from Jacobgiis, How the Other HaljLit:es: Studies among the Tenements of New York (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970),32-34.

Transcription

1 From The Shame of the Cities by Lincoln Steffens Muckraking journalist Unccln Steffens investigated political corruption in American cities. As you read this excetpt from his boole, consider why he viewed Philadelphia as "a disgtace not to itself alone, nor to Pennsylvania, but to the United States." -: /.~. The Philadelphia machine isn't the best. It isn't sound, and I doubt if it would stand in New York or Chicago. The enduring strength of the typical American political machine is that it is a natural growth--a sucker, but deep-rooted in the people. The New Yorkers vote for Tammany Hall. The Philadelphians do not vote; they are disenfranchised, and their disenfranchisement is one anchor ofthe foundation of the Philadelphia organization. This is no figure of speech. The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege. You can arouse their Republican ire by talking about the black Republican votes lost in the Southern States by white Democratic intimidation, but if you remind the average Philadelphian that he is in the same position, he will look startled, then say, "That's SO, that's literally true, only I never thought of it in just that way." And it is literally true. The machine controls the whole process of.voting, and practices fraud at every stage. The assessor's list is the voting list, and the assessor is the machine's man... The assessor pads the list with the names of dead dogs, children, and non-existent persons. One newspaper printed the picture of a dog, another that of a little four-year-old Negro boy, down on such a list. A ring orator in a speech resenting sneers at his ward as "low down" reminded his hearers that that was the ward of Independence Hall, and, naming the signers ofthe Declaration of Independence, he closed his highest flight of eloquence with the statement that "these men, the fathers of American liberty, voted down here once. And, " he added, with a catching grin, "they vote here yet." Rudolph Blankenburg, a persistent fighter for the right and the use ofthe right to vote (and, by the way, an immigrant), sent out just before one election a registered letter to each voter on the rolls of a certain selected division. Sixty-three per cent were returned marked "not at," "removed," "deceased," etc. From one four-story house where forty-four voters were addressed, eighteen letters came back undelivered; from another of forty-eight voters, came back fortyone letters; from another sixty-one out of sixtytwo; from another forty-four out of forty-seven. Six houses in one division were assessed at one hundred and seventy-two voters, more than the votes cast in the previous election in anyone of two hundred entire divisions. The repeating is done boldly, for the machine controls the election officers, often choosing them from among the fraudulent names; and when no one appears to serve, assigning the heeler [local political party worker] ready for the expected vacancy. The police are forbidden by law to stand within thirty feet ofthe polls, but they are at the box and they are there to see that the machine's orders are obeyed and that repeaters whom they help to furnish are permitted to vote without "intimidation" on the names they, the police, have supplied. The editor of an anti-machine paper who was looking about for himself once told me that a ward leader who knew him well askeu him into a polling place. "I'll show you how it's done," he said, and he had the repeaters go round and round voting again and again on the names handed them on slips. "But," as the editor said, "that isn't the way it's ' done." The repeaters go from one polling place to another, voting on slips, and on their return rounds change coats, hats, etc. from Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: 1904). Reprinted in Richard B. Morris and James Woodress, eds., Voices From Americag Past, Vol. 2, Backwoods Democracy to World Power (New York: Dutton, 1963

2 From "How the Other Half Lives" By Jacob Riis. Jacob Rils, a Danish immigrant, worked for 12years ;n the Lower ~st Side a.s ~ police rep.orter. for the New ~ork Tribune. In 1890, he publjshed a book called How the Other Half Lives. provldmg a shockmg View of slum life. Be a little careful, please! The hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies hack there. Not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet. They have little else. Here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a step, and another, another. A flight of stairs. You can feel your way, if you cannot see it. Close? Yes! What would you have? All the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall door that is forever slamming, and from the windows of dark bedrooms that in turn receive from the stairs their sole supply ofthe elements God meant to be free, but man deals out with such niggardly hand. That was a woman filling her pail by the hydrant you just bumped against. The sinks are in the hallway, that all the tenants may have access-and all be. poisoned alike by their summer stenches. Hear the pump squeak! It is the lullaby of tenement house babes. In summer, when a thousand thirsty throats pant for a cooling drink in this block, it is worked in vain. But the saloon, whose open door you passed in the hall, is always there. The smell of it has followed you up. Here is a door. Listen! That short hacking cough, that tiny, helpless wail what do they mean? They mean that the soiled bow of white [a sign of mourning] you saw on the door downstairs will have another story to tell---- Oh! a sadly familiar story--before the day is at an end. The child is dying with measles. With half a chance it might have lived; but it had none. That dark bedroom killed it. "It was took all of a suddint," says the mother, smoothing the throbbing little body with trembling hands. There is no unkindness in the rough voice of the man in the jumper, who sits by the window grimly smoking a clay pipe, with the little life ebbing out in his sight, bitter as his words sound: "Hush, Mary! Ifwe cannot keep the baby, need we complain=such as we?" Such as we! What if the words ring in your ears as we grope our way up the stairs and down from floor to floor, listening to the sounds behind the closed doors--some of quarrelling, some of COarsesongs, more of profanity. They are true. When the summer heats come with their suffering they have meaning more terrible than words can tell. Come over here. Step carefully over this babyit is a baby, spite ofits rags and dirt=under these iron bridges called fire escapes, but loaded down, despite the incessant watchfulness of the firemen, with broken household goods, with washtubs and barrels, over which no man could climb from a fire. This gap between dingy brick walls is the yard. That strip of smoke-colored sky up there is the heaven of these people. Do you wonder the name does not attract them to the churches? That baby's parents live in the rear t6nement here. She is at least as clean as the steps we are now climbing. There are plenty of houses with half a hundred such in. The tenement is much like the one in front we just left, only fouler, closer, darker-we will not say more cheerless. The word is a mockery. A hundred thousand people lived in rear tenements in New York last year. Here is a room nearer than the rest. The woman, a stout matron with hard lines of care in her face, is at the washtub. "I try to keep the childer clean, " she says, apologetically, but with a hopeless glance around. The spice of hot 'soapsuds is added. to the air already tainted with the smell of boiling cabbage, of rags and uncleanliness all about. from Jacobgiis, How the Other HaljLit:es: Studies among the Tenements of New York (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970),32-34.

3 How I Got Rich by Honest Graft By: George Plunkett Mark Twain referred to the late nineteenth century as "The Gilded Age" because he believed wealth was masking the corruption of American society. At the local level, political machines -led by "bosses" - bought votes by promising immigrants food, shelter, and other needed services. Bosses also received kickbacks from people who wanted city jobs and companies that wanted city contracts. The most notorious political machine was Tammany Hall in New York City. George Plunkett, a Tammany Hall boss, argued in favor of "honest graft". Everybody is talking these days about Tammany men growing rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawing the distinction between honest-... graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game; and I'm _ getting richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft - blackmailing gamblers, saloon- _ keepers, disorderly people, etc. - and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics. There's honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by saying, "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em." Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's going to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off that they're going to layout a park at a certain place. I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that make its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before. Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good orice make a "" nrofit on mv investment and make r-- and -----~--.-a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that's honest graft.!.,;, Or supposing it's a new bridge they're going : to build. I get tipped off and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches I sell at my own price lateron.and drop. some more money inthe bank. Wouldn't you? It's just like looking ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton market. It' wi. s honest graft, and I'm looking for it every day [of] the year. I will tell you frankly that I've got a good lot of it, too... I've told you how I got rich by honest graft. Now, let me tell you that most politicians who are accused of robbing the city get rich the same way. They didn't steal a dollar from the city treasury. They just seen their opportunities and took them. That is why, when a reform administration comes in and spends a half million dollars in trying to find the public robberies they talked about in the campaign, they don't find them. The books are always right. The money in the city treasury is all right. All they can show is that the Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you that's never going to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn't isn't likely to be popular... Tammany was beat in 1901 because the people were deceived into believing it worked dishonest graft. They didn't draw a distinction between dishonest and honest graft, but they saw that some Tammany men grew rich and supposed they had been robbing the treasury or levying blackmail on disorderly houses, or working in with the gamblers and lawbreakers. As a matter of policy, if nothing else, why should the Tammany leaders go into such dirty business when there is so much honest graft lying around when they are in power? Did you ever, consider that? Now, in conclusion, I want to say that It don't own a dishonest dollar. Ifmy worst enemy was given the job of writing my epitaph when I'm gone, he couldn't do more than write: "George Plunkett. He Seen His Opportunities and He Took 'Em."

4 Excerpt from Samuel Gompers' "Rights of the Workingman" In this excerpt, Gompers supports the idea that men should have an 8 hour workday. ~.,/ " Is it not fact that we find laborers in England and the United States, where the hours are eight, nine, and ten hours a day - do we not find that the employers and laborers are more successful? Don't we find them selling articles cheaper? WE do not need to trust the modern moralist to tell us these things. In all industries where the hours are longer, there you will find the least development of the power of invention. How can you expect a man to work for twelve or fourteen hours at his calling and then devote any time to the invention of a machine or discovery of a new principle or force? Ifhe be so fortunate as to be able to read a paper he will fall asleep before he has read through the second or third line. Why, when you reduce the hours of labor,,r sayan hour a day, just think what it means. Suppose men who work ten hours a day had the time lessened to nine, or men who work nine hours a day have it reduced to eight hours; what does it mean? It means millions of golden hours and opportunities for thought. Some men might say you will go to sleep. Well, some men might sleep sixteen hours a day; the ordinary man might try that, but he would soon find he could not do it long. He would have to do something. He would probably go to the theatre one night, to a concert another night, but he could not do that every night. He would probably become interested in some study and the hours that have been taken from manual labor are devoted to mental labor, and the mental labor of one will produce for him more wealth than the physical labor of a dozen hours. The man who works the long hours has no necessities except the barest to keep body and soul together, so he can work. He goes to sleep and dreams of work; he rises in the morning to go to work, he takes his frugal Iunch to work; he comes home again to throw himself down on a miserable apology for a bed so that he can get that little rest that he may be able to go to work again. He is nothing but a veritable machine. He lives to work instead of working to live. My friends, the only thing me working people need besides the necessities of life, is time. Time. Time with which our lives begin; time with which our lives close; time to cultivate the better nature within us; time to brighten our homes. Time, which brings from the lowest condition up to the highest civilization; time, so we can raise men to a higher plane. My friends, you will find that it has been ascertained that there is more than a million of our brothers and sisters - able-bodied men and women on the streets, and on the highways and byways of our country willing to work but who cannotfind it You know that it is the theory of our government that we can work or cease to work at will. It is only a theory. You know that it is only a theory and not a fact. It is true that we can cease to work when we want to, but I deny that we can work when we will, so long as there are a million idle men and women tramping the streets of our cities, searching for work. What we want to consider is, first, to make our employment more secure, and secondly, to make,:., wages more permanent, and thirdly, to give these people a chance to work. The laborer has been regarded as a mere producing machine... I say we are American citizens with the heritage of all the great men who have stood before us; men who have, sacrificed all in the cause except honor. Our enemies ". would like to see this movement thrust into hades.. [hell]... but I say to you that this labor movement, '.. '. has come to stay. I say the labor movement is a fixed. fact, It has grown out of the necessities of the people,",:.. and, although some may desire to see it fail.. we' will go on until success has been achieved. We want eight hours and nothing less. We (' have been accused of being selfish; and it has been said that we want more... we do want more. You will find that a man generally wants more. You ask a workingman, who is getting two dollars a day, and he will say that he wants ten cents more... The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year... while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day. We live in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the age of electricity and steam that has produced wealth a hundred fold, we insist that it has been brought about by the intelligence and energy of the workingmen, and while we find that it is now easier to produce and it is :., harder to live. \VE do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more. And we shall never cease to demand more until we have received the results of our labor....,-' j~

5 From "Twenty Years at Hull House" By Jane Addams On September 18, 1889, social reformers Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved into Hull House, a dilapidated mansion in the midst of'the Chicago slums. As you read this excerpt. think about why they undertook this social experiment.,. I n those early days we were often asked why we.had come to live on Halsted Street when we could afford to live somewhere else. I remember one man who used to shake his head and say it was "tile strangest thing he had met in his experience," but who was finally convinced that it was "not strange but natural " In time it came to seem natural to all of us that the Settlement should be there. If it is natural.to / feed the hungry and care for the sick, it is certainly natural to give pleasure to the young, comfort to the aged, and to minister to the deep-seated craving for social intercourse that all men feel. Whoever does it is rewarded by something which, if not gratitude, is at least spontaneous and vital and lacks that irksome sense of obligation with which a substantial benefit is too often acknowledged... From the first it seemed understood that we were ready to perform the humblest neighborhood services. We were asked to wash the newborn babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to "mind the children." Occasionally these neighborly offices unexpectedly uncovered ugly human traits. For six weeks after an operation we kept in one of our three bedrooms a forlorn little baby who, because he was born with a cleft palate, was most unwelcome even to his mother, and we were horrified when he died of neglect a week after he was returned to his home; a little Italian bride of fifteen sought shelter with us one November evening, to escape her husband who had beaten her every night for a week when he returned home from work, because she had lost her wedding ting... We were also early impressed with the curious isolation of many of the immigrants; an Italian woman once expressed her pleasure in the red roses that she saw at one of our receptions in surprise that they had been "brought so fresh all the way from Italy." She would not believe for an instant that they had been grown in America. She said that she had lived in Chicago for six years and had never seen any roses, whereas in Italy she had seen them every summer in great profusion. During all that time, of course, the woman had lived within ten blocks ofa florist's window; she had not been more than a five-cent car ride away from the public parks; but she had never dreamed offining forth for herself, and no one had taken her. Her conception of America had been the untidy street in which she lived and had made her long struggle to adapt herself to American ways. But in spite of some untoward experiences, we were constantly impressed with the uniform kindness and courtesy we received. Perhaps these first days laid the simple human foundations which are certainly essential for continuous living among the poor: first, genuine preference for residence in an industrial quarter to any other part of the city, - because it is interesting and makes the human. appeal; and second, the conviction, in the words of Canon Barnett [the founder of the first settlement house, Toynbee Hall, in London] that the things which make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and that these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less essential differences of race, language, creed, and tradition. Perhaps even in those first days we made a beginning toward that object which was afterwards stated in our charter: "To provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises; and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industriai districts of Chicago," from Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (Urbana: University ofillinois Press, 1990),65-66.