USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 9
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In the eighteenth century, growth of the towns was spasmodic because of the unsettled times and perils of the frontier. Tax lists show III towns in 1715; 156 in 1742; 161 in 1752; 199 in 1768; and 239 in 1780. At times the frontier hazard was so acute that the General Court passed a law by which persons abandoning a frontier town would forfeit their estates.
The same passion for self-rule, displayed at the time of Sir Edmund Andros, prompted the towns to embrace the principles of the Revolution. They voted to support the Declaration of Independence, provided sup- plies and ammunition, and voted bounties to volunteers. The towns, impelled by the ideals of the first settlers, were the backbone of the revolt.
The Constitution of 1780, after one hundred and fifty years of doubt, confirmed local autonomy. A General Act on towns, passed in 1786, treated application of the principle at length. It named the officers to be elected, the right to assess taxes, make by-laws, and punish offenders. The people were guaranteed the right to place an article in a town war- rant or even compel a Justice of the Peace to convoke a town meeting. There were then about three hundred communities with about 400,000 population.
In 1820 a constitutional amendment gave the General Court the right to charter cities. Two years later Boston, which had made five attempts since 1784 to discard the town system, was incorporated. The genesis of city government was in the chartered borough of Colonial times. New York in 1686 had the first borough charter. It was modeled on the Eng- lish Community corporation, with the Mayor and the Council or Alder- men acting as opposing checks.
At first committees of the Council handled matters like public works and water supply, but separate departments were finally created for such purposes. Wherever a Mayor secured the veto power, the Council de- clined in importance. Inefficiency in departments, laxity in enforcing
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Massachusetts: The General Background
State laws, squandering of public funds, and poor policing led to increas- ing State interference in the years preceding the Civil War. After the Civil War, towns continued to shift to city government. In 1865 there were 14 cities and in 1875 19, with more than fifty per cent of the popula- tion. In 1885 there were 23 cities with sixty per cent of the popula- tion.
As the tide of immigration rose, general optimism prevailed; and with the population interested in business pursuits, public debts, inefficiency, and the spoils system flourished. By the turn of the present century the reform of city government was a major issue and, as a consequence, many towns of increasing population were seeking to discover a modified town system and avoid city organization with its maze of problems.
By a law passed in 1915, called the Optional Charter Law, the Massa- chusetts Legislature, which has authority to grant or annul a city charter, made four choices possible: Mayor and Council elected at-large; Mayor and Council elected partially by wards and at-large; the Commission form or City Manager form. In this State, the system of providing a charter by special acts is followed, thus theoretically basing each charter on the particular needs of the community.
However, the city form has not appealed to many large towns. In 1915 Brookline tried the limited or representative town meeting to regulate its size. Any citizen may speak, but only duly elected citizens may vote. Watertown followed this example in 1919, Arlington in 1921, and about twelve others up to the present date.
Although there is a belief that the traditional town meeting is to be found only in small communities on the Cape or in the Berkshires, there are still large communities which retain not only their town designation, like Braintree, Plymouth, and Natick - all over 12,000 in population - but also towns which, although larger than some cities, retain what has been sometimes called the 'last refuge of pure democracy,' the unlimited town meeting; among them is Framingham, a community of about 23,000.
The county system which developed in Massachusetts was at first patterned after the English model familiar to the first settlers. Its or- ganization here was chiefly for judicial purposes. In the West, as in the English counties in Saxon days, the county has developed legislative powers; but in the Bay State the towns and cities, some of whose officers are today county commissioners, were too strong to permit it. The first counties were organized in 1643 as Suffolk, Middlesex, Essex, and Norfolk. By the time of the Revolution, 12 of the present 14 counties were in existence. Franklin was organized in 1811 and Hampden, the
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Government
last, in 1812. The early officers were appointed. After the Revolution, most of them became elective.
Originally all malefactors were brought before the General Court at Boston. This resulted in such congestions and delay that in 1635 the Gen- eral Court established courts at Ipswich, Salem, Newtowne, and Boston to handle all but capital cases. The General Court became a court of appeal. As courts for various purposes developed, the General Court, for convenience, located them in the four 'shires' organized in 1643. Growth of the judicial and penal system from then on was rapid. In 1647 local magistrates were appointed for smaller cases. In 1655 each county was ordered to establish a House of Correction. In 1685 came the authority to probate wills and establish Chancery Courts for equity cases. In 1699 the 'beadle' became the Sheriff, and as such was made keeper of the House of Correction.
There were few changes in the Provincial period. Judges, sheriffs, and justices were still appointed by the Governor and Council. In 1699 the Inferior Courts for common pleas were established in each county (there then being ten counties), and a Superior Court of Judicature was estab- lished by the Province. The same year legislation making the Sheriff general keeper of the jails was passed.
When the Commonwealth period began in 1780, the Superior Court of Judicature became the Supreme Judicial Court. Two years later the Inferior Courts became the Courts of Common Pleas, and in 18II they were succeeded by the Circuit Court of Common Pleas with a Chief Justice and assistants, to be succeeded in 1859 by the Superior Courts. The present Municipal Courts are successors of the old police courts or courts of Justice of the Peace.
Although the courts, as organized in the counties, are creatures of the General Court, they constitute one of the great trinity of independent branches of our government. The independence of the courts is based upon the Constitution, for it is within their power to void even legislation when it is not consonant with constitutional provisions. Common law, just as in Colonial times, is the basis of Massachusetts jurisprudence, modified and developed, however, during the past three hundred years in accordance with legislative enactments and judicial decisions.
The courts, when in session, are open to all citizens. There are two chief divisions, for criminal and for civil business. Minor cases may be disposed in the District Courts. Major matters are customarily con- sidered in the Superior Courts, although litigants of even minor matters have the right to carry their cases to the Superior. bench. The Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court of appeal in the Commonwealth.
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Massachusetts: The General Background
In Massachusetts the Legislature is known as the General Court, al- though it has long since created courts for the judicial affairs of the State. Today the General Court is exclusively a lawmaking body. Bi- cameral, it consists of a lower popular body, the House of Representatives, over which the Speaker presides, and a smaller upper body, the State Senate, over which the President presides.
The first General Court under the Constitution met in Boston October 25, 1780. The number of its members varied considerably. At times it had more than 400. The establishment of Maine as a separate State helped to reduce the number, but it was not until 1857 that a constitu- tional amendment fixed it at the present membership of 240 for the House and 40 for the Senate. The Acts of 1926, which established re- presentative and senatorial .districts, determined there should be one Senator for every 103,000 persons and one Representative for every 17,000.
While most States have biennial sessions, Massachusetts retains annual sessions. Under the right of free petition, any citizen of the Commonwealth, by requesting either a Representative or Senator, may introduce a petition to alter or abolish an old law, or establish a new one. Although such petitions are pigeonholed in many States, in Massachusetts a report has to be made on each one.
Similarly, if introduced in the Senate, such a petition is given a reading in the Senate and is referred to the proper committee. Next it is printed and a public hearing is given in order that both proponents and opponents may be heard. The committee then reports on the petition. If the report is favorable, the petition, now in the form of a bill, faces three readings either in the Senate or House, depending on the officer who introduced it. If it survives the third reading, there is then a vote to be engrossed. If engrossed, it then goes to the other legislative body, and through the same readings and engrossment. Differences between the branches may be ironed out in a conference committee.
Theoretically the laws are supposed to be administered by the Gov- ernor with the aid of his Council. In reality the Governor, having a dual rôle because of his position as head of a political party, is the origin of legislation. With this practice of inspiring legislation and with an enor- mous amount of patronage under his control, the Governor's position is no longer one merely of dignity and honor, but of constantly increasing power.
Under the Colonial charter, all Governors save the first were elected by the people for a one-year term. James II, before he was deposed,
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broke this procedure. Thereafter, under the charter of William and Mary, the Governor was subject to appointment by the Crown. He became vice-regal, a military figure with power to prorogue or dissolve the General Court. Since 1780 the Governor has been elected at-large. John Hancock, the first Constitutional Governor, was elected six terms. A majority vote was required, resulting in 1855 in a change to a plurality vote after the election had several times been forced into the General Court for selection of the winner. Since 1917 the Governor's term has been for two years instead of one.
The Governor is Commander-in-Chief of the State's Militia and Naval forces. With advice of the Council he may prorogue the House and Senate and appoint all judicial officers, may appoint and remove State department heads, and exercises the power of pardon for every verdict but impeachment.
Only Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts still have a Gov- ernor's Council. The seven assistants of the Governor of Plymouth Colony constitute the historical origin of the Council. The charter of Charles I provided for the election of eighteen assistants. The charter of William and Mary provided for the election of twenty-eight councillors. The first draft of the State Constitution omitted them, but the instru- ment of 1780 retained them, as did the Constitutional Convention of 1820, although their number was reduced to nine. These were elected from the group of forty, who were elected jointly Senator-Councillor, leaving a Senate of thirty-one members. It is an interesting fact that many declined the councillorship, regarding the Senate seat as more important.
In 1840 the thirteenth constitutional amendment was passed, providing for the selection of the Councillors by the House and Senate from the people-at-large. A committee of the Constitutional Convention of 1853 voted abolition of this measure, but the vote was rejected. Two years later another amendment was passed providing for eight councillor districts and direct election.
The Council has been attacked on the grounds that it is a dispensable Colonial relic, that it makes impossible a concentration of responsibility, that its pardon proceedings are secret, that its revision of sentences is prejudicial to the courts, that its work could be performed by the Senate, and on the grounds of economy. It has been defended as a check on the power of the Governor, and for the reason that numerous duties now performed by it would otherwise have to be delegated elsewhere.
In order to carry out the policies formulated by the Legislature, there
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Massachusetts: The General Background
has developed and been placed under the supervision of the Governor a number of State departments. These departments, with an ever-widening scope in community activities, are distinct from such primary govern- mental units as the departments of the Secretary of State, the State Treasurer, and the Attorney-General.
With early industrialization came an increase in the number of public welfare cases. Many of the towns and cities sought to evade their ob- ligation toward these victims of the changing economy, with the result that a State Board of Charity, forerunner of our present Department of Public Welfare, was established by the Legislature.
Public health was another vital need which called for State interven- tion. Boston in 1799 established its own Board of Health. In 1828 Salem, Marblehead, Plymouth, Charlestown, Lynn, and Cambridge had similar boards. But in 1849, when there was a devastating epidemic of cholera, these Boards of Health were not able to cope with the peril, with the result that the State Board of Health was established.
In 1852 a law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic liquors was passed. Its enforcement was extremely difficult. A special committee which in- vestigated the situation in 1863 publicized the weaknesses of local en- forcement. Two years later, despite the opposition of some localities, the office of Constable of the Commonwealth was established. With his deputies he was to regulate, not only the liquor shops, but also to suppress gambling and vice. In 1875, when State prohibition of the sale of liquor was repealed, the enforcement unit was reorganized into what is today the State Police.
The development of the State Board of Education had similar small beginnings. In 1826 each town was required to choose a school committee, usually of five members, and give an annual report to the Secretary of State. In 1834 a State School Fund was established from the sale of land in Maine and from claims against the Federal Government. Three years later the State Board of Education came into being.
Practically every phase of human activity came under supervision of the State. New departments, some later consolidated, were organized: in 1838, the State Banking Commission; in 1853, the Board of Agricul- ture; in 1855, the Insurance Commission; in 1865, the Tax Commission; in 1869, the Bureau of Labor Statistics; in 1870, the Corporation Com- mission; in 1887, the first registration board. More recently, civil service, elections, highways, bridges, and public metropolitan areas have come under State supervision.
LABOR
BY 1830 the nearest geographical frontier had been pushed to about five hundred miles west of Massachusetts. A new frontier, however, delineated on no map, was arising - the frontier of awakening labor. Frederick Jackson Turner and a host of his disciples have told the story of the Western frontier, and of the influence on the East of fresh currents of democracy from the West. Quite as important, however, in its ultimate effects is the story of the defense of democracy waged by these other frontiersmen.
Hardly more than fifty years after they had won the Revolution, only ten years after they had secured the vote, and seven years after the found- ing of the first trade union in the State, Massachusetts workmen in 1830 raised a whole series of new demands. They asked for free public educa- tion, for the abolition of monopolies, the end of imprisonment for debt, the reform of the militia system, separation of religion and politics, sim- plification of legal procedure, compulsory mandate for representatives, and a graduated taxation of surplus property.
Through the panics of 1837 and 1857, the post-war depression of the 1870's, the depression of 1884, the panics of 1893 and 1907, the post-war depression of 1921, and the crisis beginning in 1929; in the face of depriva- tion, discrimination, and armed force; with little support except from men and women as poor as themselves, these pioneers were responsible for the recognition by their State of the right to join a labor union, for the spread of free education, for at least the partial freeing of women and children from industrial slavery, and for the relaxation of laws that penalized a man and his family for being poor. Most of these pioneers of Massachu- setts democracy, like the majority of Western pioneers, remain anony- mous, their names and deeds either lost altogether or buried in the files of old newspapers, union journals, trade-union records, Labor Department reports, ships' logs, and other obscure sources from which much of even so brief an account as the present must be derived. A few outstanding names emerge - those of George McNeill, a weaver of Fall River, of Ira Steward, a machinist of Boston, of the Lowell textile workers Sarah G. Bagley and Lucy Larcom, the latter a poet and author of 'A New England Girlhood .?
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century shipping was among
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Massachusetts: The General Background
the most important industries in Massachusetts, the principal seafaring State of the nation. Conditions of labor on the ships were far from ideal. Aboard whaling vessels, especially, seamen risked their lives for little pay. To constant danger was added harsh discipline. Whaling vessels were floating factories, and coopers and smiths were necessary to their opera- tions. These skilled mechanics soon discovered that what was a strike on land was mutiny afloat. The cooper of the New Bedford vessel 'Har- vest' who 'said he would not work no more than day's work on shore' promptly found himself in irons aboard a sloop-of-war. When the crew of the 'Midas' refused to take the vessel out of Upsala shorthanded and appealed to the United States Consul, they were replaced with natives, one man was discharged, three were put in irons, and three others were flogged.
No matter how successful a whaling voyage might be, the 'fo'mast' hand rarely came off with anything to bank. His 'lay' in the voyage was generally on the books, his profits were book profits. Against these were charged all his purchases, during a voyage of from three to five years, from the slop-chest aboard ship - clothes, tobacco, boots, etc. - at prices several times the value attaching to these goods elsewhere. If he had any surplus when he came ashore, the 'sailors' boarding-houses' and the 'land sharks' soon took care of that. The only thing that was dis- pensed free to the old New Bedford whalemen was a Bible. A well-known owner of one of that city's whaling fleets once described the Bible as the best cheap investment a shipowner could make.
Speculative overexpansion and inflation of credit were already becom- ing familiar phenomena to the workmen of the 1820's. The hard winter of 1828-29 brought widespread misery and unemployment. Those who were employed labored long hours at low wages - in Lowell, for instance, the working-day in the mills varied from 1172 to 1372 hours, and the wages from $1 to $5 a week. Three thousand poor were annually imprisoned for debt in Massachusetts. Fluctuating currency and compulsory militia service penalized the workingmen. Many strikes were treated as illegal affairs that merited jail sentences for the participants, and not until 1842, in the case of Commonwealth v. John Hunt, were the courts to establish the precedent that a trade union - in this instance the Boston Journeymen Bootmakers' Society - was something other than a criminal conspiracy against the State.
In the face of such conditions the New England Association of Farm- ers, Mechanics, and Other Workingmen was formed in 1830. At the first public meeting of this group in Boston a political party, the Working
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Men of Boston, was founded. Meetings of the party were held in North- ampton, Dedham, and Dorchester. By the following spring, the move- ment was spreading to the western part of the State.
Immigrant laborers first began to appear in any considerable numbers in the 1830's, when many Irish entered the port of Boston. 'Riots' - sometimes spontaneous and unorganized strikes, sometimes the result of indignation of other workers against new and cheap labor - occurred.
Union organization in Massachusetts began among skilled workers - shipwrights, calkers, and journeymen in the building trades - in the 1820's. The early 'trades' union' was a confederation of organizations in the same industry; what corresponded to the modern trade union was called an 'association' or 'society,' and often had charitable and benefit provisions for its members. A very early, if not the earliest, trade union in Massachusetts was that of the shipwrights and calkers of Boston and Charlestown, who in 1823 secured a State charter as the 'Columbian Charitable Society of Shipwrights and Calkers.'
In 1825, six hundred Boston journeymen carpenters struck for the ten- hour day, but the strike was lost by the threatened blacklisting of the journeymen on the part of 'the gentlemen engaged in building.' During the 1830's many strikes for the ten-hour day occurred among machinists, leather finishers, and stonecutters, and among building trades workers. Most of these strikes were defeated either by the importation of strike- breakers from other localities or by threats on the part of the employers to reduce wages upon a reduction of hours.
Strikes for higher wages also occurred in the period of 1830-40. On New Year's Day, 1834, one thousand women shoebinders of Lynn who worked at home at piece-rates formed a society, held several meetings and street parades, and resolved they would take no work until the rates were raised. The strike was defeated by the employers' action in sending the work elsewhere. In February, 1834, 'a brief disturbance occurred at Lowell among the female factory operatives on account of a reduction in wages.' Laborers on the Providence Railroad in Marshfield struck for higher wages in the same year, and the strike was suppressed by a com- pany of militia. In 1837, sailors in Boston struck for an advance from $14 to $16 a month.
The panic of 1837 halted the labor movement for several years. Cotton mills closed down, whale ships lay idle at the New Bedford wharves, shoe manufacturing in Haverhill and other 'shoe towns' ceased almost com- pletely.
In the 1840's a new ten-hour movement developed, encouraged by Presi-
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Massachusetts: The General Background
dent Van Buren's order in 1840 that 'all public establishments will here- after be regulated, as to working hours, by the ten-hour system.' A peti- tion of Lowell women textile operatives in 1842 asked the legislature for a law to prevent mill-owners from employing women more than ten hours per day. The first convention of the New England Working Men's Asso- ciation (later the Labor Reform League) dedicated to securing the ten- hour day, met at Boston in 1844; and in 1845, under the leadership of Sarah G. Bagley, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association was founded for the same purpose. In response to this movement, a special legislative committee began in .1845 the first State investigation of labor conditions in the United States. It reported that hours for women in Massachusetts industry averaged over twelve per day. 'The remedy,' said the committee, 'is not with us. We look for it in the progressive improvement in art and science, in a higher appreciation of man's destiny, in a less love for money,' etc. The legislative committees of 1846, 1850, 1852, 1855, 1866, and 1867 also failed to recommend a ten-hour law. How- ever, by 1844, as the result of President Van Buren's regulation as applied to the Charlestown Navy Yard and of effective organization among ship- yard workers, the ten-hour day became general in most shipbuilding establishments in the State.
In 1853, the House passed a bill limiting hours of women in industry. But the Senate substituted for it an unenforceable bill. Not until 1874 was the first enforceable law limiting hours of work in factories placed on the statute books in Massachusetts, and this applied only to women and children.
In the 1840's immigration began again to rise. This period saw also the growth of associative, co-operative, and communal movements in Massa- chusetts. William H. Channing, George William Curtis, Henry James, Sr., and George Ripley, among others, spread the co-operative gospel. The humanitarians of the 1840's sought to supersede capitalism by de- veloping alternative, and superior, forms of economic organization. The wage-earners in capitalist enterprises, caught in the net of the wage system, sought to improve their conditions within that system by strik- ing. Methodical efforts of trade unions to investigate wages and conditions and to better them on the basis of their findings, to make agreements with their employers, and to enforce agreements with strikes, if necessary, dis- sipated the last fogs of transcendentalism in the labor movement. Initia- tion fees, dues, and fines were fixed, regular meeting-places rented, and hiring-halls set up. Regulations limiting the number of apprentices and protecting highly skilled workers were adopted, and the unions finally
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