USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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
The prayer, with which the town meeting was invariably opened, was not an empty formality.
The selectmen of Pittsfield in 1876 were John C. Parker, Alonzo E. Goodrich, and Solomon N. Russell, and each one of them was re-elected annually until 1881. Under the town meeting system, striking instances of continual re-election are noticeable, and the traditional fickleness of a free and popular electorate is not conspicuously apparent in the history of New England towns. In the Berkshire town of Peru, for example, one selectman was re-elected annually for half a century. An
34
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
essay by John Fiske cites an instance where, in New England, the office of town clerk was filled by three members of one family for 114 consecutive years. In Pittsfield, John C. West declined re-clection in 1875, having been a member of the board of select- men for twenty-two years, and its chairman for nineteen. As town treasurer, Josiah Carter served from 1852 to 1883. Gilbert West was habitually chosen by the voters of the fire district to be a member of the prudential committee; and, beginning in 1864, John Feeley and William R. Plunkctt were elected water commissioners continuously until 1891.
These long tenures of office gave to a town experienced scr- vice; but the tendency which they encouraged toward the more or less permanent surrender of authority was at curious variance with the idea of popular sovereignty embodied in the town meeting system. The family mentioned by Mr. Fiske can be fancied to have laid claim to a sort of vested right to the office of town clerk, and in fact such a claim was doubtless often opera- tive.
The theory of the system was based upon the presence and actual participation, in town meeting, of the entire body politic. But Pittsfield in 1876 had more than two thousand voters. There was no meeting place in town where two thousand people could be sheltered. The town hall seated fewer than five hundred. Two years later, Burbank's Hall on West Street began to be the customary scene of the annual town meeting; in 1880, it was held at the Academy of Music; in 1889, at the Coliseum on North Street, which was capable of containing about half the voters. Nevertheless, there was not serious complaint at any time that these halls were overcrowded. For the numerous special meetings, where business of much importance might be transacted, the town hall seems always to have been large enough. One special meeting of the fire district, duly adver- tised by"warrant, was called to order at the appointed hour, with six voters present. An indistinct idea having been advanced that seven were required for a quorum, another citizen was en- ticed into the town hall from a bench in the Park, and an ex- pensive sewer was then authorized. About fifty men attended the adjourned town mecting of 1868; a motion was carried to
35
TOWN GOVERNMENT, 1876-1891
reconsider certain decisions of the previous day regarding the public schools; six members were added to the school committee of three; and the employment of a superintendent was voted, for the first time.
It can readily be imagined that injustice might be wrought when proceedings like those were possible. Especially of late years, the experience of New England towns shows that the town meeting system is not a talisman against corruption and inefficiency. Given absentee wealth, or a deteriorated electorate, and the town meeting system may foster in a rural village as vicious and wasteful a political ring as ever burdened a great city. Without accepting completely the bold dictum of Alexan- der Pope that the best form of government is that which is best administered, it is demonstrable that the good results of the town meeting system in Pittsfield were exactly what the voters caused them to be; and that whatever degree resulted of equi- table and economical administration of public affairs is to be at- tributed not to the form of government, but to the quality of citizenship.
As early as 1879, Pittsfield was the largest town, properly so-called, in the United States, and perhaps nowhere else in the country did the affections of the people cherish so fondly the democratic town meeting and school district systems. School districts were abolished, much against the will of a majority of Pittsfield's voters, by the General Court in 1869. Six years later, the legislature offered a city charter to the town. The town did not take the trouble to vote upon it, and the charter was allowed to expire. The Pittsfield of 1876 was in no mood to experiment with municipal finances. Times were hard, and already the town considered itself heavily in debt.
At the close of the Civil War, the town indebtedness of Pitts- field was about $85,000. During the next three years, a period of marked local prosperity, this indebtedness was greatly re- duced; but in 1868 began a series of extraordinary expenses at- tendant upon the erection of the county buildings, the extension of Fenn Street to North, the establishment of the Athenaeum, and the improvement of the Park. In 1876, the town debt was $180,000. The town's valuation, about $8,000,000, was less
1128088
36
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
than that of the year before, and decreased annually until 1881. The ordinary annual expenses, for which appropriations werc made at the town meeting, werc for several years in the close neighborhood of $90,000, while the average tax rate, including that of the fire district, was about $16 for every thousand.
The joint salary of the board of three selectmen was cus- tomarily fixed at $1,000. The board was the executive head of the town government; and in addition was charged specifically with the supervision of highways and bridges; the care of the poor, in and out of the almshouse; the drawing of jurors; and the maintenance of order, by means of a police force. The office was no sineeure, but a proposal to increase the membership of the board was defeated more than once.
John C. Parker, S. N. Russell and A. E. Goodrich, serving as selectmen in 1876, were succeeded in 1881 by Thomas A. Oman, F. E. Kernochan, and John E. Merrill. Messrs. Oman and Kernochan were re-elected in 1882, and Mr. Merrill's place on the board was taken by George Y. Learned. In 1883, the town meeting chose F. E. Kernochan, Dr. William M. Mercer, and Franklin F. Read; in 1884, Thomas A. Oman, Laforest Logan, and De Witt C. Munyan; in 1885 and 1886, DeWitt C. Munyan, William W. Whiting, and Edward N. Robbins; in 1887, Henry J. Jones, William W. Whiting, and Hezekiah S. Russell; in 1888, Henry J. Jones, Hezekiah S. Russell and George Y. Learncd; in 1889 and 1890, George Y. Learned, W. F. Harrington, and Eugene H. Robbins. The town clerk in 1876 was Theodore L. Allen. James Wilson was chosen to that office in 1877, and was annually re-elected until 1881, when he was followed by John F. Van Deusen, who served until 1886. Frederick H. Printiss was clerk during the remainder of the existence of the town government. Succeeding Josiah Carter, the town treasurer for thirty years, Erwin H. Kennedy was elected treasurer in 1883 and served until the installation of the city government in 1891.
The town was divided into seventeen highway districts, for each of which a different "surveyor" was responsible. The seventeen surveyors disbursed their allowances of the highway appropriation practically at their diseretion. This arrangement,
37
TOWN GOVERNMENT, 1876-1891
obviously injudicious, was productive more often of accusations of jobbery, and even of fraud, than of good roads. At the town meeting of 1879, the selectmen, in accordance with a recent act of the legislature, were elected road commissioners; and the highways came nominally under their sole superintendence, in spite of persistent disapproval by many voters. Centralized superintendence in public concerns of any sort was viewed in New England, and especially then in Pittsfield, with a jealous eye.
The condition of the highways was a perennial thorn in the flesh of the selectmen. Their annual report of 1886 frankly con- fessed that "in the spring and fall months, the roads were almost impassable for heavy teams." Every winter the town paid for repairs to sleighs broken in dive-holes in the streets, and un- happy passengers by stage to Lanesborough were sometimes tossed about for three hours before reaching their destination. Complaints were constant, and the Eagle once went to the length of declaring that travel by road in April was "well-nigh impos- sible". The first example of roadmaking according to modern standards was the road to Dalton from Tyler Strect, built in 1888.
Crushed stone was not used on the streets before 1884. Its value then was so apparent that, two years later, the town voted to buy a stone-crusher, and to begin what the selectmen, with a somewhat pathetic hopefulness, called the "permanent" im- provement of North Street. The surface of the street, however, was coy of permanence in this respect; and unfeeling critics remarked that in order to find in the spring permanent improve- ments, which had been made during the previous summer, it was necessary to dig for them. In 1889 the selectmen's report as- serted that the only way to secure satisfactory conditions on the 125 miles of roads and streets was to employ one superintendent for the entire system; and this was done, with good results.
Street drainage for the disposal of surface water was not a simple matter, because of the relics of primeval swamps which still survived in the central village; and the town's sewers for this purpose were always a perplexing problem. The town meeting was tame wherein the notorious "bog sewer", running
38
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
south from West Street, was not provocative of a parliamentary skirmish. In 1878, twenty-five of the town's old wooden bridges had already been replaced by substantial structures of iron, six having been built in that year. The tornado of 1879 compelled the immediate construction of several others, and the town was never backward in meeting a reasonable demand for those con- veniences.
In spending the taxpayers' money for the relief of the poor, outside of the almshouse, the selectmen were almost unrestricted. The system was readily susceptible to abuse. As a charitable method it was probably demoralizing, and it was clearly in danger of misemployment for political purposes. To confide to elective officers the irresponsible distribution of so large and elastic a public fund among the electorate seems pregnant with mischief. In respect of no other official function is it more ap- parent that the success of the New England town government must depend largely upon the character of those who administer it. The selectmen of Pittsfield chose one of their number to be the sole agent of public charity. To him the destitute came for relief; he investigated their plight; bought and distributed sup- plies; found them employment, when he could; and was, with literal exactness, a town father. During periods of distress, like that between 1873 and 1879, his duty demanded especial dis- cretion, wisdom, and human sympathy.
After the formation of the Union for Home Work, the town, for a few years, made that useful organization its official almoner; and afterward the selectmen were authorized to employ an agent, who superintended the town's treatment of its poor.
The voters elected two constables, and the selectmen were authorized, if they chose, to appoint in addition a police force for the preservation of public order. John M. Hatch was one of the constables elected in 1875. He was an active, resolute man, who had spent a portion of his youth on the western fron- tier; and as captain of "the night watch" he introduced vigor- ous methods, surprising to those who had been accustomed to the obese tranquilities of George Hayes, the other constable. Hatch failed of re-election in 1876, and the selectmen, promptly utilizing their prerogative, appointed him chief of police, to the
39
TOWN GOVERNMENT, 1876-1891
discomfiture of the element which had defeated him at the polls. The first formal report of a chief of Pittsfield police was submit- ted by John M. Hatch in 1877. Under the town government, the force increased from seven men in 1876 to fourteen in 1890, and was never otherwise than creditable to the selectmen who appointed and controlled it.
A board of health, after 1869, was regularly chosen by the town. The recommendations of the board were alert, sagacious, trenchantly expressed, and extremely unpopular. During the final quarter of the nineteenth century, in New England, the value of public sanitation was feebly apprehended, and any in- trusion upon the domestic economy of a household was resented with honest wrath. Efforts of the earlier boards of health were intelligent and faithful; but they were empowered imperfectly both by statute and by public sentiment, and fortunately they never in Pittsfield could speak with the tragic emphasis which might have resulted from the scourge of an epidemic of disease. The health of the community was excellent.
The town meeting voters elected a school committee, and minutely discussed all phases of its administration of school af- fairs, from the selection of books to the ventilation of rooms. When a new schoolhouse was to be built, its erection was placed in the hands of a special committee, responsible only to the town. Pittsfield had unwillingly discarded in 1869 its old school district system, with its thirteen separate little republics; and for many years there was observable here the same hostile suspicion of centralized authority which existed in the case of the manage- ment of the highways. Whether for good or evil, this suspicion did not make for stability in the conduct of the common schools; but another chapter will show how a few wise and determined men were finally able so to use the town meeting system as to obtain public schools for the town of Pittsfield as efficient as the average of those in Western Massachusetts.
Partly for the use of its public schools, the town was once offered an extraordinary endowment. Abraham Burbank died in 1887. He was a remarkable man and left a remarkable will. In this, after providing for the support of his widow, children, and grandchildren, he made further devises by which he intended
40
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
that the bulk of his estate, inventoried at about $350,000, should vest in the town of Pittsfield. The town, however, took no direet beneficial interest in the estate devised; if it accepted the devise, it must hold the cstate in trust for certain charitable purposes expressed in the will. These were the creation of a permanent fund for the use of the common schools, the erection and maintenance of a free hospital, and the establishment of a public park, all three of which were to bcar the testator's name.
Difficulties were seen at once in the way of the town's under- taking the complicated management of a large private estate, for a period perhaps of fifty or seventy-five years. It was point- ed out that the town, in its corporate capacity, would be obliged not only to act as the responsible landlord of several North Street bloeks, whose structural qualities were not auspicious, but also to conduet a hotel. Furthermore, the will provided that "the Burbank Hotel shall be kept as a hotel forever, and if it is destroyed by fire, or otherwise, it shall be rebuilt in a good, substantial manner." Grave doubts, too, existed as to the legal construction of many of the testamentary clauses, and, indeed, as to the validity of the will itself.
Nevertheless, a due respect for Mr. Burbank's memory prompted the town to take measures to respect his charitable intentions. A committee was appointed to confer with the heirs on the subject of a compromise. Three compromise pro- posals accordingly were offered jointly by the committee and the heirs to a special town meeting; and the voters accepted one which, releasing all the interests of the town under the will, immediately awarded from the estate $8,000 to the House of Mercy, $2,000 to the Berkshire County Home for Aged Women, and a broad tract of land on the shore of Onota Lake to the town, to be used for a park. On June second, 1890, this adjustment was confirmed by the Supreme Judicial Court.
Theoretically, every voter was an active and constant auditor of the accounts of the town's finances. In practice, the voters were content annually to choose a committee "to settle with the town treasurer"; and the sole results of the committee's labors were half a dozen lines in the treasurer's yearly report, commending the financial administration. The mechanical re-
41
TOWN GOVERNMENT, 1876-1891
currence of this compliment had probably a certain hynoptic ef- fect, upon the voters as well as upon the treasurer and upon each succeeding committee of audit. In 1878, however, the members of the committee "respectfully recommend that the Collector and Treasurer be instructed to keep the accounts of the town entirely distinct and separate from those of the fire district". It does not appear that the recommendation was regarded as mandatory.
A special committee in 1879 was appointed to investigate and report on the debt of the town. The committee was of un- usual ability, being composed of Henry W. Taft, James M. Barker, and Marshall Wilcox, and their report, as might have been expected, was exhaustive, lucid, and cogent. It resulted in the establishment of a sinking fund for the purpose of extinguish- ing the town debt. But even this skilled and conscientious com- mittee was forced to acknowledge that it could not "exactly as- certain" the state of the town's indebtedness; and the report goes on to say that "it has not been the custom of the Treasurer to keep a list of the notes or other obligations of the town, nor have the Boards of Selectmen been in the habit of making any record of the loans made for the town."
This was in 1880. The explosion did not occur until 1886. Then the town was amazed to discover, almost by accident, that during the service of a veteran treasurer, who had held office from 1852 to 1883, a portion of his accounts had been in a condi- tion resembling chaos. No stain whatever was found on his personal integrity. Keen-eyed experts disagreed in an attempt to tell the voters how much money the former treasurer owed the town and how much the town owed him. At length, a town meeting voted to drop the entire matter. The truth seems to be that the financial machinery of Pittsfield's town government, con- sidered as a thing apart from those who manned it, was loosely jointed.
It has been intimated that the confusion of accounts was due partly to the existence within the town government of the fire district government. In theory, each was distinct and inde- pendent, but practically there was a conflict of jurisdiction. The town, for instance, had control by statute over the streets,
42
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
but not over the sidewalks, which were controlled by the fire district. The district's commissioner might fix a grade and build a sidewalk, whereupon the town's highway surveyor might order the street lowcred, and thus leave the sidewalk futilely aloft, and discomfit also the district's water commissioner, who had fondly believed that his mains were safely below the reach of frost, and the district's commissioner of sewers, who might find his pipes unexpectedly ornamenting the surface of the em- barrassed thoroughfare.
The fire district was an area of about four square miles, with the Park nearly in the center. Its boundaries were extremely erratic, running here through open farm land, and there along a village street, so that a householder on one side of the way might be assessed for fire district improvements, while his neighbor on the other side might enjoy the same residential ad- vantages and fail to find the price thereof in his tax bill. The affairs of the district, which had been incorporated by the legis- lature in 1844, were administered according to the town meeting principle, and an open assembly of all of its voters decided every question of policy or method. It was empowered to maintain waterworks, a fire department, street lights, sewers and drains, and sidewalks; and for these purposes it made appropriations and taxed itself. It elected its own appropriate commissioners and committees, and a chief engineer, with his three assistants, for the fire department; the clerk, collector, and treasurer who served the town, served the district likewise.
In the present general consideration of public affairs under the town government, it seems to be necessary to observe of the volunteer fire department only that the "firemen's vote" could have been made a political factor of importance. 175 members were carried on the rolls of the four volunteer companies in 1876. They were energetic, representative men, and the headquarters of each company served every purpose of permanent clubrooms. That they did not become subject to unworthy political control was due to their vigorous, if sometimes turbulent, democracy, and to the healthy rivalries among the independent organizations.
The water supply, obtained by the district from Ashley Lake in 1855 at an initial expense of about $50,000, had not been in-
43
TOWN GOVERNMENT, 1876-1891
creased until 1876, when the Sackett Brook extension was finish- ed. A few years later, the commissioners doubled the capacity of Ashley Lake by raising the dam; and in 1883 they announced that the original waterworks had been practically reconstructed, and that "the district has its waterworks without having con- tributed to their construction or maintenance in any other way than by the payment of reasonable rates, for which an equivalent return is made to each contributor." This condition of things testifies to good management, especially in light of the fact that the original piping was so faulty that over one hundred leaks, on account of frost, had been known to damage the mains during a single winter. The policy of the commissioners was to make yearly improvements, and to keep pace with the growth of the town without burdening the district by a debt and interest charge larger than the immediate future required. There was frequently almost an entire failure of pressure on Jubilee Hill; but in 1889 this deficiency was remedied by the laying of a new sixteen-inch main to the reservoir, and when the fire district turned over the waterworks to the city in 1891, they were com- mendably adequate. The construction account was then about $200,000, and the yearly rates paid $12,000 on the principal of the debt, after providing for interest and cost of maintenance.
The fire district, however, was never able to equip itself with a completely efficient system of sewers. In 1876, public sewers were provided by the district in only a few of the streets, and an annual appropriation of $100 sufficed to cleanse and repair them. The chronic and righteous indignation of the town's board of health over such a lamentable state of affairs had little effect upon the voters of the district. In this matter the conflict of jurisdiction between town and district was peculiarly vexatious. The fire district voted in 1884 that a committee be appointed "to consult with a committee of the town to see what the duties of the town and fire district are, relative to drains for surface water, and that the committee also be asked to examine into the rights of the town in the sewers now existing." Nothing seems to have come of this. The district was not spurred to thorough action until the closing years of its existence, when its committee, in co-operation with a committee of the town, em-
44
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD
ployed an engineer to make comprehensive plans for a system of sewers; but the final execution of these plans was accomplished under a city form of government.
Most of Pittsfield's street lamps in 1876 had been furnished by private subscription. They were lighted by gas at an annual expense to the fire district of $25 each. In 1883 electric lighting was first scen on the streets, and in 1887 the fire district main- tained thirty electric street lamps, and seventy-four for which gas was used. The expenditure by the district of money for street lighting was never very popular. The lamps were lighted only on moonless nights and were extinguished at midnight; and, at the fire district mecting of 1876, a proposal to substitute kerosene for gas, in the interests of economy, found well-inten- tioned support.
The construction of sidewalks by the commissioners, chosen for that purpose by the district, was also greatly hindered by the conflict of jurisdiction over the streets, which existed between the fire district and the town. In 1881, the commissioners declared emphatically that "some understanding or agreement ought to be made between the town and the district in regard to their relative rights and obligations" in this matter; and they com- plained that it was useless to build sidewalks only to see them destroyed by imperfect drainage of surface water, a defect that the district was powerless to remedy, since the streets were in the province of the town. Except on portions of North and West Streets and on Park Square, the sidewalks were made usually of gravel, until 1887, when a systematic construction of concrete sidewalks was commenced under the direction of Frank W. Hinsdale. During the first year, concrete to the extent of 36,000 square feet was laid on the sidewalks at a cost of $7,250; and the district thereafter prosecuted the work with diligence.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.