a super- intendent and at least two deputies from Albany, with their fingers always on the pulse of prison industries and their methods purely on business lines. When it cost, as it has done, more to produce a blanket or a piece of cloth for the insane asylums than either can be purchased for in the open market we can see to what non- efficiency we have come. The cause, of course, is political THE STATE PRISONS 79 management and both the taxpayers and the prisoners suffer. To keep the costs from piling higher the food served is of the cheapest and the coffee little better than water. One prison is handicapped for lack of shops, another for machinery, but always it is the same story of indifference at Albany to the progress of the State. Auburn prison, so well managed by an intelligent and God-fearing Warden, Mr. Charles F. Rattigan, editor, philosopher, and lover of clean politics may be taken as a sample illustration. SALES OF PRODUCTS, 1912-13 $372,000 EARNINGS, 1912-13 29,000 SALES OF PRODUCTS, 1913-14 338,000 EARNINGS, 1913-14 38,000 Of course, there would be no earnings shown if interest on cost of plant were charged up. But this showing is not caused by lack of interest on the part of the Warden. The Legislature fails to provide year after year for the industrial needs of the prison and no Governor seems to think it is any of hil^ business. Here is the story told officially in the report of the State Prison Commission : "The cloth and blanket department at Auburn cannot sup- ply the demand made upon it and this Commission is thereby compelled to annually isssue certificates of release to State Institutions permitting the purchase of thousands of pairs of blankets and thousands of yards of cloth in the markets. The furniture department is likewise far behind its orders. The capacity of the cloth and blanket department should at least be doubled, and could be by the installation of additional ma- chinery. Even with the present plant the output could be increased by equipping the shops with electric lights. Under ^ present conditions the hours of labor are shortened by lack of proper lighting facilities during the winter season." It is the same story of negligence, incapacity and lack of all business principles. The Governors come and go with fair promises on their lips, and legislators who can see a fugitive dollar far away, cannot see their plain duty to the State. The 80 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? way we do these things compared with at least nine other States shows government here to be a sham, and the larceny of taxpayers' money a daily incident of State Management. The conditions thus plainly shown to exist at Auburn with the consequent and steady waste of the State's money are true everywhere. The Prison Commission is powerless except to recommend to the Legislature. The Superintendent of Prisons cannot provide money nor can he provide a business managament. The Warden, be he ever so able and diligent, must work with the inadequate tools the State provides. The Governor of New York, the real business man when he knows his duty could, of course, mend all this, but no Governor since the time of Mr. Higgins has done anything in penal institu- tions, either to promote the industries of the State, the busi- ness education of the prisoners or the orderly progress of prison reform. Every Governor has taken more interest in the undergound movement of politics, in attendance upon regi- mental reviews, public dinners, cornerstone layings and countv fairs. With the situation in Auburn as it is, and much worse in the shops of Sing Sing, it is not surprising to find an entire lack of business foresight in the Great Meadow prison, at Comstock. This is the newest and destined some day to be the finest of our prisons. Its origin began, of course, in a land deal. The site is geographically out of the way for a prison. Some Republican gentlemen had something to sell and the State bought. Then in putting up the first buildings contractors stole from the State. One has pleaded guilty and a former superintendent of prisons, appointed by Governor Hughes, has been indicted. This, however, is foreign to this story, except as a light to show that working the State is the daily vocation of many agile-minded persons who usually have protection near the top. The big point at Great Meadow prison is that the State, now for three consecutive years, has failed to put up the industrial buildings at Great Meadow and has made no arrangement as to shops and machinery. Warden Homer is powerless to force action and in the coming winter will have practically i,ooo idle men on his hands except on open days when some of them can be used in grading the THE STATE PRISONS 81 roads, mending fences or cutting wood in the many acres of Great Meadow. This is known as the "honor" prison of the State. The exemplary prisoners are sent there from the other penal insti- tutions for good conduct and industry. It is the final clearing house before liberty comes to the convict. The grade of in- telligence is higher there than in any prison of the State, as the men, so to speak, represent the aristocracy of crime. They wander at will, practically, through the rolling meadows and woodland, and up to this time have been kept busy in build- ing roads, drains, walks, cutting timber, grading, making- walls, planting thousands of young trees, beautifying the land- scape generally and winning themselves back to sturdy health; but these improvements are now nearly finished and at best require for the future only a few small gangs of men. Warden Homer, whose work stands out splendidly in prison progress, has sent batches of his prisoners far from the Great Meadow institution to lay out roads, cut timber, cultivate the soil and drain marshes on State land. It must appeal to the common sense of any business man that this type of convict, graduated from the industrial shops of the othef prisons, a graduate by good conduct and industry, should have the opportunity in Great Meadow to weave cloth, make blankets, wooden-ware and shoes; that here would be the chance to show how a prison, combining farm and grazing land with manufacturing, would pay its own way; but the State steps in again to bedevil the situation and fails to pro- vide the necessary manufacturing plant and buildings. The site is there, the men are there, and an able Warden is there; but a Governor and a Legislature are more interested in other things, not so plainly the business of the State. In a year or two scanty appropriations will come, the buildings will go up one by one, machinery will take its place to assemble the industries of the men, but in the meanwhile, the State lags in a most vital duty, and prisoners ready to work will pass long and dreary winter days in idleness wondering at a governmental system which hobbles industry, wastes money and taps the health of those immured for punishment. Warden Homer has done so royally well with his farm and his wood- 82 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? land, producing so much required by the prisoners, that there is no doubt he would also make a great industrial record if permitted by the men who do or don't do things in Albanj'. The State has millions of dollars invested in its prison lands, buildings and plants, with at least 12,000 able-bodied convicts, a majority of them mechanics, or artisans if you please, but it neglects its buildings, starves its mechanical plant and sentences many of the convicts either to idleness or half-time work. This is to be partly expected where there is no central head for anything. Not until there is a Depart- ment of Industry, as the chief bureau of our penal institutions, can any efficient business results be looked for. Then there will be classifications of industries at the several prisons; a classification of convicts in respect of special work ; a weeding out of those least fitted for one thing as against another; and every man will have his individual record to tell for or against him as the days for his parole move across the path of time. Then it will be understood clearly that a prison is a place for work and not for play; that the State demands from the non-ailing convict the hours of work for an honest man out- side, and that the State in return will do its share in the moral and physical raising of the man, paying him something meanwhile for his industry either in money or commutation of time. Can a prison be made self-sustaining? The answer is that the cost of each prisoner, counting salaries and all other expenses, is only $3.40 a week. It used to be much less. We have expert tradesmen of all kinds in the prisons. A majority of them have earned a fair livelihood outside and made a profit for their employers. Only a small percentage of them are shiftless. There are shops in the prisons, well equipped in up-to-date machinery which earn good profits for the State. But this same efficiency in shops and in machinery is lacking except in spots. As to the general efficiency of convict labor, an interesting test was made by the Conservation Department and Clinton Prison in the building of roads in the Adirondacks, work which required lumbering, grading, stone laying and culvert building. Both free labor and convict labor was employed, and a careful test made, with the proof that in a majority of cases the THE STATE PRISONS 83 prison labor was the more efficient — and naturally the cheapest. All the necessary efficiency will come when we have a fearless Governor who will reorganize the entire prison sys- tem and take it far away from politics. It took Indiana all of ten years to do the work and Wisconsin almost as long, but the political atmosphere is no longer there, nor is it in several other States, to deaden all efficiency and make slovenly the conduct of all things relating to the welfare of the State and its prisoners. 84 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? A GLIMPSE AT THREE PRISONS The cost of New York prisons, steadily mounting, may be compared by looking at the chart. The Colorado institution is really self-sustaining. Nearly 200 of the convicts build miles upon miles of the finest county roads at a labor cost of $313.23 per mile, where by contract the cost would have run from $3,000 to $5,000 a mile. Game birds are raised for State distribution, flowers for the public parks, cattle and horses for sale. All vegetables and fruits required are raised on the farm and some sold. New ^oaK States $3.15 PfeK mrW£ PER WEEK. Colorado State. ^t(H^T6lHT\^aY, C06T 14.96 REVENUE THROWN AWAY 85 CONSERVATION. The Conservation Department of New York State is now in trustworthy hands. There are some byways, to be sure, inheritances of vicious days, and curable only by team work between an earnest Governor and a co-operating Legislature. There can be little or no criticism of this most useful depart- ment as now managed by Governor Whitman's appointee — Pratt and his very able deputy — McDonald. A little more earnestness and skill in the development of the shell fisheries, and the greater protection of migratory fish, which come to our waters, are the chief administrative features calling for distinct improvement; but after four years of the broadest in- capacity, if nothing worse, by the Dem^ocratic Party, it is too much to expect a general reformation in the second year of Governor Whitman's administration. But the trouble with this great arm of the State is that millions of revenue are lost to the Treasury. The Depart- ment not only should be self-sustaining, but in addition should earn for the State Treasury money enough to run the Depart- ment of Agriculture, economically administered. The hands of the pvesent alert and forceful head of the Conservation Department are tied either by legislative enactment or con- stitutional prohibition, and as a result sources of great State income cannot be utilized. It is one more illustration of the lack of business government in New York. This State, 20 years ago, adopted in its constitution a paragraph which said: The forest preserve * * * shall not be sold, or exchanged or be taken by any corporation public or private, NOR SHALL THE TIMBER THEREON BE SOLD, REMOVED OR DESTROYED." This prohibition is still alive. When the people adopted this in 1894, they were afraid " of the timber land sharks and convinced that further pro- fessional lumbering, especially in the North woods, would de- stroy our watersheds. We knew nothing of modern methods of forestry, and in attempting to build well for the future, we really hobbled the growth of our timber and threw away a Treasury revenue 86 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? not only big in money but potential in the employment of labor and the real protection of our forests. We have since that period, thanks to President Roosevelt's tremendously valuable work for conservation, come to know something of forestry. In our own State, the unselfish labor of C. R. Pettis, Superintendent of State Forests, has spread the light among those who think of to-day and to-morrow in the development of our natural resources. We now know that our forests are helped wonderfully by scientific lumbering. It is no longer a disputed question. We now know that moisture and sunlight are essential to the advancing life of young trees; that thinning out the old live trees and taking away the dead ones, lets the rain through and gives old Sol a chance to feed that oxygen so necessary to forest growth. But the constitution of 1894, well inten- tioned at the time, now prohibits us from cutting full growth trees, from using the dead or the dying, from receiving a big revenue for the State and from pushing the steady growth of the young forest trees. We are years behind in administrative efficiency; wealthy owners in the Adirondacks, in portions inside the forest preserve, are doing what we cannot do. The Webbs, the Whitneys, the Rockefellers and others lumber their woodlands, obtain a revenue, build roads for fire pro- tection and actually increase the forest growth. Our big men, irrespective of party, have failed to come to- gether and cut the bonds which tie the State to a useless and costly system of forest protection. Political maneuvering, legislative indifference, fear of ignorant public criticism and selfish motives have kept progress in the background. LUMBER U i:, ^-.-V.VOr i'SE NEW YORK AND ITS FORESTS. We have roughly about 1.800.000 acres of forest land, about six per cent, in the Catskill and the remainder in what generally is known as the Adirondacks. On more than 4 7 of this we have merchantable forests. On about i 7 we have forest growth not of merchantable size. The remaining 2 7 is water or denuded land, much of it reclaimable for forest growth. Most of this water represents the beds of lakes and ponds. The problem of what to do becomes all the miore interesting by the fact that we are constantly adding to the area, and have now before us a proposed constitutional am.end- ment to expend the greater part of Sio.ooo.ooo more on forest land by mieans of a 50-year bond issue. From the careful reports of State foresters, surveyors and other conservation employees, not accurate of course, for lack of appropriation, but fairly so. we are told we have approxi- mately eight billion feet of board measure of timber sizes and pulp wood: that the soft woods are 57 per cent, and the hard 43- Now these m^any millions of feet board measure do not, of course, include the smaller or stunted trees fit for firewood, posts, fences, etc. They include only merchantable timber. This forest production does not grow as fast as it could be m.ade to grow owing to failure to let in all the rain and all the sunlight, by cutting the full growth properly and by re- moving dying trees. The Forestry Experts of Northern Europe and of Ger- many, as well as those who have become recently known in the United States, figure the annual normal gro\s'th of trees under proper forest cultivation at from 180 to 220 feet per acre per year. Taking it at the lowest figure New York State in its forest area could cut each year of full grown trees not less than 200.000,000 feet board measure, without re- ducing the forest growth, and add to the State Treasury nearly a million dollars. The dead trees and brush also would be taken away, thus reducing the chance of fire, and the lum- ber roads built into the woodlands would be of great value to the forest rangers as well as to all who enjoy the beauties 88 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? of the Adirondacks. Specialization of the rapidly-growing pop- lar and of spruce could be made for our wood-pulp mills thus adding materially to the commercial development of the State and the employment of labor. When we take into view the fact that we have about $20.- 000,000 invested in the forest preserve, that the fixed charges including sinking fund are more than $350,000 against the State each year, would it not be good policy to cut our full grown timber, say 5 per cent, a year, so that the young trees may prosper and bloom to the full. Would it not be a good policy not only to earn the $350,000 a year but to put a sur- plus from the forests alone of at least half a million a year in the Treasury? There is another very important view of this. Our lum- ber cutting in the non-Government owned areas of the State has fallen 30 per cent, in several years. The cutting is four times greater than the growth and the total output now less than 900,000,000 feet. We use 16 times that amount. It would be for the interests of all concerned to produce this lumber, cheapening the cost to consumers, making sure of an ever-ready supply and enriching the State Treasury. Of course, there is nothing new in all this to the real students of State Government, nor to the real friends of the forest preserve. Among them there has been little difference of opinion that some day something would be done. All con- cede the forests would be better if scientifically lumbered. All agree that new growths would come normally. All agree it is waste to have mature trees die and litter the woodland. All agree that revenue is desirable. All agree that labor would benefit and commercial interests would obtain a very necessary product. But the best of these men can't seem to get together on any plan. Gentlemen of intellect in the law and others of re- nown in their own lines of business fear the trespass of the lumberman in our great woodland preserves. They fear the Government cannot safeguard the cutting of mature timber, which is a confession by them that they think Government is a failure. Some fear that we have not as yet overcome the partnership between politics and business. They want to NEW YORK AND ITS FORESTS 89 wait, the Lord knows how long. A few believe the State is rich enough to waste its natural resources and that the forests should forever remain in their wild state, letting decay take its course and new forestry methods stand still. Then we have the general indifference of our State officials and of our Legislatures. The latter would make a political question of a business fact. The former are more engaged with their personal public ambitions than with the direct care and progress of the State. In the meantime forest growth is being stunted, revenue is passed by and the commercial interests of the State plainly injured. Again we see the notorious lack of courage and plain ability in State Government. 90 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? OUR WASTED WATER POWER. But the forestry end of the State's conservation department is only one of three distinct features where progress is stopped in Government, resources wasted and manufacturing indus- tries crippled. We waste in water each year horsepower measured by some experts as equal to 30,000,000 tons of coal, by no engineering expert at less than 15,000,000 tons. But we do worse than that. Nearly every Spring we have freshets which destroy property, delay railroad traffic and cripple labor. The waters of small streams run in torrents through our swollen rivers carrying their energy in electric power to the ocean or the lakes there to be lost for all time. In the Summer these same streams and small rivers run dry or half so, stopping the mills, injuring labor, decreasing manu- factures and freight, increasing costs and mocking the policy of a State which permits ruin at either end of its watershed policy. The undeveloped water power could take care of nearly all our industrial enterprises, could be sold to lighting and transportation corporations and bring about increased cheap- ness in traffic. But nobody in government seems to care about stream regulation, nobody seems to bother largely about the damage of spring floods; few seem to think of State revenue and conservation — all take the world as it smiles at them, and the State goes along as blindly as a prize-fighter just put out of his job by the newest man in the fistic sky. Some of the harm we have had with us has come from having men in office who didn't know how to do things, to begin with, and who didn't dare do some things for the public good. More of the harm has come from having intelli- gent, but selfish, men in office who didn't care ten cents a ton for the State, where their own future steps in politics came into the count of the moment. The potential possibilities of our water power, both for profit and development of commerce, hit the mind of Governor Frank Higgins, which he made plain in his term as Governor. His mental horizon had been broadened by his ownership of rich oil lands — to be classed as natural resources, just as our OUR WASTED WATER POWER forests and waters. Higgins was a sturdy, unimaginative, decent business man, politically no more brilliant than a June bug in frost time, but always eating into the future just a little bit for the State. The author of this book served with Mr. Higgins in the legislature, and can say he was a well-set man for State affairs. But Mr. Higgins, when he began to grasp the big power hidden in our forests, and had shown human intelligence in respect of our then-growing State insti- tutions, was moved off the map as Mr. Hughes, in all the panoply of his intellect, came in. So once more when we were about to get something of real service to the State, as an opening for future development of our natural resources, a fairly good man moved out and Governor Hughes flashed his mind upon the screen of public thought. He made his legislative programme so attractive to the altruistic of the day that second-story men in politics at once grew busy looking after the small but sure things that men grind out who make the laws. Governor Hughes passed by the heart-breaking State prison situation to write nice prose on direct primaries. What mattered the sure care of the State's insane, or allegedly insane, while the intellectuals howled for* a Massachusetts ballot bill? What mattered it if innocent girls, motherless or worse than motherless, were herded in State correctional institutions with the mentally or otherwise viciously depraved of their own age and sex? Keep- ing grown men from betting on horse races was much more to the point with Mr. Hughes. So it is not to be wondered at a bit that he didn't get his mind on water development or on forest revenue but, having in his thoughts the criss-cross uses of insurance moneys, he spent much of his serious time in framing the public service law as a curb upon the too-rapid thought of those men who would finance pennies into dollars and tax the people on the resultant rise. Since the time of Hughes there has been no man of force, courage and plain honesty to set things right for the people on this water-power question, unless it be devel- oped by Governor Whitman. This was still a very live question when Governor Hughes resigned his office to go to the Supreme Court. He had 92 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? been too busy with other subjects, most of them semi- political, to take up a question worthy of his keen mind and great energy. Had he, with the great esteem in which he was held, gathered some firm-minded men just results would have come before this time. Our streams would not now be dry in Summer. Our surplus waters would have been impounded to give millions of horsepower for sale, by lease or rental and the flow of our streams could have been regulated to avoid the floods and do away with the droughts. Governor Dix came in and abolished the Fish and Game Com- mission, the Water Supply Commission and the Forestry Board, creating what is now the Conservation Department having control of all our forests, water, fish and game. This was done to drive out Republicans and drive in Democrats. Sinecures became as plentiful as penitents at one of Billy Sunday's meetings. Gentlemen of easy virtue drew fat sal- aries and looked upon the rich domain of the State as a place for extra-vacational studies. No appropriations for real serv- ices were made. The job hunters and not the taxpayers were in the eye of the Democratic Party, newly come to power. Sulzer came! in to find himself soon in a losing fight for his political life. The water ring slyly organized in the dying days of Dix was on hand, however, to exploit the State's waters under the guise of a hydro-electric bill to furnish the people of certain communities with cheap light and horse- power. They introduced the bill under the patronage of Martin H. Glynn, then Lieutenant Governor. They told heart appealing stories of the billions of cubic feet of water going to waste each year while electric light companies were savagely robbing the poor consumer. Every Democratic promoter in the State and a few mis- guided but honest persons were behind this hydro-electric power bill. Mr. Charles F. Murphy gave it his official O. K. It had the cherubic blessing of Mr. John McCooey and other party leaders. Governor Sulzer killed it. Apart from destroy- ing or at least menacing the interests of stockholders in light- ing corporations created by the State, in itself vicious enough, this bill, fathered by certain business men in the so-called Democatic Party, would not have accomplished anything of OUR WASTED WATER POWER 93 value in harnessing the power of the Adirondack watershed. It would have established a limited area for State ownership and operation of hydro-electric power, brought about the waste of millions of dollars in condemnation deals, enriched land speculators and saddled a corrupt machine upon the people. The area of operation to begin with was limited to about I-I2 of the State, with areas galore thereafter if the golden stream flowed as expected. Glynn, when Governor, made another futile effort to commit the State to this wild scheme of rapine, but a Republican assembly kicked it into what Mr. Greene in his short history of the English people called inocuous desuetude. Thus the subject of water reserve power first taken up in the last year of Governor Higgins has been kicked along from Governor to Governor, from Legislature to Legislature, with finally in this second year of Governor Whitman, no genuine effort to relieve conditions that injure manufactures and keep from the Treasury of the State a revenue needed by the sorely- stricken taxpayers. Governor Whitman's usually well-working mind has been askew a bit, owing to political infection. Where study of State affairs might have captured his genius for doing things, he was led from duty by that evanescent criminal dubbed by poHtical writers as the "presidential bug." He was well bitten by this parasite of big men, and the chaos of neglect in State affairs had come before he could catch up with his plain every-day work. Governor Whitman is a man of courage, as he has shown in many a hard-fought and perilous hour. If his official steps have been unsteady, even to the point of more than surprise to his very best friends, the occasion for these lapses may have passed and, in a new uncloistered atmosphere of duty, he may be just the man to start in upon the road to do things that will bring money to the State, business to the merchants, and a bit of labor to many by the sane utilization of our great water reserves. There is more than one question involved in the settlement of this complex water situation and, of course, the settlement must come, whether to-day or to-morrow. The impounding 94 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? of the surplus waters, the proper location of reservoirs, the necessary flooding of lands, the regulation of the flow of streams, the care necessary to give mill owners what they want and yet use some of the surplus energy in other avenues is a big State question, calling not only in its proper develop- ment for administrative clarity and well-trained engineering, but providing some agreement between the State and propertj' owners who will be benefited. On the new barge canal, men who call themselves decent citizens — and still think they are — took from the State Treas- ury big money for so-called "damages," and then took from the State increased water power for nothing, in some cases selling their surplus to persons not so lucky. This water question, great in all its aspects, both as to profit for the State and aid to the mill-man on the sometimes barren stream; big in its potency to regulate horsepower for towns and villages; valuable for what it can do for the bits of streams that flush the edges of many a rich meadow or plough land, can wait for settlement longer, perhaps, than Ihe question of what we shall do with our waste wood in the timber preserve. We need little capital, if any, to get our money from the soft or hardwoods that cover all the acres of the north lands, but holding the water in big engineering cups, developing dams, regulating the flow in one place and diverting it in another, taking or making land, needs a big organization ; but, before that, a settled State policy, non-elastic as against the taxpayer. The thing to do is to appoint a body of men representing the chambers of commerce in the State in cities of the first and second class, with counsel, who will give their work free for the public good, and work out a plan that will save the State the loss each year of at least 20,000,000 coal-ton power, stop the shutting down of mills, provide for them at least 50 per cent, more capacity, conserve labor and avoid waste. All this will cost money. We have put in the barge canal, up to date, about $125,000,000, and we shall never earn the interest cost. We have put into so-called "good roads" $100,000,000 in the bond issues and $5,000,000 a year, with a rising rate for repairs. The good roads of the first $100,000,000 OUR WASTED WATER POWER 95 will be gone while we all live. The watershed and its flow will be all here after we are dead, giving potential power to the commerce of the day. I have seen engineer after engineer as to the cost of all the work, allowing for honest men and grafters, for v/eak governors and those with some spine, for legislatures that may be of fugitive morality or bright spots in the moving show of government, and the highest cost of this watershed improvement is put at $20,000,000, and the longest time of completion at six years — providing the com- mission in charge is made up of men whose character is not made over night or hurt over week by the fortuitous circum- stance of the time. One great engineer, preferably from the Army, such as General Lucas, would do for the watershed of New York what General Goethals did in the Panama strip. With a man of his type as chairman, and the rest of the commission selected by the chambers of commerce of New York, Buffalo, Roches- ter, Syracuse, Utica, Albany and Troy, the State soon would have a proper revenue from its water power, and upon a busi- ness basis that would not attack the interests of those owning stock in lighting and power companies. With taxation climbing near the mortgage point of every ordinary man's last pocket of savings, the raising of revenue from any legitimate sources must appeal to the citizen who wants to do his duty. In the watershed there is potential power and money. The head of the Conservation Department, clear-headed and willing as he is, cannot do anything unless public sentiment and taxpayers' authority force a practicable plan upon the attention of an open-minded governor and legislature. That we should waste each year 15,000,000 tons of coal energy, which is the minimum; that we should hobble the industries along our ^streams by floods and droughts ; that we should endanger health by failing to keep up a durable flow of water, seems less than understandable, but we do it against the safety of public and private property. Again may I say that a business governor and not a political governor is what New York needs more than anything else. It needs a gov- ernor who will call to his aid the best minds in the legislature, 96 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? no matter what their politics; the most ardent men among the editors of the State, granting that their views are not varnished, and the most active in the decent civic societies in the several municipal divisions of the commonwealth. WHERE THE TAXPAYERS LOSE 97 CAMP SITES AS REVENUE. We, as the State of New York, own several millions of acres of woodlands and waters, nearly all in what is known as the Forest Reserve. In the constitution of 1894, it written that no bit of these lands should be leased or sold, the plain meaning, as the debates show, being to stop the spoliation of the forests by those who would put lumber into money over night if they could. Now it is held, by the wise judges in the courts, that in hundreds and hundreds of miles of water courses on lake shore in our woodlands, we cannot lease camp sites and get a revenue for the State while we, at the same time, could give comfort to those who seek health and pleasure, with a wish to pay for both. On the legal side it is probably true that under the constitution we cannot lease our own property even in a harmless, if money-making, way. The author of this book hesitates, even though a former student of law, to pass an opinion upon any controverted point in a statute or a constitution, having in mind cases where the appellate divi- sion of more than one judicial department of this State unani- mously risfversed the trial Judge, and was itself unanimously reversed by the Court of Appeals. When the final decision in law is a case of mental dice-throwing, dependent largely upon the circumstances of the hour in this fast-flowing world of ours, a merely tentative person in law has no right to aim his mind against what seems to be the plain terms of the constitution. But what does seem strange, in this rather musty way we have of doing things, is that while all are agreed we should earn revenue from our resources of forest and water, and afford health, as well as pleasure, to those who live within our State, we cannot get any governmental agency to start the ^ blocks from the wheels of progress. We lack revenue to care for our feeble-minded in the decent terms of the day, but we discard the revenue at our doors. We tie ourselves in the technicalities of a constitutional clause and refuse to free ourselves by repealing it. 98 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? So it is that we find in our ownership in the Forest Preserve more miles of shore suitable for camp sites along the lakes and tributary streams than we could have on all the Hudson River twice over. The State maintains all this vast area, but can get no revenue; neither can it provide any special comfort for the man or the woman, or the men or the women, or families or friends who would have camp sites and pay for them. The constitution says no bit of our forest domain shall be leased. In this, as in the timber of the forests and the horsepower of our streams, we have revenue thrown away. As near as can be figured, we have about 600 miles of shore line in the Forest Reserves suitable for camp sites. I am against the proposition that if relief should come these camp sites should be leased for a term of years to residents of the State who have had luck in money-making. They would then become, practically, owners for a time of the Forest Reserve, which belongs to all, and, by the legerdemain of money and influence, would win a permanent residence. This fear, no doubt, has stopped in the legislature for several years the submission to the people of an amendment that would permit the leasing of forest lands abutting on the lakes and streams. A camp site, one to each half-acre of shore line, whether on stream or lake, not longer than a month of tenure, should any other resident of the State be waiting, would solve the question. The applications would come by registered letter to the Conservation Department and be settled by priority of date. These camp sites would be rentable at least six months in the year. Let us assume that they would be leased only one- half that period, and that the rental price would be $20 per half -acre for a month. This would give the State a big revenue every year where it now gets nothing. Some idiot or several idiots have said that campers in any numbers would bring about forest fires. Of course, that is the last thing the campers would want. But in any event the answer is this: In 1903, the damage by forest fires was $864,082; acres burned, 464,189; cost of extinguishing. CAMP SITES AS REVENUE 99 $153,763.95. This was a million a year in loss. Two years ago, the last available figures, the damage was $51,445 in the entire forest preserve. The cost per acre for protection has been reduced from two and one-half to one and one-quarter cents. The railroads, in 1908, were charged with burning 143,471 acres. In 1913 they were guilty only for 260 acres. The hunters, in 1908, were tagged with fires that destroyed 75,212 acres, and two years ago had, with much sobriety, got down to 432 acres. The number of fires in 1913 credited to all campers was 64, with a damage of $1,805. These campers went where they willed, so to speak, but under the General Campers Plan, as proposed, there would be every reason for self-protection. It will, of course, take a constitutional amendment to bring about this camp site proposition. A few people are against it on the ground that it would make class distinction, that it would be a case of giving the more fortunate rights that the poor or less lucky could not get in land and water owned by all the people. There are two answers, each equally good. Poor persons will not go to the Adirondacks, pay big railroad fares and other expenses. Poor people or any other sort are on the saifie level. The first applicants for camp sites will be the first served. The State, having invested millions, has at least the right to get the interest on its money and, in fact, a little more, so that those who can give the time to enjoy all the comforts of lake and mountain at nominal expense for tenancy may, by their contributions, help the State in small part to maintain its charitable institutions. There has not been sketched here the general administra- tion of the Conservation Department. It would be unfair to point out mistakes in the fish and game lines, inasmuch as reforms are in force against the mistakes or negligence of Democratic administrations. The department now gets from game licenses, fines, etc., about $350,000, and costs $750,000 to operate. Of course, it gives the State a useful indirect revenue by increasing the game birds in hatcheries, propo- gating fish, and generally conserving the forests. But it ought to be, as a department, a great and growing asset, and not a liability. The forests, the water-power and the camp 100 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? sites ought to win for the State nearly $3,000,000 in revenue each year, the first two helping labor and manufactures as well, and the last giving health and pleasure to those who would pay a bit of the capital or interest debt of the State for its purchase of 2,000,000 royal acres of woodland, lakes and streeuns to be held forever for the people. OUR WASTE IN ASYLUMS 101 GIRL VAGRANTS AT $7.59 PER WEEK. Chart cost for maintenance only of New York State Training School for Girls, Hudson, N. Y., from direct State appropriations. Total maintenance, $120,174.80; cost, $7.19 per week; adding value of farm products, $7.59 per week, per inmate in 1915. NOTE ; — These girls do most of their own house, laundry and kitchen work. 102 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? MONEY WASTE IN BEDFORD HILLS. Chart cost for maintenance only of New York State Re- formatory for Women, Bedford Hills, paid from State Treas- ury. Total maintenance cost, $128,007.92; average weekly cost for each inmate, $6.64 — excluding value of home and farm products, $5.19. The women in this institution are between 16 and 30. They cook, bake, do their own housework, work in laundry and eating rooms and yet cost the State $6.64 per week per inmate last year. HOIV THE MONEY RUNS AWAY 103 WASTE IN OUR CHARITIES. Women of the Prison Reform Association, who have a splendid sense of the good things that can be done either in reforming the wicked or in helping the feeble-minded, have no sense at all when the question of spending the State's money is in mind. These gentle women are responsible for much of the extravagant cottage system now imposed upon the State in some of its penal, correctional and charitable insti- tutions. There is costly waste in building and in administra- tion; indeed, so costly that the orderly expansion of these asylums, if continued under the present plan, will pile upon the State new obligations amounting to millions a year. Only last autumn — that is, 1915 — there was dedicated in Letchworth Village, home for feeble-minded and epileptics, an attendant's cottage to house 48 employees. The cost of the building, exclusive of the ground, is $50,000; that is more than $1,000 per attendant. A model system of building such as offered and designed by several well-known architects, and to be made a type for all State institutions, would not cost $500 per^inmate, affording comfort, privacy and all that our expanding civilization demands. Extravagant as is this attendants' home in Letchworth village — and it is only one of several yet to be put up — its cost per inmate is less than that of several cottage colonies sandpapered into legislative existence in the last year of Mr. Hughes as Governor. These built after the views of several architects, one differing from the other in institutional esthetics, have cost as much as $1,500 per room per patient.. The first thing in starting a new home is to get a Board of Managers. Then they get an architect and, lest the market be suddenly closed to them, they get a superintendent and part of a staff before there are , any buildings completed or any persons to supervise.. All they need to start the wheels of progress is an appropria- tion. After they get it there is nobody to control the method of its spending but themselves. Letchworth village may be called the Tuxedo Colony in the State's enterprise, the per capita cost now being about $9.50 a week, for each of the feeble- minded in that delightful place, but it is doubtful whether 104 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? with all the pomp and extravagance of this spot in the sunny hills of Rockland, that it has any claim of aristocracy when challenged by the new home for women misdemeanants in Valatie, Hudson County. There we have a plant which when finished is to have 21 cottages, each holding 25 patients, each room private with all the arrangements of a modern hotel, including electric lights and each cottage with its own kitchen. The cotttages built to hold 25 inmates cost $35,000 each. There is the cottage laundry, the cottage bake shop, and to make expenses doubly sure there is a separate heating plant as well as laundry and bake-shop for each building. No ap- propriation was made this year for completing the remainder of the cottages, nor was any money provided for the proposed new administration building, hospital or very necessary barns if the farm products are to be properly housed. The women sent there must be at least 30 years old, must have been convicted at least five times of petty offenses, mostly drunkenness. This costly home with its many hun- dreds of acres was won from the State by the women prison reformers in the fond hope that in these classic surround- ings the many times convicted women would be guided back to virtue and sobriety. Here they have many Milch cows, hundreds of chickens, lots of garden vegetables, acres of potatoes and native bacon and pork. The woman who gets drunk four times and is convicted must get drunk once again and be caught at it to entitle her to the courtesies of this establishment. As there are few inmates as yet and, as, in the completed homes, there is more room than present demands call for, it is not at all surprising that the warden moved from his com- paratively shabby home to occupy, for a time at least, one of the 25-room cottages. Why there should be a male warden with a male staff of this sort passes all understanding, except that the warden was appointed from Washington County in the days of Governor Dix, the gentleman being a political lieutenant of Mr. Dix's business partner, Mr. Huppuch, leader of Washington County. The additional fact that this warden was on the ground drawing salary before there were any cot- tages or any inmates is only an illustration of that sure pre- WASTE IN OUR CHARITIES 105 vision controlling the Democratic party in the days of Dix, which added more than 3,500 gentlemen of varying degrees of non-distinction to the State payroll. But granting that nice cottages, fresh milk and eggs, woodland, stream and valley, and home cured bacon will do much to wean these women from what we call dissolute lives, it might at least have flashed across the apprehension of the founders that a well equipped industrial building would be a necessity. There some women already well taught in the making of things for the home could earn their way. There other women less fortunate could be shown how to knit and weave, how to make willow-ware or brooms; how to make underclothing and thus in part supply the needs of the many State Asylums. It will probably be years before this institution is finished judging by the meagre appropria- tions this year and last year, and in Mr. Glynn's year, for most necessary improvements in many of the hospitals and charita- ble buildings of the State. It is just as well, however, for the expenditure of several millions by incompetent Boards of Managers — $200,000 here and $300,000 there — may well wait an orderly and comprehensive plan for the management of all correctional, curative and charitable institutions. Other States studying both economy and progress have legislated out of life all the Boards of Managers and have put all the expenditures both for maintenance and building in the hands of a Board of Control which purchases all the coal and other big supplies for the prisons, asylums and char- itable homes, standardizing all employment and creating a general system of non-costly administration. A standard set of building plans and of heating and lighting is a part of this new forward plan for efficiency in many States with a result- ing decrease in all costs. In New York State aside from the topsy-turvy and wasteful plans for buildings we find one de- partment paying 20 cents a ton more for coal than another, a cent a pound more for meat and so on in expenditures which run up in the millions. We find one institution costing more than $1500 per bed and another built at a cost of $970 a bed, another at $1,200 a bed; when a systematic plan would re- duce the cost to from $500 to $600. 106 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? The appropriations at this last session of the legislature for our penal, charitable and curative purposes, reaches the enormous total of $13,821,950, distributed as follows: In Indiana or Wisconsin, for instance, these three great departments would have their expenditure controlled from one source. All the flour, coal, meat, etc., would be purchased at one price, the only fluctuation being the difference in freight rates to the several institutions. In this State hundreds of different persons will spend the money. Here we find the State Asylums paying $4.46 a barrel for rolled oats and the State Charities $4.85 a barrel; one paying $3.83 a barrel for corn meal white, and another $4.02 for the same. Ten years ago it cost New York $9,000,- 000 to run these institutions as against almost $14,000,000 to- day, and in the intervening period we have done nothing of value toward standardizing our methods or in promoting that economy and efficiency in which so many other States lead. If there be an incompetent Superintendent in any one of the Asylums, the State Hospital Commission cannot remove him. If he be a drunkard or a drug fiend they are equally power- less. All they can do is to inform the Board of Managers and there the matter rests. If there be a wasteful or thieving steward the result is the same. There may be only one or two persons on the Board of Managers at all competent or willing to do anything and they, too, are powerless against an indifferent or negligent majority. Only a short time ago the superintendent of a big State institution was notoriously a drunkard. The managers actually had given him leave of absence more than once to recover from his debauches. Eve.i when charges were brought they defiantly declined to receive them. Is it any wonder that with this condition of things u bachelor superintendent of a big State hospital lives in a $22,000 house paid for by the State, has a housekeeper, cook and chambermaid, light, heat, food and laundry in addition to State Asylums Charitable institutions Prisons $8,136,076 3,834.205 1,851,669 JFASTE IX OUR CHARITIES 107 his annual salary of $4,700? Is it any wonder the records show 240 quarts of milk and 200 pounds of meat in a month consumed in the superintendent's house? Is it strange that other superintendents have added to the wages of a cook, chambermaid and waitress a coachman or a chauffeur at the expense of the State? Surely it is not odd therefore to find lack of system everywhere, and only in spots a real attempt by some individual to serve the State. He does this of his own initiative as there is no guiding force anywhere to say how things shall be done. Such is the way of the State Ad- ministration. The Letchworth village home for feeble- minded of all ages, built on the cottage colony plan, and laid out so as to have the highest possible overhead costs, is called the Tuxedo colony among the State's charitable institu- tions. It now costs the State $9.50 per week per patient, is run by a board of managers, and illustrates clearly the uncontrolled fashion in which new enterprises are begun by the State. 108 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? PER CAPITA COSTS. When the reader takes in view that the insane, the feeble- minded, the criminal and the purely indigent of this State are increasing in our public institutions at least twice as fast in percentage as the general population of the State increases, it will be seen that the question of expense is vital. We are now not only shamefully overcrowded in our institutions, but the more we get the greater is the per capita tax, and we are plainly in the position where we must get down to a basis of efficient administration. We have now in our State asylums for the insane approximately 33,000 patients, and more than 6,000 employees of all grades. We have in the State institu- tions controlled by the Board of Charities 10,000 inmates and 2,000 employees. So here we have, apart from our prisons, an inmate population of at least 43,000, with 8,000 employees, with buildings wastefully designed and hundreds of acres of land unimproved. The lack of central authority is everywhere apparent. When we find that in the State asylums for the insane the salaries and wages increased in one year more than $220,000 while provisions decreased $134,000, notwithstanding increase in price, we know some of the cause for the ever-rising budget. When fuel and light cost almost $900,000 for a year in 33 institutions, apart from prisons, we may have some thought that business efficiency should play some part in the enormous expenditures with which we are being faced. It is a condition requiring the earnest study of men who have desire to lower taxation, and ability to work on business lines. Nothing of value can be looked for from State officials or from the Legislature until public opinion gets firmly and steadfastly behind a well-thought out plan of reform. The business of sandbagging the State goes on from year to year, permitted largely by the indifference of good citizens. When we find the per capita cost of provisions in one place $81.52, in another $62.75, in another $48.37, and in an- other $102.36, we know that comes in great part from lack of good administration. When we find the per capita cost per year for salaries and wages to be $284.68 in one institution, PER CAPITA COSTS 109 $90.28 in the next one, $300.52 in a third, $101.48 in a fourth, $74.60 in another and $139.79 elsewhere, we have further illus- tration of the queer costs that political control piles up against the taxpayer. When we have one charity home spending $126,000 in salaries at $175.35 per capita and another spending $128,000 at only $90.28 per capita, we can readily see what economical administration could do for the State Treasury. The farm and garden cost in one asylum is $25.18 per patient; in a second $16.54, in a third $6.95, m a fourth $15.33, and in a fifth $5.33 per inmate per year. In one State hospital we get economy in provisions, in another we have cheap coal expenditure, in another household stores are well managed, in a fourth the per capita expenditure for lawns and grounds is kept well within the limits. This is true of clothing in one institution. In one home for the feeble-minded the cost of medicine per inmate is twice that in another similar in all respects. If the several economies in one institution and another could be enforced in all, the saving would run into the two million mark, taking all the buildings under control of the State Hospital Commission and the State Charities. If in addition to this bit of efficiency there should be well- managed industries and farms, the per capita cost would soon get within the ordinary limits of a business administration. To this the State must set itself the task so many cities are doing so well. Is it not startling to see this table: 110 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? ANALYISIS OF COST FOR LIGHT AND HEAT IN STATE CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS OF NEW YORK. Percentage cost of fuel and Yearly cost of Actual expendi- light to all Name of fuel and light tures for fuel expendi- Institution. per inmate. and light. tures. Bedford $36.92 $15,396.22 12. 32.50 10,434.43 8.7 Oxford 26.96 5,284.77 10.7 25,38 18,753.07 8.7 Albion . . . ; 26.50 6,493.46 8.9 rlwuse of Refuge.... 13.94 11,534.84 6.1 20.66 12,290.64 10.1 h ewark 16.36 13,532.51 10.7 12.61 19,243.57 8.4 29.76 4,166.09 6.1 Craig Colony 22.34 32,398.61 10 Soldiers Home 28.90 37,411.52 11.9 Thomas Indian School 23.03 3,962.01 8.7 41.11 5,179.76 9 West Haverstraw ... 21.76 1,653.96 5 ANALYSIS OF COST OF FUEL AND LIGHT IN THE STATE HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE IN NEW YORK. Tons Aver- Cost of fuel and of coal used age purchase Name of light per year, Total cost of per inmate, price of coal. Institution per inmate. coal per year. per year. per ton. Hudson River . . $26.86 $82,711.12 .7.70 $3.50 Middletown .... 13.12 26,140.65 4.72 2.76 Utica 20.16 29,084.84 5.50 3.41 Willard 16.73 38,877.54 5.90 2.83 Buffalo 16.75 34,102.43 7.25 2.32 Binghamton . . . 24.80 58,276.98 11.10 2.32 St. Lawrence . . 26.29 51,485.26 8.20 3.22 Rochester 22.50 32,718.21 7.35 3.10 23.58 26,483.06 6.60 3.70 Kings Park .... 15.72 63,459.38 5.58 2.83 Long Island . . . 15.68 12,484.23 5.10 3.08 Manhattan 11.45 53,910.65 4.50 2.47 Central Islip . . . *Mohansic 19.68 97,186.50 6.90 3.04 35.23 2,149.38 5.50 6.47 ♦Anthracite. PER CAPITA COSTS 111 The author has picked out in the foregoing tables all of the charitable institutions and all of the State hospitals for the insane. It will be noticed that light and heat cost $41 per year for each inmate in one institution and less than $12 per year per inmate in another. In several of the State build- ings there are seven tons of coal per year per inmate and in others much less than five tons a year, which with many thousands of patients runs the waste up to big money. A study of the tables show radical differences in efficiency and cost. When an institution like the Hudson River State Hospital with more than 3,000 patients burns more than $80,000 of coal in a year at a cost of $26.86 per inmate, it ought to startle the taxpayers. When Middletown Asylum with practically 2,000 inmates runs along at $13.12 per person per year, while St. Lawrence costs $26.29 a head with its 2,000 patients, there is surely room for a system of efficiency. The coal bills of many of these institutions go above $40,000 a year and some above $50,000. When we recall that there are more than 40,000 inmates in the retreats for the charitable and the insane the lowering of the per cgfpita cost is a very serious matter. In Middletown the coal consumption for instance is only 4.72 tons per year per inmate, while in Oxford, it is 7.25; in Bedford, 9.04; in Binghamton, 8.80; in Long Island, 5.10; Bath, 10.48; Hudson (for girls), 8.12. The real saving in money will come only when all fuel- saving appliances are used by the State. This also will bring about a further saving in labor and easily cut the costs in this one department of light and heat by 40 per cent, a year. The Governors and the Legislatures by failing year after year to modernize the heating and lighting plants have cost the State in wasted money far into the hundreds of thousands. An- tiquated heating plants and defective boilers have long been brought to the attention of the Legislature, but it was not until Governor Whitman came in that any practical work was begun to map out all the defects, estimate the costs and plan for the future. The State, however, is doing it only by piece- meal instead of voting more than a million dollars to clean up 112 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? the situation. The State also should take the initiating of these improvements out of the hands of the superintendents and the Board of Managers and have it done by one central authority. These Board of Managers frequently obstruct the State ofBcials, as they did in Western States until they were wiped out. It is only a short time ago that although the State Architect, the State Hospital Commission and the Governor were united upon an economical plan of spending money on the Manhattan State Hospital, that certain of the Board of Managers obstructed every effort to stop the erection of new buildings not framed on the former extravagant type. There are many other Boards of Managers in the State who cannot yet see the good of new type buildings which will give more room at less cost and also steadily reduce the ex- penses of administration. There will be no real reform until all direct control is centered in Albany and not until then will the output of manufactures and farm produce pay in greater part for the keep of the inmates. STATE BOARD OF CONTROL Paid Board of five members —rovr men undone woman Term — five years — one appointed each year Administrative Board of all state charitable and per}al irtsli tutions. Supervision of all county, city , and private charitabje and penal institution i This Board acts as. Board of parole. Commission in Lunacy. Probation Board Board of Relief This Board also Supervises: State Aid to OcpertdenT Children finotvn as rhe trainers' Pension Larv. Adminiitrction of Proiation Law. Courts plaza ca probation, '^ho froiution ofliczrs tctin^ uot^ir Boord of State Charitable, and Penal Institutioc^s Some of the chief duties of this Board are : I. Administration 4 Purchase of Supplies 2 Supervision, 5 Audit of tills. 3 Insppctlcn. 5 Transfer of Inmate j tn and frcn. Institutions for t^enfitl Defectives Penal and Reformatory Institutions County ■ind City Charitable and Penal Inst tutlons. Fr/va re Institutions Urhni such as tivspfWs, homef^iniiins Asscc/oTion^ Orphanages, SonaTon'a, CTc. 35 County Asyfvfnj fsr Ch/vni'clnsani, tJliltvaukic SCounty hospiTol 54 Count) Tubercdoiis Houst of tor Iht Qncf City Sanatoria. Corr.cHm. 2 Por,l,in- Insane. Pocrti ousts lApprere iiTis andbuiidinj / Transfer Inmate', ro 1 Appnre Sites and phns. 3 Transfer and frofri. hil/tng plji^ i.flifXCt ln/tiol*% fre^ ?.. Inspect. I Inspin. Lducationol Tubercular Institutions Sanatoria !l4t. Ne^r/ltfn Htme *S,utlit,n Hospital HtSflltl tloipittl f«-/Ae hc/Ttt for Frfilt-Mi^ for tht fir n. Crimina/ Imer. InSKe Insane Stare and plentiful labor we may well ask, "What's the matter with New York?" 150 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? THE STATE'S ASSESSABLE PROPERTY. Property value in New York State on which the Direct Tax in 1915 was raised. Read about the fake realty assess- ments up-State. i^xi YoM^. Cv-tx SHARt OF STATt5 or -r*^6 frr/xTE ^ 3.096,^11,100 The real estate exemptions in New York State amounted last year to $2,377,156,232, an increase in 10 years of 79 per cent. MISUSE OF OUR LAWS 151 THE TAX QUESTION. The most serious question that could be treated in this book is the system of taxation in New York, the neglect of the State to enforce its tax statutes and the consequent failure to collect the full franchise taxes from most of the corporations operating north of New York City. Mere assertions are not proof of evil conditions. The author of this volume set out to get the proof, but after investigation in two small counties had cost in paid labor more than $200, it was seen that the expense of obtaining State- wide official proof would be prohibitive within the limits of this book. The leading civic association of New York was offered an opportunity to co-operate but did not accept, which is regrettable, inasmuch as a complete uncovering of conditions up the State would have shown, by incontestable official records, that the system of levying a direct tax is open larceny from the City's realty owners for the benefit of cor- porations and other taxpayers in many sections of the State. In New York City the assessed valuation of real property is, on the average, 85 per cent, of its selling price. In some cases it goes below this and in some above, but the average is very near 85, as has been shown officially and otherwise in the examination of m.any parcels. Mayor Gaynor, coming into office only to find the City at the limit of its bonding capacity, jumped realty valuation about 25 per cent, to make bond issues valid within the 10 per cent, requirement of the Constitution in respect of taxable values. Had the rest of the State done the same thing, New York City would be at no disadvantage when a direct tax is levied upon the total assessed valuation of the cities, towns and villages of the State. It would pay only its equalized share. But property up-state is assessed from 35 to 65 per cent, of its value by the local assessors, wholly to escape the heavy hand of State taxation at the expense of the big city. A proper equalization would have made New York City's direct tax in the last fiscal year not more than $8,500,000, instead of the $13,000,000 in round figures which it had to pay. 152 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? It would be assumed that the great realty interests of New York City, if not the officials, would be interested in stopping this manifestly unjust assessment on already over- burdened taxpayers, something which could be done in law after proof; but while these gentlemen worry themselves into meetings of protest against one thing or another in the pass- ing hour, and hurry the Board of Estimate, they stop short of doing the most material thing they have at hand for the protection of the City. In one county examined for the writer of this book, town houses, business plants and farms with buildings thereon were found mortgaged for more than their assessed value, and the selling price was, in every case, almost twice the value of the mortgage. In one city on the Hudson River, which has a tax rate of more than per cent, on the assessed valuation, mortgages were found far in excess of the taxable value. One farm assessed for $1,800 was mortgaged for $5,400, and was offered to the author of this book for $12,000. One commer- cial plant, assessed for $56,000, was mortgaged for $92,000. The cost of examinations made it impossible to bring this phase of New York's government to any point of real value for the purposes of this volume. But as the State tax com- missioners have neglected their plain duty in equalizing valua- tions, or attempting to do so, it would well repay New York City to take up this vital subject and fight it to a finish. We are surely in for the day of the direct tax, and it means more than a few dollars to the realty owner and the rent payer of New York. It is an over tax on all business in the big City, and an under tax on all business outside the City, with the possible exception of Albany, where examination shows the rate to be close to 8o per cent. Of course, the people of the City of Newburgh don't care if their tax rate is $33.00 on the thousand if the actual rate is only 35 per cent, of value. This means that on a valuation of 70 they would be paying only 16.50 on the thousand, a reasonable rate for any city. When the State comes along with a direct tax it collects on the local values, which are much less than they ought to be, and New York City pays the difference. THE TAX QUESTION 153 But of much more moment to the State Treasury, and to its biggest city, is the fact that the tax on the franchise valua- tions is the same as the tax in each locality upon realty, and so the corporations cheerfully pay the State upon the under- valuation of the local assessors. A corporation in New^ York City pays more in proportion than one up-State in the same kind of business, although its overhead charges are greatly in excess. The Nev^ York City corporation is taxed by the State on the high valuation existing and the up-State corporation on the low valuation that local and friendly assessors put upon them. If these gentlemen representing the State who have spent many thousands of dollars through legislative committees in studying new sources of State revenue, and if these gentle- men representing New York City who spent a lot of money last year for a similar local aim, would go at the root of this question, they would get results well worth the ambition of the ablest citizen. The way local assessors in the several towns of this State do business ought to be torn wide apart by a fearless State government — that is, the Legislature and the Governor, with his Tax Commissioners ; but no real relief will come until New York City's officials, backed by the big civic organizations, take up this great subject with intent to make it right for all time ; that is, as nearly right as constantly changing human agencies can make it. The corporate property which escapes taxation, in part, in this State, is, of course, big, but it was impossible for the writer of this book to check it to the point of usefulness. It can be done, however, with accuracy, by existing bureaus of government, and would entirely change the present relation of New York City to the remainder of this State in the percentage of property open to assessment for a direct State tax. Just how bad the inequalities are in the assessment of real property through New York State, for the purpose of levying a direct tax need not be estimated by any words of mine, but the official records show facts which ought to stir New York City's leaders to positive action. 154 WHATS THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? Less than two years ago the City of Salamanca increased its real estate assessment 115 per cent., exclusive of special franchises. In the same year the town of Orwell in Owego County increased its real estate assessment, exclusive of special franchies, 188 per cent. Orleans County increased its valuation of real property in 1914, 46 per cent.; Warren County 40 and Wayne County 19 per cent. This was a com- plete confession by these tax authorities that in the preceding year, as in other years, they had failed to pay their fair share of the direct State tax. Rochester, which was danger- ously near the limit of its bonding capacity, also lifted the value of its realty, reducing, of course, the rate of taxation but not its volume. Before Salamanca raised the assessed value of its real property, its rate of taxation was $50 on the thousand or five per cent., which would have been confiscation, of course, if the rate had any proper relation to actual values. When we find the towns of Sullivan County with a tax rate averaging 6 per cent, on the dollar, Ulster County wich tax rate of more than 4 cents on the dollar in many of its im- portant towns, and Orange County with such places as New- burg, Cornwall and Monroe, far above $30 on the thousand, we know that the tax rate is high while the valuation is low. With the law explicitly clear as to their authority and their duties it is more than strange that the State Tax Commission- ers do not enforce a full valuation of property. In 1913 they were provided with an extra staff of examiners for this very purpose, but nothing of material value has been done. We know, of course, that New York City has the costliest Government in the State, partly because of her enormous new water system; partly because of her present subway obliga- tions; partly because of her care of aliens dumped upon the City; partly because of her extended social service in sup- plementary education, and partly because she is still rebuild- ing her piers, roads and sewers, and yet her tax rate is far behind all other cities of the State, based upon the assessed valuation of property. When we take into account that New York City's debt service alone is nearly $60,000,000 a year, interest payment upon past obligations, we wonder at the THE TAX QUESTION 155 following tax figures on each $i,ooo of valuation in which the fractional part of the rate is omitted: New York Tax Rate (average in Boroughs) $i8 Buffalo Tax Rate 30 Rochester Tax Rate 23 Syracuse Tax Rate 23 Utica Tax Rate 30 Albany Tax Rate 24 Schenectady Tax Rate 31 Amsterdam Tax Rate 32 Troy Tax Rate 28 Auburn Tax Rate 33 Jamestown Tax Rate 34 Kingston Tax Rate 25 Elmira Tax Rate 27 Newburgh Tax Rate 35 In the State tax last year New York City paid $2.77 for each member of its population, including aliens. The rest of the Stat^ of New York paid $1.37 per capita. In the last 12 years in which a direct tax was paid, New York City's pro- portion was $58,765,082, as against $29,337,153 for the re- mainder of the State. In 1898, New York City paid 60 per cent of the tax, and in 1915, 68 per cent. There is no question whatever that hereafter we must have a continuous direct tax. We have gone to the limit of our indirect taxes. Appropriations to repair or extend our State institutions — all shamefully overcrowded — were post- poned under Mr. Glynn and omitted in large part by Mr. Whitman. The obligations, steadily mounting, caused by the cottage system for the feebleminded and for the venial in ^ crime, mean high rates of maintenance. The cost of govern- ment goes up by millions. The direct tax will rise in pro- portion. It is the plain duty of New York City's Government and of its civic organizations to enforce a proper equalization of real estate valuation in the cities, towns and villages of the State, so that the City of New York shall not continue to pay 156 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? an undue proportion of State taxes. The only way to wipe out the direct tax is to find new revenues by taxation; the only way to reduce the State tax is to enforce economy and efficiency in the State Government. That New York City is entitled to some consideration from State officials we may well note in the mere item that in the collections from the transfer tax alone to the State Treasury the big City con- tributed in the last ten years the enormous total of $93,000,000 as against $32,000,000 for the rest of the State. The City con- tributed last year in excise tax more than $5,500,000 and as much in the inheritance tax. No real help in the fight for fair play need be looked for up State. A dollar looks as big to Democrats above the Bronx as it does to Republicans. Any- thing they can save as the cost of New York, they will. To win an even deal in State taxation the local and the legisla- tive representatives of New York City must act as a unit, and when they do they can achieve what they set out to do. CANAL DAMAGES TO COME 157 THE STATE'S FINANCIAL MUDDLE. The wholly lax condition of Government in New York with its ill effect upon the State Treasury may be broadly shown in the enormous canal damage suits and the excess of money in the Sinking Funds. In one canal sinking fund alone the excess is $16,000,000. In all the Canal and High- way sinking funds the excess is more than $30,000,000. This money has been improperly taken from the people in the last ten years either by direct tax or by appropriation from the Treasury, and only in the last eighteen months has any in- telligent effort been made to stop the inflow of money to these over-swollen sinking funds. The administration of Gov. Hughes did nothing toward correcting the fiscal error in the State Constitution relating to Highway Sinking funds and did nothing to correct by legisla- tion or otherwise the excess in the canal sinking funds. Dix and his advisors ignored it even when compelled to levy a direct State tax. Sulzer attempted to untangle the situation but went out of office before he could do anything. Glynn left it to the constitutional convention whose work was upset at the polls, but the Whitman administration, that is the Governor, the Attorney General and the Controller, agreed upon a constitutional amendment which when finally adopted will save at least $4,000,000 a year for a long time to come. Thus it has taken at least eight years and must, under the constitution, take at least another year to settle a question of plain finance which should have been taken care of in 1909 or at the latest in 1910 by an amendment to the constitution. When Gov. Hughes, in 1909 and 1910, signed bills and made them into law for the issues of Highway bonds and Canal bonds and providing for the sinking funds, both the ^ Governor and the Legislature followed in part the direction of the Constitution, just as did Dix after Hughes, and Higgins before him in Canal bond issues. But Mr. Hughes seeing that an error had been made, in computing the amount necessary from year to year to retire the bonds at maturity, should have brought the submission of a Constitutional Amendment to the people. Had he done so there would have been no direct 158 WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH NEW YORK? tax in any year since that period except last year, and that tax would have been several millions less. Gov. Hughes went out of office leaving the taxpayers in a sorry muddle, since which time they have contributed at least $18,000,000 that was wholly unnecessary. It is not improbable that the Legis- lature could have acted within the law by directing the Comp- troller to treat the surplus in the Sinking Funds as revenue of the State, to be applied from year to year toward the amorti- zation of the bond issues. The law could have been passed swiftly correcting the former Legislatures, Governors and Comptrollers respecting the Canal Sinking funds, if not the Highway funds, which latter seem to be governed by the Constitution. The Court of Appeals could have passed promptly upon the validity of this act, but neither in the Legislature or by Constitutional amendment was any relief attempted until the present time. Of course, this is not a new story but it serves first to throw light upon our methods of State finance and second to bring sharply in this volume to the attention of the tax- payers the grievous situation we have in the claims running near to $50,000,000 for Canal damages. The State has been left in this sorry financial muddle by the failure of every ad- ministration since the time of Hughes to provide through the Court of Claims for money damages caused by the taking of property for the Canals. No money was set aside from year to year to meet the final judgments and it was not until Gov. Whitman reorganized the Court of Claims on a business and non-political basis that any relief was attempted. It will probably be news to some of the heaviest taxpayers to learn that there are claims against the State for about $55,- 000,000 and that nearly $45,000,000 of these claims involve the taking by the State of land and of water power. There is also the annual accruing interest of six per cent, from the time the State entered upon the property. This six per cent, cumulative interest will have to be paid on whatever portion of the $45,000,000 of claims may be allowed. Of course, under a business administration of the State these cases would have been determined rapidly and appropriations would have been made annually to take up the State's indebtedness from time THE STATE'S FIXAXCIAL MUDDLE 159 to time. There would have been money in the State Treasury to meet the claims. Mr. Glynn, not at all in ignorance of the situation, completely ignored it in his pursuit of a low budget and a false programme of economy. Gov. Whitman has gone about resolutely to clean up the situation, assisted by Mr. Egbert E. Woodbury, the most efficient Attorney General the State has had in many years, and as a result, several Judges of the Court of Claims are giving their undivided time to try- ing these damage suits. In many cases the actual homes of people were taken by the State, and while years have lapsed these people have been left without homes, money or even the interest upon the capital employed. This is a fair illustration of the financial methods employed by Governors and Comp- trollers who seek to delude the people by low budgets and alleged decreasing costs of administration. Assuming that only 20 per cent, of the $45,000,000, or JtJg,- 000,000 in all, is finally allowed, there will be six per cent, in- terest charges alone piling up from past years of $540,000 a year. All this will have to be met by the taxpayers in the next few years, all of which furnishes an additional reason why the:!(pe should be without delay a comprehensive system of reorganization in the great departments which are spend- ing the public money, with a steadily rising cost of adminis- tration. We have reached pretty nearly the limit of our in- direct taxes. To meet the expenditures we must have direct taxes. The sum of the direct taxes will be measured by the efficiency and econom.y which we bring into the administra- tion of the State. Our very alert and business-like State Comptroller, Mr. Eugene M. Travis, has done much good work in raising the State's infiow of revenue. He has gone into fields neglected by former incumbents of the office and found new income. - His work on the stamp transfer tax, the inheritance tax and the secured debt tax has shown the highest efficiency of which there is any record. In addition he has caused amendments to the tax laws which will average about $2,500,000 a year increased income, but there even his administration must stop in greater part. The real relief must come in economy of ex- penditure with efficiency of administration in the big depart- ments discussed in detail in this volume. 9