USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 20
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
THE RELATION OF BOSTON, SUFFOLK COUNTY AND THE STATE
The anomalous relation between Boston and Suffolk County created at the time of the adoption of the City Charter in 1822, by which the title to the county buildings was transferred to the city in consideration of the assumption of the entire expenses of the county by the city, has continued to this day, although the tentative and temporary character of the relation was recognized in 1831, when the original legislation was amended by the
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provision that the arrangement should continue "for the space of twenty years and thence afterwards until it shall be altered by the Legislature."
In the meantime, Chelsea has become Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop, and their growth in population and valuation has changed substantially the conditions existing more than a century ago. During that time, the expenses of the county have risen from $15,000 to almost $3,000,000. Not only does Boston pay the entire expense of the administration of justice and the main- tenance of the county buildings for the benefit of these communities, but, in addition, fines collected in the local courts are returned to those communities instead of being paid into the city treasury. From time to time efforts have been made to correct this situation and the city has petitioned the Legislature for relief. In 1914 a special recess commission of the Legislature studied the subject, and recommended legislation to re-establish the relationship on a different basis. Legislation has also been asked to provide that Boston might at least receive the receipts from the operation of the courts for which it pays the maintenance costs. All these efforts have, however, met with failure, and the legislation of a century ago still controls what many regard as a changed situation.
NOTABLE BOSTON CITIZENS IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE
No record of the general relationship between the City of Boston and the Commonwealth in the period from 1880 to 1930 could be complete without a passing reference to some of the outstanding figures wlio represented the city in the state government during that half-century. It is perhaps interesting to note that only two Mayors of Boston, Alexander H. Rice and William Gaston, later became Governors of Massachusetts, both of whom served prior to the period mentioned. On the other hand, several conspicuous Mayors of the period received their early governmental training in the State Legislature, and five Governors and nine Lieutenant Governors liave been citizens of Boston. Their names will be found in the following list :
Speakers of The House
Beginning with Charles J. Noyes of South Boston in 1880, the City of Boston has been honored by having seven speakers of the House of Representa- tives. Mr. Noyes served as Speaker for five years, in 1880, 1881, 1882, 1887 and 1888.
John Q. A. Brackett was Speaker in 1885 and 1886. He was also Lieu- tenant Governor in 1887 and 1888. In the following year he moved to Arling- ton and was subsequently elected Governor of the Commonwealth, serving a single term in 1890.
George von L. Meyer was Speaker for three terms, in 1894, 1895 and 1896. He subsequently became a prominent figure in the diplomatic service of his country and was also a distinguished Secretary of the United States Navy.
Mr. Meyer was succeeded as Speaker of the House by John L. Bates of East Boston. Mr. Bates was Speaker in 1897, 1898 and 1899. He was Lieu- tenant Governor of the Commonwealth in 1900, 1901 and 1902. He was Governor for two terins, in 1903 and 1904.
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Louis A. Frothingham, another distinguished Boston citizen, was Speaker in 1904 and 1905. He was Lieutenant Governor in 1909, 1910 and 1911. In later years, although he was no longer a legal resident of Boston, he served several terms in Congress.
During the somewhat stormy legislative years of 1912, 1913 and 1914, Grafton D. Cushing was Speaker of the House. Mr. Cushing served for a single term as Lieutenant Governor in 1915.
Channing H. Cox, whose public career dated back to the Boston Common Council of 1908 and 1909, was Speaker of the House for the four years from 1915 to 1918, inclusive. In 1919 and 1920 he served as Lieutenant Governor under Governor Calvin Coolidge. With the coming of biennial elections he became the first two-year Governor of Massachusetts, and was elected to a second term, thus serving in 1921, 1922, 1923 and 1924.
Presidents of the Senate
Six eminent citizens of Boston were Presidents of the Massachusetts Senate during the period from 1880 to 1930, the first of whom, George G. Crocker, served but a single term in 1883.
Albert E. Pillsbury, who was President of the Senate in 1885 and 1886, was subsequently Attorney-General of the Commonwealth in 1891, 1892 and 1893.
Halsey J. Boardman succeeded Mr. Pillsbury and was President of the Senate in 1887 and 1SS8.
Henry H. Sprague was the President in 1890 and 1891.
Wellington Wells was the first Boston citizen to serve as President of the Senate following the advent of biennial elections. He enjoyed two terms of two years, serving from 1925 to 1928, inclusive.
Mr. Wells was followed by Gaspar G. Bacon in 1929, who was destined also to serve for four years, which precedent had established as the period of service for a presiding officer in either branch of the Legislature.
Lieutenant Governors
Nine Boston men have been Lieutenant Governors of Massachusetts since 1880. Mention has already been made of the service of John Q. A. Brackett in 1887 and 1888.
The next Lieutenant Governor from Boston was Roger Wolcott. Mr. Wolcott was Lieutenant Governor in 1893, 1894, 1895 and 1896. He became Acting Governor on March 5, 1896, when a vacancy occurred in the office of Chief Executive by reason of death. He subsequently served for three full terms as Governor in 1897, 1898 and 1899.
John L. Bates, as already mentioned, served from 1900 to 1902, inclusive, and was followed by Curtis Guild, Jr., in 1903, 1904 and 1905. Mr. Guild was Governor of the Commonwealth in 1906, 1907 and 1908, and also distinguished himself in the diplomatic service as Ambassador to Russia.
Following Louis A. Frothingham, who served from 1909 to 1911, inclusive, Edward P. Barry was Lieutenant Governor for a single term in 1914. Mr. Barry enjoyed the distinction of being the only Boston Democrat to be elected Lieutenant Governor in the record of half a century.
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Following Grafton D. Cushing in 1915, and Channing H. Cox in 1919 and 1920, ten years passed before Boston again had a Lieutenant Governor. William S. Youngman, who had been Treasurer and Receiver-General of the Commonwealth from 1925 to 1928, inclusive, served as Lieutenant Governor in 1929 and 1930, and was re-elected in the latter year for a second two-year terin.
Governors
Five Boston men were Governors of Massachusetts between 1880 and 1930. Four of this number, because of prior service in important state offices, have already been mentioned-Roger Wolcott, Governor in 1897, 1898 and 1899; John L. Bates in 1903 and 1904; Curtis Guild in 1906, 1907 and 1908, and Channing H. Cox, from 1921 to 1924, inclusive.
Eugene N. Foss was Governor in 1911, 1912 and 1913. His previous public life had consisted of service in Congress. Mr. Foss was the only Boston Democrat to serve as Governor in the fifty-year period.
Secretaries of State
Although Boston has had only two men serve as Secretary of State in the half-century between 1880 and 1930, the first, William M. Olin, established a record of twenty-one consecutive years in that office. Mr. Olin served continu- ously from 1891 to 1911, inclusive.
Frank J. Donahue, the only Democrat to occupy the office of Secretary of State in the history of Massachusetts, served for two terms in 1913 and 1914.
Treasurers and Receivers-General
Alanson W. Beard, who served in 1886, 1887 and 1888, was the first of four Boston citizens who filled the office of Treasurer and Receiver-General of the Commonwealth from 1880 to 1930.
Frederick W. Mansfield had one term in 1914.
Charles L. Burrill was Treasurer in 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 and 1919.
Mention has already been made of the service of William S. Youngman from 1925 to 1928, inclusive.
Attorneys-General
Albert E. Pillsbury, Attorney-General in 1891, 1892 and 1893, and Henry A. Wyman, were the only two Bostonians to fill the office of chief law officer of the Commonwealth from 1880 to 1930. Mr. Wyman was appointed Attorney- General on August 13, 1919, to fill a vacancy and served through the year 1920.
Auditor
Alonzo B. Cook was the only Boston citizen to serve as State Auditor in the half-century included in this record. Mr. Cook was Auditor from 1916 to 1930, inclusive, a total of sixteen years.
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General Court
Space prohibits the mention here of the many distinguished citizens of Boston who have served in the two branches of the General Court in the past half-century. In addition to the Speakers of the House and Presidents of the Senate who have already been referred to, there have been many men from Boston who have been leaders in the legislative sphere of the state government during this period. Perhaps two individuals might be cited as examples of the type of men who have represented the city to its great credit and who have rendered conspicuous service to the Commonwealth.
One of the most widely known has been Martin M. Lomasney. Mr. Lomasney served in the Boston Board of Aldermen from 1893 to 1895, and from 1901 to 1903. He was a leading member of the Constitutional Convention from 1917 to 1919. He served in the State Senate in 1896 and 1897. He was a member of the House in 1899, from 1905 to 1909, from 1911 to 1917, in 1921 and 1922 and in 1927 and 1928.
Henry L. Shattuck was a member of the Massachusetts House of Repre- sentatives from 1920 to 1930, when he became Treasurer of Harvard University. During most of that period he was chairman of the important House Committee on Ways and Means.
Judiciary
One of the most outstanding contributions which the City of Boston has made to the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the past fifty years has been the high caliber of its citizens who have served as judges in the higher courts. Probably no city in the United States has given to the public service in this period a list of more eminent jurists than has Boston.
Walbridge Abner Field, who was appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1881, was named as Chief Justice of that court in 1890, and served until his death in 1899.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1882, was named as Chief Justice of that court to succeed Justice Field in 1899. He resigned his office in 1902, upon accepting an appointment as one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Holmes has enjoyed the most distinguished judicial career of any man in the history of the country.
Among other Boston men who served on the Supreme Judicial Court during this period was Charles Allen, who was appointed in 1882 and who resigned in 1898. Justice Allen died in 1913.
Justice John Lathrop, appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1891, served until 1906. He died it 1910.
Appointed in 1899, William Caleb Loring served for a period of twenty years, resigning in 1919. Justice Loring died m 1930.
Justice Henry King Braley was appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1902 and served until his death in 1929.
The last two citizens of Boston to serve on the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth, received promotions from the Superior Court.
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Justice Henry Newton Sheldon, appointed to the Superior Court in 1894, was promoted to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1905. He served for ten years, resigning in 1915. He died in 1925.
Charles Francis Jenney, appointed to the Superior Court in 1909, was appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court in 1919, and served until his death in 1923.
Fourteen justices of the Superior Court have served from Boston during the period from 1880 to 1930.
Caleb Blodgett was named in 1882. He resigned in 1900 and died in 1901.
James Bailey Richardson, appointed in 1892, served until his death in 1911.
Mention has already been made of Justices Sheldon and Jenney, who were promoted to the Supreme Judicial Court.
Frederick Lawton, who was appointed in 1900, served until he retired in 1926.
John Dwyer Mclaughlin, appointed in 1911, was the dean of the Superior Court as it existed in 1930. *
Patrick Michael Keating, appointed in 1911, was continuing a notable service in 1930.
Frederic Hathaway Chase, also appointed in 1911, resigned from the bench to return to private practice in 1920.
Charles Edward Shattuck, appointed in 1917, served only one year, his death occurring in 1918.
George Aloysius Flynn, appointed in 1920, resigned in 1927 and died in the following year.
Charles Henry Donahue was appointed to the Superior Court in 1924. *
In the same year, 1924, David Abraham Lourie was named to the Superior Court and served until his death in 1930.
Walter Leo Collins was appointed in 1928.
Daniel Theodore O'Connell was also appointed in 1928.
LEGISLATIVE SERVICE OF MAYORS
Of the fifteen men who served in the office of Mayor of Boston during the fifty-year period from 1880 to 1930, nine had previously served in the State Legislature and a tenth was a member of a Constitutional Convention, as were also his immediate successor and one of his predecessors, Mayor Prince.
Frederick Octavius Prince, Mayor of Boston in 1877, and again from 1879 to 1881, was a member of the House of Representatives in 1851, 1852 and 1863, and served one term in the State Senate in 1854. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1853.
Albert Palmer, Mayor in 1883, had a lengthy service in the Legislature. He was a member of the House in 1872, 1873 and 1874, and served in the Senate in 1875, 1876, 1878 and 1879.
Edwin Upton Curtis, Mayor in 1895, was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1917, and was Police Commissioner of Boston at the time of the police strike in 1919.
* EDITORIAL NOTE. - Since 1930 Justice McLaughlin has died and Justice Donahue has been promoted to the Supreme Judicial Court.
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Josiah Quincy, Mayor from 1896 to 1899, was a member of the House in 1887, 1888, 1890 and 1891. He was a member of the Constitutional Con- vention of 1917, and First Assistant Secretary of State at Washington in 1893.
Patrick Andrew Collins, Mayor from 1902 to 1905, served in the House in 1868 and 1869, and in the Senate in 1870 and 1871. Before his mayoralty term he had been a member of Congress and later consul-general in London. John Francis Fitzgerald, Mayor in 1906 and 1907, and from 1910 to 1913, was a member of the State Senate in 1893 and 1894, later serving in Congress.
George Albee Hibbard, Mayor in 1908 and 1909, was a member of the House in 1894 and 1895, later serving as Postmaster of Boston.
James Michael Curley, Mayor in 1914 to 1917, from 1922 to 1925, and elected to serve from 1930 to 1933, was a member of the House of Representa- tives in 1902 and 1903, and, like Mayor Fitzgerald, also served later in Congress.
Andrew J. Peters, Mayor from 1918 to 1921, was a member of the House in 1902, of the Senate in 1904 and 1905, served four terms in Congress, and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.
Malcolm E. Nichols, Mayor from 1926 to 1929, was a member of the House in 1907, 1908 and 1909, and served four terms in the Senate in 1914, 1917, 1918 and 1919.
As this list suggests, few of our Mayors - none in recent years - have been taken directly from private life. Very many of them have had experience, not only in the State Legislature but in the city governinent and in Congress or in one or another department of the national government, before being called to serve as chief magistrates of the city. This, no doubt, is partly be- cause a previous career of official service brings them the necessary reputation, but partly, also, because the electorate recognizes, or, at any rate, believes, that municipal administration requires the special sort of training that for want of a better word we must call political.
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THE INFLUENCE OF BOSTON IN NATIONAL AFFAIRS
By JAMES MORGAN
As the influence of Boston in the field of national politics was not discussed and Boston's contributions to the political thought and action of the nation were not set forth in the Winsor Memorial History, it may be well now to brush in the background of the subject of this chapter. It is no empty boast of local pride to say that this town played a greater part in laying the foundations of American independence than any other municipality in the colonies. Yet envious neigh- bors sometimes are inclined to suspect that its name is writ so large across the history of the Revolution only because that history has been so largely written hereabouts by Sparks, Hildreth, Bancroft, Schouler, Fiske, Lodge, Hart, Channing, Morison and other Massachusetts historians. The people of Boston, to be sure, were no better Americans than the New Yorkers and the Phila- delphians. But they had better political institutions for training them in politics and for giving expression to their sentiments.
Kings shook with fear, old empires crave The secret force to find Which fired the little state to save The rights of all mankind.
That secret force, of which Emerson speaks, lay in the town meeting. The Boston town meeting was the one best arena in the colonies where mass opinion could be marshaled. This was voiceless in other centers, where only the chosen few could be heard in colonial legislatures. With more at risk, those upper class representatives naturally were more amenable to compromise and to the counsels of prudence. But whenever the colonies generally were lulled by con- cessions from king and parliament, Faneuil Hall continued to rock with revolt under the guiding hand of Samuel Adams. "Wherever there is a spark, we will kindle it," said that "greatest incendiary in the colonies," as Governor Hutchinson named the father of the Revolution.
It was the town meeting which made Boston the center for ten years of the gathering storm that burst at last into the Revolution. And such a din did it raise that an English premier, George Grenville, mistook this little community of sixteen thousand population for an entire province and so spoke of it. In what was but a bare loft above the butchers' stalls of Faneuil Hall Market, Tom, Dick and Harry, in town meeting assembled, set themselves up as the overrulers of the august mother of parliaments in her splendid palace at West- minster and drew down upon their town the thunderbolts of a king.
When the royal governor dissolved the General Court, the Selectmen of Boston, by calling a convention of the representatives of the province, sum- moned into existence the first revolutionary government in America. From the throne of Windsor, George III shook his scepter at those town fathers and
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MAYORS OF BOSTON, 1889-1905
THOMAS N. HART
NATHAN MATTHEWS, JR. EDWIN U. CURTIS JOSIAH QUINCY PATRICK A. COLLINS
DANIEL A. WHELTON ( Acting Mayor)
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declared that "Boston appears to be in disobedience to all law and govern- ment." The first troops to be employed against any of the colonies were hurled at the rebel town, and the first blood was shed in what is called the State Street Massacre. But those redcoats were withdrawn, at the command of a town meeting, and it was another town meeting in the Old South that decreed the first violent resistance to royal authority at the Boston Tea Party.
"Nothing was more shocking," wrote Horace Walpole a few months after the destruction of the tea, "than the King's laughing and saying at his levee that he had as lief fight the Bostonians as the French." But Boston was not standing alone. Already she had drawn the other towns of Massachusetts into appointing Committees of Correspondence. Thomas Jefferson was quick to catch the idea, and Virginia expanded it into an intercolonial system for the exchange of views and purposes. This became a correspondence school in revolution and, in due course, it provided a framework of government, ready made for governing the colonies when royal rule collapsed.
The Boston Port Bill was the penalty inflicted for the Tea Party, forbidding a ferry to be run to Charlestown or Cambridge or a dory to be rowed from island to island in the blockaded harbor. The spectacle presented by Boston, with her wharves deserted, her warehouses shut, her trade dead and with the British soldiery encamped on the Common in the midst of an idle, silent town, supplied the one touch needed to make all the colonies kin. Money, food and clothing came from near and far to succor the stiffnecked town that would not bow in penitence beneath the chastening rod. And, on the motion of Virginia, the Continental Congress came into being.
Half a century after the Revolution, Boston was a storm center once more in the next great conflict in our national history, which arose over the momentous question of the relations of the states to the federal power, with slavery the bone of contention. Surely no other community matched the group of actors con- tributed by this city to that drama: Webster, John Quincy Adams, Garrison, Phillips and Sumner, seconded outside the political field by the militant pens of Whittier and Lowell.
The opening scene, which is reproduced on canvas in Faneuil Hall, was enacted in the old Senate Chamber at Washington, with Webster's reply to Hayne. The tariff was the subject directly at issue in that fateful debate, but slavery was the negro in the woodpile.
Boston and Massachusetts, with Webster for spokesman, had opposed the policy of protection at first. They rightly sensed that they were confronted by a choice between foreign trade and domestic manufactures, and instinctively they resisted a measure that was to cripple their rich commerce, which crowded their harbors and spread their sails over the seven seas. They chose ships in preference to factories and dissented from their fellow Federalists and Hamil- tonians of the Middle States, who were for a protective tariff. But, being over- ruled, outvoted, they accepted the verdict against them and turned from the sea to their waterfalls.
While: Webster was opposing the proposal to employ the taxing power to foster manufactures, he had said that he was in no haste to see Sheffields and
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Birminghams in America. But after these actually had sprung up beside the Merrimac and other rivers of New England, he stood forth, in his reply to Hayne, as the champion of what was called the Tariff of Abominations.
That tariff of 1828 was the occasion of the historic debate in 1830. Since her master mind, John C. Calhoun, was silenced by his position in the chair of the vice-president, South Carolina put forth Hayne as the advocate of the right of a state to nullify within its borders the provisions of an act of Congress. Webster's rejoinder was far more than a reply. He lifted the discussion out of the cool realm of metaphysical abstractions. His eloquence breathed the passion of love into the federation of states, which had been at first only a make- shift compromise and still was regarded as merely a political experiment. He exalted it into the finality of an ideal, sublimated it into a national religion, whose creed should be "liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
Straightway the slavery question brought into conflict those two proposi- tions of Webster's peroration, and a generation of statesmen, including Webster himself, compromised liberty to preserve the Union. Boston took and held the lead in that thirty-year struggle. John Quincy Adams, single-handed, began the fight in Congress for the ancient liberty of petition, when North and South alike were willing to sacrifice it for the sake of harmony among the states. Although never an antislavery agitator, Adams felt in conscience bound to present the petitions he received for the abolition of the system both in the District of Columbia and generally. After eight stormy years of battling almost alone, the tottering old warrior saw the vindication of the right of the citizens to address their representatives on the subject, and his diary solemnly rejoiced, "Blessed, forever blessed be the name of God!"
Meanwhile, the devotion to the Union that Webster's reply to Hayne had done so much to awaken was proving to be such an obstacle in the path of liberty for the slaves that the Boston abolitionists in their impatient zeal, cried out, "Let the Union slide!" William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator denounced and renounced the Federal Constitution as "a covenant with death and an agree- ment with hell." As Garrison was hustled by the "broadcloth mob" from Washington street along Court street, young Wendell Phillips, son of the first Mayor of the city, looked from the window of his law office, and what he saw changed the whole course of his life. Rocked by his eloquence, Faneuil Hall became the cradle of the black man's liberty. A few years more and the windows of Webster's Court street office stared out upon a scene of violent resistance to the surrender of Anthony Burns under the Fugitive Slave Act, that last vain offering which Webster, in his Seventh of March speech in 1850, had joined in laying on the sacrificial altar of the Union.
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