San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume II, Part 33

Author: Young, John Philip, 1849-1921
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Pub. Co
Number of Pages: 738


USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume II > Part 33


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It was not until May 26, 1898, that the people of San Francisco consented to accept a charter framed for their benefit, and it might be inferred from the small- ness of the vote on its adoption that the acceptance was merely a fluke and not a real expression of popular judgment. The vote was 14,389 for and 12,025 against, a total of 26,969, whereas at the general election in 1896, 64,820 had voted. It has been assumed that the apparent lack of interest was due to the fact that voters were disinclined to sacrifice the time involved in going to the polls on a day spe- cially set apart, but this assumption is dissipated by the fact that nearly half of the voters in the general election of 1896 refused to avail themselves of the privilege of voting for or against the charter submitted, probably because they were honest enough to admit their incompetency to form a proper judgment concerning the desirability of the changes, and their inability to understand the multitudinous details of a voluminous document, concerning the meaning of many of whose pro- visions there was a serious disagreement.


Nineteen Years to Get & Charter


Thus it took nineteen years to secure an organic law for San Francisco, the imperative need for which was supposed to have existed even before the adoption of the Constitution of 1879. When a charter was finally adopted the result seemed to stamp as puerile the earlier objections to the conference of power upon the mayor. The new instrument in this particular gave that official as large a degree of control as any of the previously rejected documents, and the fact that it did was a subject of felicitation until the exercise of authority by Phelan, when the labor troubles occurred in 1901, caused it to become an object of fierce denuncia-


A Charter Finally Adopted


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tion by the workingmen; and later when their party came to power, and Schmitz and Ruef were running things with a high hand, it became the target for adverse criticism by the conservative element. In view of the fact that the people of San Francisco had suffered repeatedly from the derelictions of elected officials it is astonishing that any considerable number of persons should have retained implicit faith in the wisdom of the electorate. They had gone to the polls election after election, and had chosen supervisors who deliberately allied themselves with the corporations, and sold or carelessly conferred valuable privileges which should have brought a return to the community, or would have done so had the people recognized their value. They had given their suffrages to a tax collector who had robbed the treasury, and they had elected other officials who filled their offices with tax eaters who performed no services for the salaries paid to them. But on the other hand it is equally surprising that after witnessing the possibilities of a Kalloch administration, and what actually occurred after Schmitz obtained full control of the city government, that any considerable body of men should exhibit confidence in the workings of any system which the ingenuity of statesmen may provide.


The powers conferred upon the mayor by the charter of 1898 were not extraor- dinary. They gave him the appointment of several members of commissions, but a system of holdovers was provided for which would make it impossible for him to absolutely control any board if the people chose to exercise their power of lim- iting the number of terms of his office. Confidence in the ability of the people to recognize when they were being wronged dictated the provision of the charter relating to the appointment of boards and commissions. The freeholders did not foresee the possibility of a majority of the electors of San Francisco deliberately continuing to support a mayor who almost openly defied public opinion, and who converted his position into a source of personal gain. And yet the second mayor elected under the new organic law proved to be a man of that sort, and whether or not San Franciscans like to consider the fact, it remains one all the same, that the third time he was elected Schmitz received a handsome majority of the suf- frages of his fellow citizens.


A hundred years hence the historian in attempting to understand the conditions existing in San Francisco in the opening years of the nineteenth century will probably be bewildered by the apparently conflicting endeavors of the people to hring about satisfactory results in municipal government. Perhaps, if he is a philosopher, he will have reached the conclusion that it does not much matter about systems. If he is at all acute he will deride the belief that now obtains that people with widely diverging interests can so reconcile them that they will all act together to bring about an ideal state of municipal affairs. He will in the light of San Francisco's experiences be inclined to regard with astonishment the assump- tion that a community whose voting element was composed in large part of voters who had no property to be taxed regarded the problem of municipal government from the same standpoint as the owner of real estate or personal property. He will probably see nothing extraordinary in the persistent disregard by a portion of the electorate of the appeal to run the City in a businesslike manner. He cer- tainly will not wonder that workingmen subordinated every other consideration to that of protecting their direct interests, and, as history is full of instances of the vast influence exercised by the class which thrives upon the blunders of a


The Mayor and the Electorate


The Coming Philosopher's Views


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community, the existence of the parasite known as the "tax eater" will not seem strange to him.


Continuous Struggle for Reform


Perhaps the only thing that will greatly excite his wonderment if he makes a special study of American municipal institutions in the twentieth century, such as Mrs. Green made of "Town Life in the Fifteenth Century," will be the facility with which experiences were forgotten, and the disposition of the people of older cities of the United States to misunderstand and misrepresent the municipality in which more earnest efforts to effect reforms were made than in any other in the Union. That they failed was due to the same cause that has produced the same result in other cities where the inclination to expose deficiencies is not so insistent as it is in San Francisco. The Constitution of 1879 was in response to a strenuous demand for reform which was voiced most loudly in the metropolis of the state, and the long-continued effort to secure a charter was prompted by the belief that supervision and regulation would abate the evils which afflicted most . American communities.


Methods of Preserving Secrecy of Ballot


The activities of the San Francisco reformer of forty years ago asserted them- selves in fields which are only now beginning to be explored in Eastern cities. Before the term Australian ballot had been made familiar to the East, and while that section of the Union was discussing the desirability of a secret ballot which could not be manipulated by the bosses the City was working under an election law which assured the elector that his rights would be respected, and which gave him as complete an opportunity to express his preference as through any means since devised. The uniform ballot adopted in the seventies, and the precautions taken against importuning voters within 100 feet of the polls, the closing of saloons on election days and other devices adopted presented an opportunity for an untram- meled choice which was exercised in such a fashion that the selection of a straight ticket composed of members of one party was almost unheard of, and in 1892, responsive to an agitation in San Francisco, a law was passed which provided as near an approach to the Australian ballot as could be devised while the demand persisted that the bulk of the administrative officials should be subject to popular choice.


During the Eighties, and the greater part of the Nineties, the filling of munici- pal offices was accomplished very simply. The people retained the right to choose from tickets presented to them by committees, or those resulting from a farcical pretense of popular initiative at primaries. These latter were conducted without attempt at regulation and were wholly managed by the bosses. As already related after the Vigilante troubles of 1856 for many years there was absolutely no attempt on the part of those representing the general taxpayer's interest to consult the people respecting the choice of candidates. A few men met together, named a ticket and it was accepted and voted for and was usually successful. That the method was criticized it is hardly necessary to state, but frankness demands the admission that the severest censors of this undemocratic mode of putting forward condidates were the bosses. The element which took no active part in politics, and had only one object in view, namely, to get men who would administer the affairs of the City as cheaply as possible, was glad to have the job of selecting candidates taken away from it. Many who would cheerfully have performed the duty of voting at the primaries refrained from doing so because they were perfectly aware that they would have their labor for their pains.


Adoption of Australian Ballot


362


SCENES IN GOLDEN GATE PARK


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The real or imaginary success attending the method inherited from the Vigi- lantes could not, however, utterly destroy the democratic ideal. As in the case of the police commission, which for many years held office without change, the stand- ing committee or junta of the so called people's party was under suspicion, and there was an uneasy consciousness in the minds of those who upheld it that the system was not entirely in accordance with the genius of American institutions. The suggestion that everything was cut and dried was constantly being made, and finally the objection to nominating cabals became so pronounced that an insistent demand arose for properly regulated primaries which was responded to by the enactment of a law which threw about these initiatory proceedings all the safe- guards provided for the conduct of general elections at which candidates for office were voted for by the electorate.


It was thought that with the passage of the primary law of 1897 the matter of properly selecting candidates had been satisfactorily solved, but a constitutional defect was found which was seized upon by the bosses who imagined the new law might have the effect of abridging their power. The trouble was cured at the ensuing session of the legislature by its author, Senator F. S. Stratton. The amended law was entitled "an act providing for the election of delegates to con- ventions of political parties," and provided that all political parties which at the preceding election had polled at least 3% of the vote of the state, should be entitled to a place on the ballot. The Australian system of balloting had to be modified in order to allow the use of pasters, but in other respects the methods of a general election were adhered to, and the qualifications of electors remained the same. The new law was fiercely assailed as a device to perpetuate existing political parties, and it was predicted that its effect would be to fasten a partisan system of municipal government on the City. This objection was chiefly urged by the advocates of the back room system of nomination who realized that whatever its defects the new primary law would certainly put an end to selection by cabal, and that therefore nonpartisanism in municipal elections in order to win at the polls would have to be real.


The result of the first election under the amended primary law was to greatly discomfit the old time bosses, and to disclose the fact that if the people could be induced to turn out and vote, it would be no difficult matter to defeat the machina- tions of those who had hitherto had their own way at primary elections, wholly because they were allowed to run affairs without interference from the decent elements of society. The election was held on the 8th of August, 1899, and 32,519 votes were cast. This was an immensely greater number than had ever before turned out at a primary election in San Francisco, and exceeded by several thousand the number who had voted at the charter election of the preceding year when the new organic law of the City was adopted. There was an undisguised effort on the part of the bosses big and little to make an exhibition of their power, a fact which served to put the people on their mettle, although it cannot be said that the electorate was fully aroused for the total number of votes cast was only half as many as the 64,820 in the general election of 1896.


There was absolutely no ground for adverse criticism of the operation of this first primary under the Stratton law. It was conducted in an orderly fashion, and no suspicion of fraud or irregularity of any kind attached to it, but when the smoke of battle cleared away, and the results were surveyed, there was an uneasy


An Improved Primary Law


The Primary Law and the Cabals


The Bosses and the New Primary Law


Only & Change of Bosses


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feeling that although the bosses formerly in the ascendency had been shown up as pretenders, the splitting into factions of their opponents had exposed their weak- ness. A new set of bosses, it was feared, would profit by the experience. Indeed there was evidence in the figures of the election which pointed conclusively to the advent of a new boss, Gavin McNab, who, however, was credited with a desire to see the affairs of the municipality conducted in a businesslike fashion, and who later made his boast that the boards of supervisors put forward by him were efficient and honest.


Groups Voting in Primaries


One possibility was made apparent by the workings of the new primary law. It presented an easy opportunity to the people to take the direction of affairs out of the hands of the professional bosses provided they were willing to do the arduous preelection work which these men performed. An analysis of the vote shows that on this occasion at least sufficient interest was aroused to promote the organization of numerous groups within the parties, and it also disclosed that the old bosses, who put forth their most strenuous efforts were unable to rally anything like a sufficient number of voters to make themselves formidable. The divisions were rep- resented by names that were misleading, and in some instances assumed by trickery, but they deceived nobody. Every voter knew under whose auspices the delegates he voted for were chosen. There were eleven different tickets, but some of them received a vote so small as to render them obnoxious to the charge that they were put forward by "piece" clubs. Their designations are interesting and with a few sidelights will indicate the nature of the contest. There was the Central Repub- lican League (anti boss) which polled 5,644 votes as against the Regular repub- lican (Kelly and Crimmins boss ticket) with 4,400 votes. Then there were Citizens' republicans, Reuf republicans and independent republicans with 195, 302 and 279 votes respectively. The Regular democrats led the democratic vote with 10,544, the Rainey democrats polled 4,004 votes, the Buckley lambs 5,116 and the Independent democrats 40. The Socialist Labor party polled 605 votes in this primary, but had no contests within its ranks. There was also an organization with the pretentious title of the people's party which had only 58 votes, and there were 278 scattering.


While the bosses were completely discomfited by the result of the primary the outcome was not regarded with unalloyed satisfaction by the reformers who plainly perceived that the name of the election was a misnomer, for all the candi- dates were chosen in advance by coteries, and the people were no nearer their ideal of direct nomination than before. In the case of the triumphant anti boss element which overthrew Buckley and Rainey, the ticket subsequently put up was named by Gavin McNab, who had engineered the campaign for James D. Phelan. In the democratic convention McNab controlled 307 out of the 354 dele- gates, Rainey securing 31 and Buckley 16. Ten years earlier Jeremiah Lynch, a former state senator, had published a pamphlet which had mercilessly exposed the rascalities of the Blind Boss, but it did not accomplish its purpose because while in possession of the machine Buckley was able to snap his fingers at public opinion. Lynch clearly indicated the secret of Buckley's success. He pointed out that the Boss was in the habit of putting up a good man for mayor and then under the cloak of his respectability foisting into the patronage offices creatures who gave the Boss the appointments with the accompanying "rake off." The new law seemed to be working out in the same way.


Bosses Discomfited by Result of Primaries


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It was noted at the time of this primary that the bosses' candidates received only 13,560 votes out of the total of 32,519 cast, and with some show of reason it was assumed that it would be an easy matter for the better elements, if they would unite, to elect good men whenever they chose to do so. But the difficulty of inducing them to stand together, and the possibility of men primarily acting in the public interest turning bosses was not foreseen. At the very next election Ruef, who had posed as an antagonist of the bosses, had become one himself. He found it impossible to obtain control of the republican party, but the circumstances already described made it easy for him to put the workingmen into the traces and drive them to success. With the rise of the workingmen's party the object for which the primary law was enacted was defeated. It could only prove valuable and effective with two leading regular parties in the field. Under the original conditions the decent elements in the democratic and republican ranks could easily with its aid keep the bosses in check; but when a third party numerically strong came into the political game it resulted in providing the ma- chinery by which the two national parties were able to keep up their local organiza- tions only to be beaten in detail.


One of the most serious evils connected with the boss system, and perhaps more directly responsible for its existence in San Francisco than any other cause, was the use made of the bosses by unscrupulous men with ambitions. We have seen that in the early days Broderick used the power he obtained as a local boss to secure the United States senatorship. His rivals were no more scrupulous in their methods than he was, and manipulation at the bottom was the recognized mode of accom- plishing political results. There was absolutely no spontaneity in the selection of candidates for the highest offices in the gift of the state, and there was no pretense that the people were exercising a choice when the legislature chose a United States senator. Men are prone to forget, and are quite ready to assume that the republic was administered more simply and purely in the days when the great corporations were undreamed of than it is at present. A careful study of Californian political methods in the period when the personal was the predominating element, however, discloses that there were as many scandals connected with the selection of United States senators as to-day, and that bribery of the direct kind, and promises of reward for services rendered were as common as they became later, when it was generally assumed that no man could obtain high office in California except by the consent of the railroad, unless indeed a popular revolt occurred, in which case a man like Stoneman, or Stephen J. White, who refused to accept orders from the corporation, crept between the bars.


Abuses of this sort were so numerous and flagrant that in 1871 a convention of workingmen in San Francisco denounced the system of electing senators in the method prescribed by the constitution and resolved in favor of choice by direct vote of the people. It does not appear that the demand which was renewed by the so-called sand lot convention made any serious impression. No attempt to bring about a change followed, nor was the agitation of the subject renewed until 1892, when a proposition was submitted, which, however, had no other object than to test the sense of the people on the question of direct election of United States sen- ators. It showed an almost unanimous desire for the change, the vote being 187,- 958 for and only 13,342 against the direct method. The overwhelming affirmative


Bosses Profit by Dlvision of Decent Voters


Evil Political Methods Before Cor- poration Ruled


Direct Election of United States Senators Advocated


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vote was undoubtedly due to the agitation begun in San Francisco when Leland Stanford was elected United States senator.


Railroad Betray's A. A. Sargent


The circumstances attending the election of Stanford, who was president of the Southern Pacific, made a deep impression on the public. He was chosen to succeed James T. Farley, whose term expired March 4, 1885. Although the legislature which had elected Farley in 1877 was decidedly anti monopoly in sentiment, and during its entire session had proved a thorn in the side of the corporation, the political machinery of the railroad was so adroitly handled that the corporation had no serious difficulty in sending a serviceable representative to Washington. Farley was from the interior, and was absolutely controlled by Huntington, but there was no desire on his part to continue him in office. It was an open political secret that his place was destined for ex-Senator Sargent, who had suffered a temporary eclipse owing to the anti monopoly upheaval which resulted in the overthrow of the so-called Federal Ring. The railroad satellites throughout the state thought they were working for Sargent, and it is not improbable that he would have been elected, despite the fact that he was regarded with hostility by a section of his party for his subserviency to the corporation. But when the republican caucus met his name was not even mentioned. Stanford was its choice, and when the two houses assembled to ballot he received 79 votes and was elected.


The sudden change caused a great scandal. Charges were openly made that $250,000 had been expended to bring ahout the result, and the price of members was freely quoted. On former occasions when charges of this sort were made an investigation usually followed, but there was no disposition in this case to make an inquiry, and the people were permitted to speculate and criticize as much as they pleased. Criticism took the form of cynical comment rather than that of denuncia- tion, and the opinion was expressed that the railroad had made up its mind to be directly represented in the senate instead of by servants willing to carry out its behests. But beneath the cynicism there was deep resentment which, however, ow- ing to the control of the political machinery, and the refusal of the people to inter- est themselves in primary politics, bore no fruit at the time. The corporation still went on as formerly, and continued to so arrange matters that it made little differ- ence to it which political party won at the polls. No matter what the outcome of the elections, by skilful manipulation a majority of the Railroad Commission and of the State Board of Equalization was assured to it, and it invariably contrived that legislatures should elect, if not servants of the corporation, at least men who would not antagonize its interests.


The events narrated, although participated in by the entire state, were usually directed from the office of the railroad in the City to which the footsteps of the politicians had beaten out a well defined path which the ambitious had to follow or renounce chances of success. And it was the local bosses who cleared away the underbrush and made the trail clear. Political storms occasionally arose, and there were some wrecks, but as a rule the wind blew pretty steadily from Fourth and Townsend streets, where Stanford sat in state and received the willing and anxious or turned them over to his chief political manipulators. The latter, whose business it was to keep track of all that was doing, kept the local bosses well in hand, and considered the municipal situation strictly from the standpoint of its relation to the more important matter of controlling the legislature and the two bodies which touched it so closely. It was believed in some quarters that a restraining influence


Absolute Domination of Politics by Railroad


Scandals Attend Election of Stanford


A STREET IN CHINATOWN, BEFORE THE FIRE


Y


A GROUP OF CHILDREN IN CHINATOWN


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SAN FRANCISCO


was exercised over the bosses in shaping their taxation policy, but the evidence points with tolerable conclusiveness to the fact that the dollar limit was adhered to by the manipulators because it was regarded the bit of sweetening calculated to catch the cautious property owner, who during the Eighties still tenaciously ad- hered to the belief that public expenditures for any other purpose than mere admin- istration opened the door to abuse and made municipal government a menace rather than a benefit.




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