USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 20
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still delayed. It is not too much to claim for the federation that in the realiza- tion of this consummation it has materially helped.
A reform of another sort, in process at the same time, was being attempted by the Federated Council of One Hundred, working in conjunction with the New Ilaven Pastors' Union. It illustrated how the work of this society was bound to reach beyond New Haven. The Pastors' Union had taken the lead in the discovery that the government of New Haven County, and the manage- ment of its affairs, were not such as to meet the approval of sensible and moral citizens. The pastors believed this a matter in which the voice of the laymen should be heard, and had laid the facts before the representative citizens included in the Council of One Hundred. The result was a "Communication from the New Haven Civic Federation's Council of One Hundred and the New ITaven Pastors' Union Concerning the Government of New Haven County," issued in September, 1910. It revealed many things which might not be expected to meet the approval of good citizens, in the manner ef administering the affairs of New Haven County. Some of them were news to a good many citizens, though they had to admit that they were, as voters in the county, in part responsible for them. It cannot be said that there was any immediate revolution in county affairs as a result of this report. But there have not been lacking, in the years sinee, evidences that the people of New Haven County were set to thinking by its statements. Some other deliverances with which the federation has since followed it have served to keep the matter in the publie mind, and some valuable changes in county processes are pending, as a result, it may confidently be said, of the agitation.
One specific presentation, immediately following in November, 1910, was the "Report on County Affairs by the Special Commission of the Council of One Hundred." This touched on certain phases of New Haven County's system of business and political management more definitely than did the previous document. It was the attempt to present, as fairly and free from animus as possible, county conditions as they were. What was presented, to be sure, was bound to be taken by certain politicians, particularly the county commissioners and their creators, as personal. but the investigators were unconcerned about that. The effect of the report was to show in a clear light the lack of effective- ness and economy in New Haven's present county system, and to suggest what the citizens ought to do about improving it. As has been said, they are thinking about the matter.
The following January. as a result of some very careful work by the Tene- ment House Committee, of which Rev. J. Edward Newton was chairman, an excellent report on "Improved Housing for Wage Earners" was presented. The survey on which this was based had been made by skilled investigators, who went through over one thousand New Haven apartments. It embodied some very specific recommendations for the improvement of the undesirable conditions fonnd, several of which have since been worked out not only in progressive local ordinances but in state laws.
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UNITED STATES POSTOFFICE AND COURTHOUSE, NEW HAVEN
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In April, 1912, the Committee on Buildings, Streets and Shade Trees shaped some careful and expert observations and findings into a report on "The Plant- ing and Care of Street and Highway Trees." It was a timely and needed reminder to those responsible for the trees of New Haven. The elms, once the city's pride, had been suffered to fall vietims, in great measure, to their myriad enemies. The congestion in the city's center was crowding out trees. New Haven needed tree protection in its administration. It is not too much to credit the move of the Civic Federation largely with the appointment of a eity forester and the adoption of a consistent and scientific plan for the care of trees and the reforestration of the city, which already shows tangible results.
New Haven owes a great deal to the federation for its vigorous work in the elimination of the mosquito and fly pest in its borders. The marshes along West River and around Mill River and Morris Cove had for generations been the source of a plentiful supply of mosquitoes, while the whole city abounded in fly breeding places. The federation ably seconded the work of the Board of Health, in conjunction with the nation-wide campaign against the insect pests. Much was done to enlighten the people by a report on "Mosquito Con- trol" published in March, 1913. Soon after this the State of Connecticut took np a broad work of mosquito combat. All in all, the result has been a gradual reduction of the mosquito and fly menace. along with a sure education of the people, which will have the result of keeping it down. In this result the fed- eration has been. so far as New Haven is eoneerned, a pioneer.
More specifie and technical was an attempt at civie betterment suggested in "A Survey of a New Haven District, " a doenment issued by the federation in April, 1913. It was by expert investigators, and included a presentation of the social, moral and economic phases of the life of the people in a repre- sentative section of the city. It was largely of value to the workers of the federation, but it must have been highly suggestive to a great many New Haven people who read it. of ways in which they could help their city. It is illustrative of the thoroughness of the work which some of the departments of the federation have sought to do.
Another report on "Housing Conditions in New Haven" followed the pre- liminary one, the latter in October, 1913. It had been prepared by Carl Arono- vici, director of the Bureau of Social Research of New England, for the section on Tenement House Conditions. It was technical, but plain. Its faets were tabulated. The conditions found were revealed by figures, and in some cases by illustrations. It should be said, however, that this report was not made publie until its findings had been laid before the proper authorities, thus avoid- ing the advertising without purpose of "New Haven's shame. " as the committee expressed it. And in the year which the committee held the report before publishing it, three of its principal recommendations were adopted : A tenement house inspector was appointed under the Health Board; a state housing asso- ciation was formed: amendments to the laws and ordinances were secured.
To the report. as published, were appended the Connectient statutes eon-
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verning tenement houses, as amended in 1913; a statement of New Haven's health officer as to the report of the first year of tenement house inspection; and a presentation of the plans of the Improved Housing Association of New Haven, with a sketch of the first houses which it was building under them. It appears to have been a commendable showing of immediate results of an important survey.
"Living Conditions Among Negroes in the Ninth Ward, New Haven" was a thesis written in his course by Rev. Charles W. Burton, Yale School of Religion, 1913. It was the result of some thorough, systematie, very valuable study, and though conducted independently of the federation, that organization did New Haven a great service by publishing it. Citizens thoroughly conversant with conditions among his race in New Haven have repeatedly praised this presentation of their case by Mr. Burton, who is now a successful pastor in Macon, Ga.
One of the most thorough pieces of work done by any department of the federation was " A Study of the Problem of Girl Delinqueney in New Haven," by the Committee on Social and Industrial Conditions, of which the Rev. Robert (. Denison was chairman. The work, of course, was done by a trained investi- gator under direction and employment of the committee. With facts, with figures, with the most illuminating charts, it presented some very fundamental truths as to a condition of which New Haven needed to know. While no alarmist document, it did warn New Haven of certain steps it must take if it would arrest a very serious tendeney among its younger generation, and gave a basis for some very valuable work, some of which, there is reason to believe, has since been started. The report was printed in March, 1915. In summing up, Miss Mabel A. Wiley, the investigator, made certain specifie recommendations, most of which concerned the improvement of court methods in dealing with the delin- quent girl, and of the after eare of the delinquent following the court stage. The most important of these were a special court for the trying of these cases. and a detention home for girls. These have since been adequately covered by the establishment of the Children's Building at 291 Orange Street.
For it may readily be granted that it was an outgrowth of the revelations of this report, though of course other canses contributed, that there was pre- sented to New Haven, in the spring of 1917, this completed Children's Building. It was a remodeled private residence, the gift to the city of Mrs. Perey T. Walden and her sister, Mrs. Frank D. Berrien. Here, in a building admirably equipped for the service, juvenile delinquents of both sexes, without being so labeled, are detained and treated in the most effective way for what ails them. Here the Children's Court is held, and disciplinary schools for both boys and girls are conducted. It is one of the most effective ageneies for the meeting of its juvenile delinquency problems possessed by any eity of New Haven's size anywhere. In effect it is a home, inviting and humanly attractive, and those who pass under its influence are permanently helped without realizing that they have been under restraint.
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The Civic Federation of New Haven takes justifiable pride in one of its latest achievements, the survey of the New Haven County Jail. This was undertaken in 1916, also for the section on Social and Industrial Conditions. The com- mittee actually doing the work consisted of Dr. John E. Lane, chairman ; Mrs. Charles J. Bartlett, Clarence W. Bronson, Mrs. Robert A. Crosby and John Phillips Street. There was an accompanying supplementary report on the same subject by two experts, O. F. Lewis, Ph. D., general secretary of the Prison Association of New York, and Hastings Il. Hart, LL. D., director of the Child Helping Department. Russell Sage Foundation.
Few county jails are anything like ideal institutions; New Haven's was at that time very much the opposite. There was no attempt to gloss over its glaring defects. They were shown up as they were. The findings of both the local committee and the experts condemned the jail in dispassionate but unsparing terms as constitutionally impossible. There was not so much a suggestion of blame for the management as there was a plain showing to the people of the county of their duty radically to change a system and its management. and as soon as might be to reconstruct their jail on an entirely different plan. The outcome was the appointment, by the representatives of the county in the General Assembly of 1917, of a commission to investigate further the jail conditions, with a view to suggesting a material change. The presentation of the report was too overwhelming to be disregarded. There is good prospect that in results this will be one of the most valuable of the services of the federation.
Three documents were published by the federation in 1917, each the valuable record of constructive work. The first was another "Health Survey of New Haven," the second a "Voters' Bulletin" and the third a timely treatise on the "Servant Problem."
Such are a few of the apparent fruits of the Civic Federation of New Haven in something less than a decade of its career, with particular attention to those phases upon which its published documents have made report. They fail, of course, to show much of the less conspicuous but hardly less valuable of the constant service of this effectual organization of the earnest, forward-looking men and women of New Haven. The federation functions regularly through sections of Sanitation, Recreation, Education, Legislation, Honsing, Municipal Research, Social and Industrial Conditions, Household Economies, Buildings, Streets and Shade Trees, Finance, Membership, Protection of Minors, Lectures and Popular Amusements. Each section is well officered and has a good working committee, and its work each year becomes more practical and effectual. The present officers are :
President-Charles J. Bartlett, M. D. First Vice President-Thomas W. Farnam. Second Vice President-Wilson IT. Lee. Third Vice President-Patrick F. O'Meara. Treasurer and Acting Secretary-Donald A. Adams.
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Members at Large-Mrs. Percy T. Walden, Charles F. Kent, Mrs. John C. Schwab, Charles S. De Forest, Miss Lina M. Phipps.
Section chairmen, in the order of sections given above-Henry B. Ferris, E. Hermann Arnold, M. D., Mrs. Perey T. Walden, Harry W. AAsher, Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers. Eliot Watrous, Rev. Robert C. Denison, Mrs. Wilder Tileston, Walter O. Filley, Victor M. Tyler, Livingston W. Cleaveland, Frank A. Corbin, Frederick 1. Kingsbury.
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The New Haven Chamber of Commerce makes the undisputed claim to be, with not more than one or two exceptions, the oldest organization of its kind in the country. It was on the evening of April 7, 1794, so the record runs, that it was organized. Just where that meeting was held the seribe neglected to note. The meetings for the first few years seem to have been occasional-being, aside from the stated annual meeting, no doubt at the call of the president. There were at least a few of the faithful, for we are told that during the first twenty years of its existence "stated and special meetings were frequently held, and only once-in 1801-was there a quorum lacking at an annual meeting." How- ever. the native hne of resolution with which the organization was launched in 1794 must have paled a little, for the seribe relates that "from 1821. at which time Mr. Gilbert Totten was elected president and Timothy Dwight secretary, there was a revival of interest, and during the next eighteen years annual meet- ings were held quite regularly." This may not be interpreted as tremendously prodnetive work, even during the years of the revival. There was a boom before the end of the period, for at the adjourned annual meeting held April 1, 1835, twenty-five candidates were elected to membership. Among the number are men- tioned Thomas R. Trowbridge, Harry Prescott and Edwin Marble. At the next annual meeting Harry Prescott was elected secretary, sneceeding Leonard A. Dag- gett, who had hell the office for ten years. Mr. Daggett, we are told, began the record of that meeting by giving the list of the newly elected members, and then added : "What was done after this I leave to my worthy successor to record." "Mr. Prescott," writes the narrator. " proved himself to be indeed a worthy sue- cessor.' For forty-eight years he faithfully served the chamber as keeper of its records."
But the secretary's faithfulness was uot shared by all the members. Even his records show that after 1839 there was a period of sad falling off in interest. For twelve years in succession. it appears, the annual meetings were legally warned, but no quorum appeared to transact the business. The secretary remained at his post through it all. And after each of these lamentable failures he would dispassionately record, following the date in each case: "Annual meet- ing warned, but only the secretary being present. the meeting adjourned. II. Pres- cott. secretary."
This lone fidelity had its fruits in time. On Tuesday evening, May 14, 1872, he was able to record a real me ting. Members and others in favor of a reorgani-
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zation of the chamber met at the mayor's office-Henry G. Lewis being mayor at that time. The mayor. Prof. Johnson T. Platt, Edwin S. Wheeler and the seere- tary are mentioned as the reorganization committee. They proceeded to notify all members and request their presence at the meeting to be held at the same place on the following Friday evening. The work of the committee is said to have been prompt, and we have proof that it was successful in the fact that at a special meeting held the following day at the office of Atwater, Wheeler & Company fifty-seven of "our best citizens" were elected to membership. And still another special meeting eame the next day at the Yale National Bank, which accepted eleven more returning to the fold.
Some serious happenings had taken place in the lapse of annual meetings, as the following preamble and resolution, adopted at the adjourned meet- ing, held on Friday evening, May 7, attests :
"Whereas, vacancies having occurred since the last annual election, by the death of the president, vice president and treasurer, and it being necessary and important that said offices should be filled, therefore,
"Resolved, that this meeting do now proceed to the choice of a president, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Ezra Hotchkiss, Esq., of a vice president, to fill the vaeaney caused by the death of Enos A. Prescott, Esq .. and of a treasurer, to fill the vaeaney cansed by the death of Henry Hotchkiss, Esq."
The meeting then proceeded to elect as president, Thomas R. Trowbridge; as first vice president, James E. English ; as second vice president, Johnson T. Platt : as recording secretary. Harry Prescott : as corresponding seeretary, Edwin S. Wheeler; as treasurer, Wilbur F. Day.
"At this meeting, besides the newcomers"-this must be from the faithful Secretary Prescott's reliable record-"there were some who, like Mr. Trow- bridge and Mr. Preseott, had been members of the chamber 'in the old days before the war.' " But a later historian, probably John Currier Gallagher, who was secretary for eighteen years previous to March 27, 1909, and who collected the seattering records of those earlier years, added: "Of this num- ber but one is now living. Mr. Edwin Marble is the only one of the 450 members of the chamber who can date his membership previous to the reorganization in 1872." This was written about 1909.
On the day following that reorganization in 1872, which day was May 15, the chamber, at a special meeting, accepted a resohition incorporating "The Chamber of Commerce of New Haven." This was promptly passed by the General Assembly and approved by the governor-he was Marshall Jewell of Hartford-on June 11. At the meeting of May 15 a revision of the old "bye- laws" was adopted and a committee was appointed to procure the corporate seal now in use.
The modern life of the Chamber of Commerce substantially dates from that time. The organization then came into some conception of what such a body of men can do for a city like New Haven. There was mueh to the credit of the chamber in the years from 1872 to 1909, though the record of some of
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it was not fully kept. Mr. Gallagher resened some of the salient features of the chamber's work in that period. Of it he says modestly :
"The chamber has contributed its share of work in the establishment of the United States Weather Signal Station here; in the freeing and rebuilding of Tomlinson's bridge; in the improvement of the harbor; in the relief of the yellow fever sufferers in the South; in devising the plan for permanent street pavements ; in the annexation of East Haven; in the consolidation of our munici- pal governments; in the establishment of our city park system, and in the organization of the Naval Militia."
Of these years much more might be written. They were years of earnest work; they were productive years. The chamber was led by good men. Such representative citizens of New Haven as Wilson H. Lee, Hon. Rollin S. Wood- ruff and Gen. Edward E. Bradley-to mention a few out of many-were its presidents. But the real awakening had not come to New Haven, and the chamber, though it helped toward it, did not serve as a rude disturber of New HIaven's conservatism. The spirit which prevailed is well illustrated in the last decade of the period. New Ilaven was doing pretty well, was progressing and prospering, they said; and they spoke the truth. There was nobody to answer in any aggressive way the question, why start anything ?
But there were those, especially in the opening years of the century, who fretted at the chamber's lack of aggressiveness. It might, they insisted, serve as a mighty welder and wielder of the united influence of the men of New Haven. It might be the ageney through which they could do great things. Subsequent events have shown that they were right.
Perhaps it was not with the clear thought of a new era in mind that the chamber, on March 28. 1909, elected Colonel Isaae M. Ullman president. He was known as a leader in New Haven polities. He had demonstrated his ability to marshal men who would be marshaled, within his own party lines. But some questioned, though they kept their questionings largely to themselves, whether he was qualified to unite such a force of positive men, worth while, as New Haven ought to furnish to make its Chamber of Commerce a constructive force for the highest good of the city.
But looking back now to that election of officers in March, 1909, New Haven has to accord to it the standing of another organization of the chamber. It marked a new era in its work, and a new era for New Haven. Along with Colonel Ullman were elected HIon. Eli Whitney as first vice president ; George II. Seranton, second vice president ; Charles E. Julin, secretary: Charles W. Scranton, treasurer; John Currier Gallagher, George F. Burgess. James Hill- house, Charles S. DeForest. W. Perry Curtiss, directors. The first named, Mr. Gallagher, had been the secretary for eighteen years previous, and was one of the most popular and respected citizens of New Haven. In all, it was a strong body of citizens, well qualified to undertake the new task to which they were called. The appointment of Mr. Julin was the beginning of the employment of a paid secretary to give practically all his time to the work of
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the chamber. He has been its secretary ever since, and though sometimes the credit for achievement is given by the undiscerning to others in more conspicuous office, those who know accord him much of the praise.
It was a distinctly go-forward plan which Colonel Ullman at once set in motion. The first task, naturally, was to get the men. The chamber then had a membership of a little over 500. An aggressive campaign, inaugurated at once, raised it in two years to more than 1,200. In 1917 it had grown to upwards of 1,400, and was still rising. Long before this the chamber had affiliated with itself, and counted in its membership, the Business Men's Association and the Publicity Club. It had the men, and the strength of the union was such as to make sure that others would come as fast as might be. It has for almost a decade been the proper thing to belong to the Chamber of Commerce.
The membership held partly because it was set at work. There were things to be done, and the leaders were wise enough to know that an organization, like a man, grows by exercise. The aim of most chambers of commerce, merely to make the city bigger, was overlooked. The big task the New Haven chamber made its own was to make New Haven a better city in the truest ways. Per- haps the scope of the work undertaken may fairly be indicated by a list of the committees through which, a few years later, the chamber was operating : Ways and Means, Manufacturers, New Enterprise, State and Local Legislation, Public Schools and Education, Municipal Affairs, Railroads and Transporta- tion, Town and City Improvements, Harbor. Trade School, National Legislation, Membership, Real Estate, Civie, Sanitation and Public Health, Banquet, Bi-Weekly Luncheon, Public Recreation, International Arbitration, Co-operation with Scientifie School, Fire Prevention and Agricultural Extension. It must seem that almost everything possible to the ambition of a chamber of commerce would come naturally within the province of one or more of this list of com- mittees. The policy of keeping the same chairman for each committee from year to year has been followed, so that the most active workers of the chamber have in a sense become experts in their lines of endeavor.
The period since then has been a period of accomplishment. Perhaps New Haven was readier to respond than at any previous time, but no credit may he subtracted from united, consistent. hard and earnest work. It seems like boast- ing to mention even a few of the things which the Chamber of Commerce has achieved within less than a deeade past. but it is a mere relation of facts.
One of the most significant actions, itself a matter of preparation and effi- ciency, has been the effort to unite some of New Haven's scattered organizations under one head. The men of New Haven have at times been painfully organized. At least two or three organizations would be seeking to do the same thing at the same time. It was the work of the new Chamber of Commerce to make a beginning in simplifying New Haven organizations, at least in its own depart- ment. The New Haven Business Men's Association was a body of the familiar type for the serving of some interests peculiar to the merchants and tradesmen of New Haven as distinct from the manufacturers. The governors of the cham-
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