USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume II > Part 35
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When the new charter was put into effect there was a pronounced belief that the creation of the civil service system for which it made provision would eradicate all the troubles that had attended the administration of the municipal government during previous years. It was thought that the selection of subordinates under a Vol. II-16
Neighborhood Improvement Clubs
Civil Service Law in Operation
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merit system of appointment would work a revolution in the office personnel, and completely destroy the power of the bosses, thus insuring greater efficiency, at the same time promoting economy. It does not appear that these results were achieved during the period between the adoption of the charter and the great fire of 1906. The merit system was first applied in 1900 when forty examinations were held and 2,064 applicants examined, and there were regular examinations thereafter. Charges of evasion of the spirit of the law were frequently made after the election of Eugene Schmitz in 1901, and in many instances they were well founded. Whether civil service selections succeeded in giving the City a better class of employes is still to be determined, but there can be little doubt concerning the soundness of the view that its successful operation would impair the power of the bosses. Under the operation of this provision of the charter including the members of the police and fire departments who came in with the instrument on December 31, 1911, there were 3,019 civil service employes, 2,546 of whom re- ceived their appointments after examination. In addition several hundred tem- porary clerks, mechanics and laborers were awarded positions by the commission.
If the object of the reformers who advocated the merit system of selection was to take away from the bosses the power to reward followers by giving them positions at the public expense it was measurably accomplished. The system is now well established, and the exercise of influence at the polls has ceased to be a considerable factor in the appointment of men to subordinate positions. But Ruef and Schmitz, and subsequently McCarthy, found many ways of evading the spirit of the charter while apparently complying with its letter. The demonstra- tion that the system has proved economical is yet to be made. Perhaps it never will be. The growth of the City; the increasing demand for conveniences and improvements formerly unthought of, and other causes have enormously swollen expenditures since 1900, and it is practically impossible to make comparisons. Per- haps the latter may be undesirable in view of the undoubted fact that selection on the merit plan is popular, even those who stand ready to interpose practical obstacles to its working being compelled to accept it as sound in theory, and the only mode which can be successfully pursued under a democratic form of government in which the autocratic exercise of power in a municipality will not be tolerated, even though foreign experience has shown its efficiency.
The difficulty of making comparisons of the cost of city government at various periods is accentuated by the failure to adhere to any consistent method of public accounting. From the beginning of the municipality down to the present, there has never been a time when the most accurate statistician could determine whether the rate of taxation was higher or lower at one time than another. The nominal tax rate is easy of ascertainment, and it is possible to find the assessed valuation, but only the individual taxpayer can tell whether the burden was more oppressive at one time than another. In 1860 the assessed valuation of the City was $35,- 967,499, and the tax rate $2.25; ten years later the value was $116,375,988 and the municipal rate $1.98; in 1880 the assessed value was $253,520,326, and the tax rate $1.57, and in 1890 the assessed value was $291,583,668 and the tax rate $1. The year after the charter went into effect assessable property to the value of $+10,155,304 was found in the City, and the tax rate was for city purposes $1.27 and 49.8 cents for state purposes. As the population of the City between 1890 and 1900 had only increased from 233,959 to 342,782 it is obvious that the addi-
Impossibility of Com- paring Cost of Govern- ment
Valne of Merit System Undeter- mined
TON
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DON LUNE ANTONO ANIVELLO
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Monument to California Volunteers in Span- ish- American War, Van Ness Avenue and Market Street
Monument to First Spanish Governor of California, in Burial Ground of Mission Dolores
Donohue Fountain, Market Street
Robert Louis Stevenson Monument, Ports- mouth Square
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tion to property values was out of proportion to the growth of the inhabitants of the City. It may have represented a true increase to the extent indicated, but it is more than probable that the assessor under the pressure of the growing needs of the community had enlarged his roll sufficiently to meet the expanding demands of the various departments of the municipality for funds to carry on their operations.
Whether these latter were carried on economically or conducted extravagantly no accountant or expert could possibly tell from the data at hand. All the citizen could learn from the information furnished by officials was that expenditures were constantly increasing. In this particular the charter made absolutely no attempt to provide reformation. The inherited system of auditing was grafted on the new instrument, and as that simply imposed on an official known by the name of auditor, the duty of deciding whether a demand on the treasury was created in conformity with law, there was absolutely no real check. If the expenditure was duly authorized the auditor had no other recourse than to allow it; he could not, or at least did not, go behind the returns, and indeed there was no machinery provided which would have enabled him to do so. As a result of this loose method, which for years had been extolled as a safeguard of the treasury, there was con- stant suspicion and many accusations of loose and corrupt expenditure ; but nothing came of the charges, as it would have been impossible to prove any of them simply because the evidence could not be obtained. The only definite knowledge con- cerning the administration of public affairs was that conveyed to the people when the figures of the constantly swelling budget were announced. They knew that the assessment of 1900-01 of $410,155,304 had produced or called for a tax amounting to $6,665,023, and that in the fiscal year 1905-06 the assessment had been increased to $524,000,000 and the taxes to $8,666,960, and that the amounts raised by taxation direct, and from other sources such as licenses and fees, which nearly reached two million dollars in the last named year, had been expended assumedly for their benefit. And they further knew that the rate of municipal taxation had been increased during the five years to $1.164, but the wherefore of the increase could only be guessed.
A provision of the charter devolved upon the mayor the duty of reporting upon the various departments of the municipality, but it happened that no machinery was devised by which he could obtain independent sources of information. As a result the messages of the mayors under the new charter retained the same per- functory character as those under the Consolidation Act. Being based solely on the data furnished by the various city officials they merely consisted of a setting forth in a condensed shape of the figures or statements thus obtained, and rarely took on the form of criticism. Occasionally when the public inclination to censure became pronounced the chief executive would constitute himself a defender of the department under suspicion of extravagance, or worse, and attempt to dispel the uneasy feeling of the taxpayer that his money was not being properly expended. At different periods prior to the fire of 1906, pressure had been brought to induce the municipality to thoroughly reform its system of accounting. A movement was started in the Commonwealth Club in 1903 to effect that object, and it was taken up by public accountants, but it made no progress during the administration of Schmitz; and although tentative efforts in the direction have since been made, in 1912 the community had not been thoroughly impressed with the necessity for a change.
No Proper Check on Expenditure
Attempt to Secure Syste- matic Public Accounting
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Objection to Double Board of Supervisors
Evasion of "One-twelfth" Act
Although it took the people of San Francisco nineteen years to make up their mind that a charter was needed to take the place of the Consolidation Act, they were not inactive during the entire period in the matter, but resorted freely to the amending power which the Constitution of 1879 made easy of exercise by the people. Many of the amendments to the constitution adopted during the Eighties and Nineties were inspired by San Francisco demands, and some were needed to clear away the objections to making a change in the municipal laws of the City. By means of an amendment the provision requiring double boards of supervisors in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants was eliminated in 1894. This proviso was at one time regarded as the best feature of Hager's section which entrusted to freeholders the duty of charter making. It was hailed by the reformers as a safeguard, but previous experience in the early history of the City had made clear that a double board was a broken reed to lean upon. The common council, consisting of a board of aldermen and an assistant board established by the act of 1850, unless the advocates of the consolidation scheme carried through six years later grossly exaggerated the facts, proved a stimulus to extravagance rather than a check on expenditure. Whether deservedly or undeservedly the bicameral plan was in bad odor and the amendment of 1896 which permitted San Francisco to frame a charter with a single board of supervisors paved the way to getting a new charter. The amendment adopted in the same year exempting cities desirous of acting under freeholders' charters from the operation of general laws concerning municipal affairs also promoted the feeling in favor of the acceptance of a new organic law.
There were other amendments adopted chiefly at the instance of San Francisco, during the Nineties, which indicate the uncertainty in the public mind concerning the desirability of the Draconian enforcement of laws designed to regulate ex- penditure and to curb extravagance. The legislature of 1877-78 had passed an act which required the departments of the municipal government to apportion the appropriation of amounts to be disbursed by them so that they would last through- out the year. It was generally known as the one-twelfth act, and applied solely to San Francisco. For the first few years after its enactment it was lived up to after a fashion, although methods of evading it were frequently resorted to, such as the payment of one class of claims out of the fund provided for some other purpose. This dishonesty succeeded in breaking down respect for the law, and finally departments boldly disregarded it until under pressure of public opinion an auditor refused to allow the illegal claims. Suit was brought against the City unavailingly, but an amendment was submitted by the legislature and voted upon in 1900 by which the claimants, who were put forward in the light of innocent sufferers, obtained relief, and the anomaly of the people of the sovereign State of California condoning the infraction of its own laws was presented.
Voting Machines Tried and Abandoned
Although the California election laws as early as 1875 had been framed with especial regard for the preservation of the secrecy of the ballot, and with the view of making fraud as difficult as possible, and later had adopted all the safeguards which the Australian ballot system is supposed to possess, San Franciscans were eager to try the virtues of the voting machine. There were provisions in the con- stitution requiring amendment before the desire could be gratified and the legisla- ture submitted one which would have accomplished the purpose had it not been rejected by a decisive vote. That was in 1896, and it required six more years of
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argument to convince the people of the interior that if the cities really wished to discard the old-fashioned methods of casting the ballot that they should be per- mitted to do so. In 1902 an amendment was adopted by a vote of 83,966 for to 43,127 against. In the election of 1896 the number voting against the law facili- tating the use of the machine was 158,093 and only 63,620 in favor of the inno- vation. The large vote against in 1896 was due to the suspicion that the adoption of the amendment was favored by jobbers who sought to impose their devices on the public, and it was in a measure justified by an exposure made at a later period which pointed directly to a corrupt bargain with members of the legislature en- gineered by one of the bosses. Subsequent to the enabling amendment machines were introduced and made use of in the City, but they were destroyed in the fire of 1906 and were not replaced. There was an opinion prevalent after the third election of Schmitz in 1905, that the machines had been tampered with, but no evidence was ever adduced to support it. The accusation was probably caused by the surprise occasioned by the result of the contest in question which seemed to have been shared by Ruef as fully as the general public. That no further attempt to a machine voting has been made since is due rather to the difficulty occasioned by the multiplication of persons and propositions to be voted upon than to distrust of the new device.
Among the numerous amendments the citizens of San Francisco were called upon to deal with in common with the voters of the rest of the state was one granting the suffrage to women. The vote was taken in 1896, and resulted in the defeat of the amendment, 137,099 casting their ballots against and only 110,358 in favor of the change. The test was not preceded by an active campaign. In the City a few meetings were addressed by speakers whose names were familiar as advocates of the change. At that time the women's clubs organized for social purposes had not attained proportions of consequence, and the movement lacked organization. In the campaign which resulted in the adoption of the amendment in 1910 there was a marked change. The energetic elements in the clubs arrayed themselves on the side of suffrage, numerous meetings were held which were ad- dressed by speakers of both sexes, but the amendment failed to receive a majority in San Francisco. The boon sought by the women would not have been secured if it had not been for the strong support which it received in Los Angeles and the interior which overcame the adverse vote of a majority of 14,000 against in the metropolis.
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One of the provisions of the Constitution of 1879 most bitterly antagonized was that providing for the taxation of mortgages. It was contended by those opposing the new organic law that its effect would be to impose double taxation on the owners of property, and that the system would operate to exclude outside capital from investment in the state. The major part of the opposition came from San Francisco, but the interior was strongly in favor of that particular section. After the constitution had become effective it was seen that the charge of double taxation was groundless, but with the development of the southern part of the state, particularly Los Angeles, the idea that it tended to exclude capital grew in strength. San Francisco which from pioneer days had been almost wholly dependent upon local financial resources, after the first flurry of opposi- tion was over, adapted itself to the new system, and apparently took little interest in the renewed efforts to strike out the mortgage tax provision. In 1896 an at-
Woman Suffrage Defeated in 1896
The Mortgage Tax Law
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tempt was made to repeal the mortgage tax law which proved unsuccessful. Ten years later an effort was made to meet the views of those who were convinced that the mortgage tax law was injurious to the development of the state by an amendment which permitted borrowers to contract to pay the tax, but it did not effect its purpose. The amendment received less than a hundred thousand votes of 312,030 cast at the election. In November, 1908, the attempt to repeal was repeated and was defeated by a narrow margin, the vote being 90,061 for repeal and 90,896 against in a total vote of 386,597. In 1910 the long agitation resulted in success. The amendment for repeal was resubmitted and carried, the vote being 118,927 for and 79,435 against.
The Initiative in San Francisco
In 1902 the state constitution was amended to permit the inhabitants of cities to submit amendments to their charters by petition. Prior to that date the charter had been amended so as to permit the voters of the City to initiate ordinances upon petition of 15 per cent of the number of electors casting ballots at the last preceding election. When the required number of petitioners signed, it became the duty of the supervisors to order an election. It was freely predicted that the result of the privilege would be incessant change, but this fear was not justified, although there have been some innovations of doubtful value in consequence of the facility with which propositions may be introduced. That the initiative has elements of danger in it owing to the difficulty of getting out a full vote when elections are numerous will be inferred from the fact that a proposition placed before the people in 1900 by petition, which provided for the legitimatization of pool selling was nearly carried, the vote being 22,419 for and 25,347 against. The near success of the gambling element in this election was due to the fact that the movement in favor of permitting pool selling was well organized, while the opposition was confined chiefly to the columns of the newspapers and the Ministerial Union. Later invocations of the power of the initiative have produced varying results which will be referred to in describing the events occurring after the fire. It is significant, however, that this first effort was made prior to the election of Schmitz, and the idea suggests itself that the looseness of thought respecting what is called an "open town," had already reached an advanced stage of development before the work- ingman's mayor sought to make San Francisco the Paris of America.
Undoubtedly the most important of the innovations of the charter adopted in 1898 was that providing for the acquisition and operation of public utilities. James D. Phelan during his first administration as mayor had urged this policy, and the freeholders embodied it in the new organic law. As the reader of these pages is aware there had been many earnest efforts to acquire a municipal water supply, all of which, however, failed, not because there was no effective mode of bringing about that result, but rather on account of the hostility of the people to the Spring Valley Company in whose interest it was assumed every proposition that the City should purchase and operate its own plant was supposed to have been made. About the time of the adoption of the charter this fear had in a measure been allayed by the belief that a supply wholly independent of Spring valley could be obtained by resorting to the Sierra, and it was assumed that by providing the necessary legal sanction for acquiring and operating a municipal water plant, there would be no difficulty whatever attending the creation of a system which would meet the requirements of the metropolis for an indefinite period. The fact that the Spring Valley Water Company had practically monopolized the available reser-
Acquisition of Public Utilities
GENERAL VIEW OF MIDWINTER EXPOSITION, IN GOLDEN GATE PARK, 1894
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voir sites on the peninsula was not wholly lost sight of, but its importance was minimized.
There was no ambiguity in the provision respecting the acquirement and opera- tion of public utilities, and the discussion of the policy or impolicy of municipali- ties owning and operating public service corporations had been carried on for some time in the newspapers, but in 1898 the subject had not yet become one of burn- ing importance. It did not reach that stage until after the sale of the Market street system of street railways to the Baltimore syndicate in the fall of 1901. Prior to that year there were a few active advocates of the construction and opera- tion of the Geary street railroad whose franchise would expire in 1907, but their position and number did not have sufficient weight to move any of the parties striving for control of the municipal government to declare in favor of the City owning and operating a railway until the alien holding organization which bought out the local capitalists came in conflict with its employes. The friction produced by these labor disputes gained a large support for the policy of municipal owner- ship of other utilities than the supply of water and culminated finally, after several failures, in securing the necessary two-thirds vote to authorize the issuance of bonds, to enable the City to enter upon the construction of the Geary street rail- way. The vicissitudes attending the carrying out of the enterprise will be described later.
Another movement closely touching the administration of the municipality was inaugurated in San Francisco in 1904. There had been discussion of a desultory character concerning the desirability of changing the taxation methods of the state, and efforts had been made to substitute for the then mode of taxing the railways a tax on the gross receipts of such corporations. An amendment to that effect had been submitted by the legislature many years earlier, and was rejected by the people, who were justifiably suspicious, as the rate proposed was extremely low, and the difficulties of raising it in the event of the amount produced by the tax proving inadequate being almost insurmountable. In 1904, at the instance of Pro- fessor C. C. Plehn of the University of California, the Commonwealth Club, which had been formed in the previous year, took up the matter, and assisted in creating an opinion favorable to the change. After repeated discussions and investigations made under the guidance of Plehn, who was acting in an official capacity, the club finally adopted a recommendation in favor of "the abandonment of the attempt to tax all forms of property for the support of each and all departments of govern- ment by a single and uniform system." It also favored the abandonment of the attempt to support both the state and local governments from taxes derived from the same sources of revenue, and urged the separation of state from municipal systems of taxation. It required several years to effect the change which was not accomplished until the people were thoroughly assured that the railroads would not escape their share of the burden of supporting the government.
In this resume of the main political factors operating in San Francisco during the period described it has been impossible to even glance at the mass of ordinances enacted by the successive boards of supervisors. They constitute a vast body of regulative matter filling pages, and which, if gathered and printed would require a much larger space than will be devoted in these volumes to an effort to note the changes which have affected the growth of the City, and the manner and life of its people. The charter with its various amendments and brief references to de-
Construction of Municipal Street Rail- way Author- ized
Agitation for Separa- tion of State and Munici- pal Taxation
Countless Regulations and Ordi- nances
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bated provisions is in itself a formidable book. There are numerous volumes containing the opinions of various city attorneys. Year after year the operations of the different departments of the municipality have been set forth in bulky tomes which few read when they were first issued, and from which only an interest- ing note can now and then be extracted, but whose financial intricacies would defy the efforts of the most accomplished expert to unravel. From them may be gathered a list of the officials who have served and those who have betrayed the interests of the City, but the acutest critic would be unable in nine cases out of ten to separate the good from the bad. And if the latter feat could be achieved no benefit would be derived from its performance. Men play their little part which in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases is cut out for them by circumstances. They are the creatures of their environment and their sins oftener than otherwise are those of the whole community. No one can study the history of San Francisco without reaching that conclusion; nor can the conviction be escaped that if a reformation of municipal political methods is to be effected it must be preceded by a reformation of the people, not merely of the cities but of the country and the nation.
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