History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 79

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 79

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The money cost of the Rebellion to the towns of Massachusetts, apart from what their inhabitants then or later contributed in national taxes, was not large. In the case of Quincy it amounted to less than $50,000, including the subscriptions of citizens to bounty funds. In 1861 the town owed $35,000; in 1865 it owed $57,000. The whole increase of debt due to the war was not equal to one per cent. of the valuation. Neither was the rate of taxation be- tween 1861 and 1865 peculiarly high, or the increase of it rapid. Indeed, the era of extravagance and than marked its progress. Nor was the excessive taxation subsequently imposed the result of an effort to clear off burdens due to the war. On the contrary, the debt yearly grew larger, so that while between 1861 and 1865, the war period, the rate of taxation increased but one-third, and the debt but $35,000, in the four years of peace which followed the rate of taxation increased eighty per cent., while the debt was $16,000 larger in 1869 than it had been in 1865. Indeed, compared with that of the Revolution, the burden of the Rebellion, whether in men or in money, was for Quincy light and easy to be borne. In the Revolution there was no general government or system of national taxation to fall back upon. The States had to meet the requisitions directly ; and the States made their calls upon the towns. Accordingly, it has been already seen that Braintree then sent into the field | first and last two men out of every three capable of bearing arms, while a fourth part of the whole wealth accumulated through a century and a half was con- sumed in the struggle. During the Rebellion not two men in five did military duty, nor was the ac- cumulated wealth diminished at all. On the contrary, even allowing for an altered standard of value, in 1865 the town was unquestionably richer than it was in 1860.

and often in part bent on carrying out some secret arrangement in which private interest overrode all sense of public welfare. To maintain in these meet- ings that degree of order which is necessary for trans- acting business in a methodical way was not easy. The multifarious affairs of a year were to be at- tended to in a single day. Town officers were to be elected ; the appropriations were to be considered and voted ; the policy of the town on all disputed points was to be decided. These points also included every- thing,-education, roads, health, temperance; for in the course of growth the functions of municipal government had expanded and branched out until simplicity had become a tradition. The poll-lists contained the names of more than two thousand voters. For these to come together as one legislative body and pass upon numerous and difficult questions in a few hours would at first seem impossible. The suggestion of such a scheme of municipal government as a new idea of his own would cause any political thinker to be looked upon as a foolish theorist. The thing is deemed practical simply because it is habit- ually done. But to adapt the old village system to the new town conditions was the problem which Quincy, in common with many other Massachusetts towns still clinging to the ancient ways, found forced upon it. Nor is the town-meeting in its actual working fully under- stood. Since De Tocqueville fifty years ago made it the fashion, much has been written and said of this New England institution. It has been often described and infinitely lauded ; but it may well be doubted whether one in ten of those who have philosophized over town- meetings ever attended one, much more ever took part in one. Yet without having done so it is as difficult to understand the practical working of the system as it is to describe war without ever having served in an army or seen a battle. The ideal town-meeting

The close of the Rebellion left Quincy a town of | nearly 7000 population, and from that time forward the increase both in numbers and in wealth was rapid. The last vestiges of village life now passed away, and the suburban town assumed shape. This change could not take place without bringing up new problems for solution. The first and most important of these related to municipal government. It was one thing to manage the affairs of a small village community through the machinery of town-meetings ; it was quite another to manage those of a place num- bering a population of 12,000. In 1830 the annual | is one thing; the actual town-meeting is apt to be a

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very different thing. To the historical theorist who should attend one, it would not improbably be the rude dispelling of a fanciful delusion. He would come away from it rather amazed that civilized gov- ernment was possible through such a system than understanding how New England was built up by it.

That the town-meeting, as a practical method of con- ducting municipal affairs, should break down under the stress to which a dense city population must sub- ject it, is a matter of course. It did so in Athens and in Rome before it did so in Boston ; for Demos- thenes and Cicero as well as James Otis and Josiah Quincy were town-meeting orators. Just in the de- gree in which civic population increases, therefore, the town-meeting becomes unwieldy and unreliable, until at last it has to be laid aside as something which the community has outgrown. It becomes a relic, though always an interesting one, of a simpler, and possibly better past. Moreover, the indications that the system is breaking down are always the same. The meet- ings become numerous, noisy, and unable to dispose of business. Disputed questions cannot be decided ; demagogues obtain control; the more intelligent cease to attend. In all these respects, the experience of Quincy has afforded interesting matter for study.

Between the years 1840 and 1872 the town-meet- ing there fell to its lowest point of usefulness. It has already been said that prior to 1840 it might have been seen in its most perfect form. But during the later Jacksonian period Thomas Greenleaf, and the class of men of which he was a type, lost their hold. They were supplanted by others altogether inferior. The business of the town had then for years been done in an orderly and intelligent way. Everything of importance was at the annual meeting referred to committees for consideration ; and these committees made reports upon which the town acted at its adjourned meetings. No method of govern- ment could have worked better. for the townsmen were accustomed to it. This it was which De Tocqueville lauded so highly. But there was an- other and far from uncommon phase of the system which might at any time have been studied in Quincy during the score of years between 1850 and 1870. Had De Tocqueville then visited the place on a town-meeting day he would have gone into a large hall the floor of which, sprinkled with sawdust and foul with tobacco-juice, was thronged by a mass of noisy men, standing in groups or moving inces- santly to and fro, and in and out. There were no rows of seats in the room, and but one bench, which ran along its sides. The men all wore their hats, and many of them had pipes or cigars in their

mouths; while the air reeked with odors, tobacco- smoke being among the least objectionable. Quite a number of those present had plainly been drinking. On a platform at the further end of the hall was a desk, behind which were the moderator and the clerk. The town business for the whole year was being dis- posed of and the appropriations voted. Amid a con- tinuous sound of voices and moving feet the moderator would bring up in succession the articles in the war- rant. The custom of referring them to committees had fallen into disuse, and been abandoned in 1852. After that year everything was disposed of in a single day and on the spot. It was supposed to be a more prompt, more energetic, more popular way of deal- ing with business. Accordingly, the disposition which might be made of any subject was very much matter of chance. Certain questions the town, or individuals in the meeting, might be on the watch for. These had been discussed outside, and were or were not to pass unchallenged. But orderly debate was impos- sible. Now and again some one would uncover and address the moderator. For an instant there would be silence. If the speaker then knew what he wanted to say and how to say it, he would be lis- tened to, always provided he spoke briefly and to the point. If he told a funny story or made a broad joke he would be uproariously applauded. The comic performer was a dangerous antagonist in town- meeting. If, on the other hand, the speaker was long, or dull, or pointless, his voice was soon lost in the hubbub of those moving and talking about him. For the moderator to preserve order and quiet was simply impossible. The audience was numerous, and almost no one was seated. Tired and restless, those composing it were also excited and noisy. Many of them wanted what they called " fun," and there was a great deal of horse-play going on. The Dutch auction in the choice of tax-collector was in this respect the episode of the occasion. The office was put up to the lowest bidder. Some one would offer to make the collections for five cents on the dollar, and then would follow bid upon bid, each lower than the other, until at last, amid shouts of laughter and applause, the prize would be struck off at three mills on the dollar or less. Finally the war- rant would be disposed of, the appropriations voted, and the meeting stand adjourned. Then at last the moderator and the clerk would get together, and from their notes and memories manufacture a record. A few days later the town would for the first time know what it had done at its annual meeting.

Such a meeting as that described would also be looked upon as a usual and orderly one. The busi-

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ness would have been transacted in a regular way. All meetings were not so. Occasionally there would be an organized faction there bent on putting through some job. For instance, in 1844 the town was pro- foundly agitated over the great question of where the new town hall should stand. Should it, moreover, be built of wood or of Quincy granite ? After numerous town-meetings and many reconsiderations, the party in the Centre came to a quiet understanding with the quarrymen that, if the site of the hall was fixed in the Centre, the building should be of stone. The quarry- men would have the contract. Accordingly a town- meeting was held on the 18th of April, and this pro- gramme was carried out. All previous action was reconsidered, and then by a vote of 325 to 229- numbers unprecedented -- the questions of site and material were decided. The wrath of the Point and the South at this political bargain and sale was in- tense ; nor did it fail to find speedy expression. Two days later another town-meeting was called. And now the Point, the South, and the West combined in revenge against the Centre and the North, and voted themselves three fire-engines, with hose com- plete, and directed the town treasurer to borrow money to pay for the same. A debt of forty years' duration was due to that town-meeting episode.

When the affairs of any community are managed in this way, it scarcely needs to be said that they soon fall into confusion. Want of method may be demo- cratic, but it is not business-like. Quincy proved no exception to the rule. In 1870 government by town- meeting was there plainly breaking down. A general laxity in ways of doing public business had crept into all the departments. The school committee, the sur- veyors of highways, the overseers of the poor, the en- gineers of the fire department were in the custom of asking for such appropriations as they thought suffi- cient. If in the hurly-burly of town-meeting these were voted, it was well and good. Those who had the disbursements to make would then keep within the sum allotted them, provided they were under no special temptation to exceed it. If the whole amount asked for was not voted, it would be spent all the same ; and the town found itself liable for the bills its agents had contracted. There was no great amount of jobbery and scarcely any corruption, except in the small and more contemptible way ; but the soil was being rapidly prepared both for jobbery and corrup- | back to that old system which had been abandoned tion. The growth of a municipal " ring," the mem- more than twenty years before. When at the annual meeting officers were elected, it was also voted to refer all the business articles in the warrant to a large com- everything, and at an adjourned meeting report its bers of which would live on taxpayers just as par- asites live on dogs, was a mere question of time. The laborer who worked on the roads, the pauper who | mittee, which was to subdivide itself, investigate lived at home while the town paid his rent, the trades-

man who supplied the pensioned poor, all began to feel a direct interest in the growth of bad govern- ment. As yet the evil had made no great headway, but the sense of official responsibility and obedience to instructions was already relaxed. Officers were disposed to do what seemed in their own eyes " about right," regardless of rule; and the town good-na- turedly condoned the offense. The result was that the finances fell into confusion. Every year a liberal appropriation would be made to reduce the town debt, but each year saw that debt grow larger. It rose in this way from $8000 in 1844 to $112,000 in 1874, and a committee then reported that it repre- sented an outlay incurred neither for educational or war or other special purposes. It was a pure de- ficiency debt. The money time and again raised to pay it off had been regularly diverted, and applied to those ordinary purposes, the amount spent on account of which regularly exceeded the sums appropriated by the town.

Such were the facts. It remained to find a rem- edy. This remedy was found not in a representative city government, but in a return to the old and cor- rect town-meeting methods ; and in this matter the experience of Quincy might be of value to her sister- towns, for many of them have already found them- selves, and others yet will find themselves, in the same position. The younger John Quincy Adams had then for years been chosen by common consent as the moderator of all town-meetings at which he was present. Mortified at the way in which busi- ness was done and at his own inability to preserve order, he announced a reform. In 1870, when the town came together at the annual meeting, after the polls for the choice of officers were closed the hall was ordered to be cleared and seats brought in. Then, after the vote was declared, the articles in the warrant were taken up, but not until every voter was uncov- ered and seated, and pipes and cigars extinguished. Order was thus established, and deliberation became possible. This was a great step gained ; but more was necessary. The warrant had now grown to thirty, and even forty articles, all of which were acted upon in the single evening of a day which had been occupied with voting. The townsmen were tired, excited, noisy, and in no mood to do business. Accordingly, in 1874 a new step was taken, and the town went fairly

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« conclusions in the form of votes properly drawn up. all were absorbed in that. At last, when the Rebellion These the town would then consider.

The result of this return to business-like methods was remarkable. The town-meeting at once showed itself equal to the occasion. After 1874 every ques- tion was again fairly considered and acted upon intel- ligently, with full opportunity for debate ; the appro- priations were carefully made, and all officers required to keep the expenses within them ; a responsible gov- ernment was established. Then, as if by magic, the finances assumed shape. The debt which for nearly half a century had defied every effort to extinguish it, now fell in nine years from $112,000 to $19,000, and then shortly disappeared. Deficiencies were met by special appropriations ; exceptional outlays were distributed over a series of years ; rigid accountability was established. This was done through an intelli- gent development of the ancient village system ; and it is probably safe to assert that never in the two centuries and a half of town history had that system worked so well, or to such general satisfaction, as during these years when Quincy had grown in wealth and population to city limits.

Nor did the reform in town methods stop here. It extended itself into other fields. The work done at this time in the schools has already been described. But while Mr. Parker was busy in one way there, an- other man was busy in a very different way elsewhere. In the days of John Adams it has been seen that Braintree did not enjoy a reputation for temper- ance. His labors in that field of reform, and the poor results derived from them, have been referred to. As time passed on the state of things hardly seems to have improved; and the large foreign element which the working of syenite brought into the town tended to make it distinctly worse. The Washingtonian movement made some headway before 1840; but, even then, when a temperance convention was to be held in Quincy, the use of the stone church was re- fused it. Mr. Adams being invited to deliver an ad- dress before that convention, accepted; and then, to their dismay, the parish authorities found that they had shut the ex-President out of his own church. It was too late to retract, and the address on tem- perance was delivered elsewhere. It was at this time that the town voted (117 to 81) " to discontinue the use of ardent spirits at the almshouse ;" but still, and for several years to come, the post office was in the bar- room of the principal tavern, and thither, among drink- ing men, daily went women and little girls and boys to have letters and papers handed to them across a coun- ter which reeked of rum. Then came the period of anti-slavery education, and the minds and thoughts of

was suppressed, it is not too much to say that, through its peculiarities of position, population and labor, Quincy was a stronghold of the liquor interest. In- deed, peace was scarcely established, and the wave of sctional feeling had not yet begun to subside, before the town was again Democratic. In 1867 it gave J. Q. Adams 650 votes, to 348 which it cast for the Republican ticket. For a town to be Democratic on State issues and Republican on national issues-and that was the position of Quincy-meant then but one thing. It meant intemperance. The foreign vote combined with the Democratic vote, and, having the ascendency, decreed that unrestrained sale of spirits against which John Adams had so manfully contended.

Where such an evil exists, some man is very sure soon to rise up and protest against it. In Quincy that man appeared in the person of one descended from the oldest of North Precinct stock, for the name of Faxon is met with on many pages of the town records, and can be found on not a few head-stones in the old graveyard. Henry H. Faxon was a man of many peculiarities. Into these it is not necessary to enter. It is sufficient here to say that he became deeply interested in the cause of temperance. Per- haps it would be more correct to say in the cause of total abstinence; for in the virtue of temperance, whether in drink or speech, he had but limited faith. Very imperfectly educated, Mr. Faxon was not con- spicuous for dignity of bearing ; and as a public speaker his deliverances were more noted for direct- ness and frequency than for eloquence or correctness of speech. He was known to address the audience forty times at a single annual town-meeting, and hardly once in those forty times did his remarks fail to elicit laughter, cheers, or hisses. That he was deficient in judgment it is hardly necessary to say. Yet, though often exciting unnecessary opposition and ridicule by his methods and the way with which in place and out of place he advocated the reform he had come to have at heart, he clung to it with a tenacity sure to produce results. Many at first doubted his sincerity, but he showed that he was in earnest by the freedom with which he contributed his labor, his time, and his money. His attacks on individuals were so open, public, and fearless that from the mouth of any one else they would have been sure to lead to blows. Once they did so in his case ; and he was often threat- ened. Much of his security lay probably in the fact that he was not malignant. Indeed, he was good- natured in his enmities. He did not lose his temper, and become ugly and bitter under defeat ; nor did he follow up wrongs or slights in any spirit of revenge.

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He had apparently none of that brooding desire to " get even," as it is expressed, with a successful op- ponent, which is always the characteristic of small, vindictive, and sour-tempered men. Under these cir- cumstances, while in town-meeting, and not without cause, his opponents laughed and jeered at him and hustled him, yet he laughed and jeered in return. So Yankee met Yankee; but his work went on. It was a long, hard fight. Not only was a sentiment of re- form to be roused, but a strong business and political combination had to be broken down. The town had become in a certain way a liquor-selling centre, and, as usual, the thing had worked its way into local poli- tics. The reputation of the place suffered. John Adams noted down in 1760 that to be " as litigious as Braintree" had become a common expression ; so now it was said that other towns were " as intemper- ate as Quincy." It was spoken of as " a hard place," and the stone-cutting population was held accountable for it. The evils of the thing also were keenly felt in many households. Mothers and fathers saw their

So things went on year after year. But as wealth and population increased it grew plain that it was not only a question of temperance. The cause of good and honest municipal government was also involved. The condition of affairs in this respect already de- scribed was rapidly growing from bad to worse. No reform in town-meeting methods would suffice unless the dominant combination was broken down. Then Mr. Faxon found new and potent allies, and suddenly the town was revolutionized. In March, 1881, a Democratic and liquor licensing board of selectmen was, as usual, chosen. That same year, largely through the efforts of Mr. Faxon, the law of the State was changed so that the question whether "licenses be granted for the sale of intoxicating liquors in this town" was presented squarely to the voters. The result was astonishing. In 1882 there were 1057 who voted " No," to 475 who voted " Yes." When the thing was presented in this plain way the issue was understood, and the foreign vote broke from Democratic control. At the same time the friends of good government and temperance came together. The town-meeting had been reformed, and now the bar-

room was closed. But the length of the struggle against the last is worthy of record. It largely ex- ceeded a century ; for in 1760, John Adams described himself, to use his own words, as discharging his venom "against the multitude, poverty, ill govern- ment, and ill effects of licensed houses, and the tim- orous temper, as well as criminal design of the select- men" who licensed them ; but not until 1882, one hundred and twenty-two years later, did his local successor in that crusade close, at least for the time being, the last of those houses in Quincy.

In the " Memoirs of John Quincy Adams" there is a striking passage wherein he records his boding thoughts as he wandered about his native town one day near the close of October in the year 1844. He was then an old man, for it was hard upon seventy years since he had, as a boy, served as post-rider between Braintree and Boston. Anxious, despond- ent, overworked, he at this time had just received the tidings of those earlier elections which indicated young sons falling into drunken ways. But it had | the choice of Polk as President, foreshadowing the always been so, and the political combination which favored the continuance of the system was very strong. The Democratic leaders controlled the foreign vote, and the liquor interest had a complete understanding with the Democratic leaders. The foreign vote was thus juggled into perpetuating a system under which those whom it represented suffered more than any others in the community.

annexation of Texas and the spread of slavery. He looked upon his own re-election to Congress as im- probable. Engaged in bitter political controversy, nearing his own end, he foresaw more clearly than others the terrible trials which did indeed then re- motely impend over the country. It was the month of October, and the time and the solitude quickened his feelings. He thus described them :

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 79

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534