USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 40
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consumption of water during the year 1879 amounted to 34,579,370 gal- lons, of which 8,883,470 were drawn from Mystic Lake, and 25,695,900 from Cochituate Lake and Sudbury River.
In 1871 the Legislature established a new department in the city govern- ment, known as the Department for the Survey and Inspection of Buildings. The chief officer is appointed by the mayor, with the approval of the city council, for a term of three years; and the assistant inspectors and clerk are appointed by the chief officer with the approval of the mayor. The depart- ment had been organized but a few months when the great fire of 1872 occurred, and at the extra session of the Legislature which followed, the provisions of the building law were greatly modified with a view to prevent the use of combustible materials in the construction of buildings within certain limits to be prescribed from time to time by the city council.
A description of the great fire does not fall within the scope of this chapter, therefore I shall refer to it only so far as may be necessary to show the effect it had upon the city government. There was a good deal of dissatisfaction with the management of the fire department during the fire, and this dissatisfaction subsequently found expression in the defeat of the Mayor when nominated for another term, and in the reorganization of the department. It is natural that the people should hold the chief executive of the government largely responsible for the efficiency of the executive departments under him, although by the letter of the law he may have little or no control over them. Mayor Quincy (the senior) was quick to see that if anything went wrong in any department of the government (the mayor's duties were then partly legislative and partly executive) he would be held accountable, and he felt that the people were right in holding him account- able. Therefore he made the "glittering generalities " concerning the powers of the executive "blazing ubiquities." By the charter of 1854 the powers of the mayor - especially in the matter of controlling legislation - were somewhat curtailed ; but still there is enough in the general powers given him as the chief executive officer of the corporation, and in the in- junction " to be vigilant and active at all times in causing the laws for the government of the city to be duly executed and put in force," to justify the people in looking to him for such prompt and energetic action as the emer- gency may call for. Mr. Gaston failed to make his paramount authority as chief executive felt, not only in the case of the great fire, but in the meas- ures taken to check the terrible disease from which, for want of suitable sanitary precautions, many lives were sacrificed during the last months of his administration. While, therefore, his general policy in the management of the city affairs was approved by all classes, the lack of energy shown in these two instances raised a strong opposition to his retention in office; and at the election on Dec. 10, 1872, Henry Lillie Pierce,1 who was nominated
1 Mr. Pierce, the descendant of an English family that seltled in Watertown in 1638, was born in Stoughton, Mass., Aug. 23, 1825. He received his education in the public schools of VOL. 111 .- 36.
his native town and in the academy at Milton, and the academy and normal school at Bridge- water. Although actively engaged in business since the twenty-fifth year of his age, he has
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
by the Republicans on a non-partisan platform, received a plurality of seventy-nine votes.
Mr. Pierce brought to the mayor's office not only good business principles and an intimate knowledge of municipal affairs, but an ability for dealing with publie questions very rare among men not specially trained for office. In his inaugural address he recommended the reorganization of the fire and health departments, and the revision of the city charter. He did not con- tent himself merely with recommending these measures which he thought essential to the good government of the city; he had that sense of respon- sibility in seeing them carried out which is the chief requisite of a good executive. Within ten days after taking office he organized a new board of health, and took effective measures to check the loathsome disease from which the people were dying at the rate of about fifty a week. The re- organization of the fire department met with strong opposition. The move- ment was made to appear as a sort of reflection on the conduct of the members during the great fire. Now the firemen had behaved on that occasion with characteristic spirit and bravery, but for want of an intelli- gent head their efforts were badly" directed. Many of them, however, did not appreciate this, and they made the cause of their chief their own. Had it not been for another serious fire on May 30, 1873, which went far to de- stroy the public confidence in the management of the department, it is hardly probable that the Mayor's recommendation could have been carried out. It required no additional legislation on the part of the State to enable the city council to place the department under a paid commission, and on October 24 an ordinance was passed giving the mayor authority to ap- point, with the approval of the city council, three fire commissioners, to hold office for three years each. The duty of extinguishing fires and pro- tecting life and property in case of fire, was intrusted to these commission- ers ; and to enable them to perform their duty in the most efficient manner, they were authorized to appoint all other officers and members of the department and fix their compensation. The Mayor lost no time in carry- ing the ordinance into effect, and a considerable reduction in the rates of insurance soon testified to the efficiency of the new organization.
The recommendation for a revision of the city charter was also strongly opposed, on the ground that it looked to a centralization of power; but the mayor was finally authorized to appoint a commission to consider the sub- ject. Benjamin R. Curtis, the eminent jurist, accepted the position of chair- man, but he died before the work was entirely completed; and his place was filled by George Tyler Bigelow, formerly Chief-Justice of the Supreme
always taken a deep interest in public affairs. The pro-slavery course of the Democratic party, to which he originally belonged, led him in 1848 to join in the organization of the Free Soil party, and afterward to become an active member of the Republican party. He was a member of the
Legislature for four years (1860-62, 1866); and on the annexation of Dorchester to Boston he was chosen to represent that part of the city (where he had long been a resident) in the board of aldermen during the two years ending 1870- 71.
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Court. In their report, submitted at the beginning of the year 1875, the commissioners said : -
" The lapse of half a century since the adoption of the first charter has wrought great changes in the city and in its municipal affairs. Its population in 1822 was only a little more than forty thousand. It now contains upward of three hundred and forty thousand. Its territory at that time embraced an area of about two thousand acres ; now it includes more than twenty-one thousand five hundred acres. Its valu- ation in 1822 amounted only to about forty-two million ; in 1874 it rose to upward of eight hundred million. The change has not been merely in the extent of its territory, the number of its inhabitants, and the amount of its taxable property. The character of its population has greatly changed. Instead of a small, compact community, the leading citizens of which were well known to each other, it has become a large me- tropolis, with a population spread over a large extent of territory, divided into numer- ous villages, widely separated, having but few interests in common, and the inhabitants of which are but little known to each other. With these changes have come their natural consequences. Many institutions, public works, and organizations have grown up or been established, such as the public exigencies require, and which have added largely to the duties of the public officers of the city, essentially changed their char- acter, and rendered their administration more difficult and complicated. . . . It would seem to be clear that duties so numerous and important cannot be properly superin- tended and managed by persons who render gratuitous services only, or who are chosen to office not for their experience in the duties which they may be called to perform, or their peculiar fitness and skill in the work of the different departments which they may have in charge."
The draft of a new charter, which the commissioners submitted with their report, provided that the mayor and the members of the city council should hold office for three years; that the city council should have entire control over all appropriations of the public money and the purposes for which it is expended; that the heads of the several executive departments should be appointed by the mayor with the approval of the city council; and that the school committee should be reduced to two members from each ward. Some of the recommendations made by the commissioners have since been carried out, but the report as a whole never received the approval of the city council.
Among other important matters which engaged the attention of the city government during the year 1873 were the street improvements within the district covered by the great fire of the previous year. The cost of these improvements amounted to over five million dollars. The old streets were so narrow and crooked that it was at first proposed to lay out the territory on an entirely new plan; but it was found on examination that the city could not give a good title to the land included in the old streets, and the improvement was, therefore, restricted to the widening and straightening of the old ways.
The city council of this year also passed an order requesting the trustees of the Public Library to open the reading-room connected with that institu-
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
tion on certain hours every Sunday. Similar orders, passed in 1865 and 1872, had been vetoed by the mayors then in office, partly on the ground that the law officer of the city was of the opinion that the opening would be a violation of the statute relating to the observance of the Lord's Day, and partly on the ground that it was contrary to public policy. Mr. Pierce was heartily in favor of the measure; and with his approval it was carried into effect, and its wisdom has hardly been questioned since.
The boundaries of the city were considerably enlarged this year by the annexation of Charlestown, West Roxbury, and Brighton.1 At the election in November, 1873, Mr. Pierce was chosen a member of the National House of Representatives to fill a vacancy in the third Congressional district, caused by the death of Mr. William Whiting. In order to take his seat in the House on the first Monday in December, he resigned the office of mayor; and in accordance with the provisions of the charter the duties were performed for the remainder of the year by Leonard R. Cutter, chair- man of the board of aldermen.
At the municipal election in December Samuel Crocker Cobb 2 was chosen mayor for the ensuing year by a nearly unanimous vote. For the office of chief executive he was singularly well fitted, not only by experi- ence in municipal affairs, but by a disposition in which great energy and courage were joined to high-bred courtesy and genial frankness. Although not specially identified with any political party, his sympathies, after the dissolution of the Whig party to which he originally belonged, were gen- erally with the Democratic party on national questions. He was a firm believer, however, in a non-partisan administration of local affairs; and so well did he act up to his convictions in that matter, that the Citizens elected him for three successive terms, - the last time against the united opposition of the two leading political parties. During these three years (1874-76) a great many important measures were acted upon by the city government.
In his inaugural address the Mayor recommended the cstablishment of several public parks in different sections of the city, easily accessible to
1 Charlestown at this time contained about 30,000 inhabitants, and covered an area of 586 square acres. Brighton contained about 5,000 inhabitants, and covered an area of 2,277 square acres. West Roxbury numbered about 9,000, and its territory embraced an area of 7,848 square acres. By the census of 1870 the popu- lation of Charlestown was 28,323; of Brighton, 4,967 ; of West Roxbury, 8,683. [See the chap- ters on "Charlestown," " Roxbury," and " Brigh- ton," in the present volume. - ED.]
2 Ile was born in Taunton, Mass., on May 22, 1826, and was the descendant of an English family of good condition that settled in that town during the latter half of the seventeenth
century. The paternal ancestor, Henry Cobb, emigrated to the Plymouth Colony as early as 1629, and settled at Barnstable, where he died in 1679, leaving seven sons. He was fitted for col- lege at the Bristol Academy in Taunton, but came to Boston at the early age of sixteen, and engaged in the foreign shipping business, which he was fol- lowing at the time he entered the mayor's office. He served as a member of the Roxbury board of aldermen in 1861-62 ; and after the annexation of that city in 1867 he was chosen as its first repre- sentative in the Boston board of aldermen. He also served as a member of the board of direc- tors for public institutions from 1869 to the close of the year 1873.
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the people. The subject of enlarging the public grounds had already received some attention. In 1869 the General Court passed an act pro- viding for the appointment of a mixed commission, part by the State and part by the city authorities, with power to take lands and " lay out one or more public parks in or near the city of Boston." The act was not to take effect unless accepted by two-thirds of the inhabitants of Boston, who might exercise the right of voting on the question; and failing to receive the re- quisite number of affirmative votes, it became void. In accordance with the Mayor's recommendation a new application was made to the Legislature ; and in 1875 an act was passed authorizing the mayor, with the approval of the city council, to appoint three park commissioners, with power to take lands, lay out public parks, and make rules for their government. The operations of the commissioners were restricted, however, by a provision in the act that no expenditures could be made by them, and no obligations entered into beyond the appropriations of money made from time to time by the city council. This act was duly accepted by the citizens on June 9, 1875, and the commissioners were appointed in the following month. Be- yond preparing plans and estimates no action was taken by the commission- ers until 1877, when, with the approval of the city council, they purchased one hundred and six acres of flats on the westerly side of the Back Bay, at the average price of ten cents per square foot. The assessments which they were authorized to levy on the adjoining lands, on account of their in- creased value from the establishment of the park, have made the net cost of the property to the city only about thirty thousand dollars. The commis- sioners have since recommended, and the city council has now under con- sideration, the purchase of a large tract of land in West Roxbury, the purchase of certain lands and flats at City Point, in South Boston, and the acquisition from the State of a strip of flats on Charles River, in the rear of Beacon Street and Charles Street, for an ornamental embankment and driveway. Connected to some extent with the park improvement, as a sanitary measure, was the plan for an intercepting sewerage system prepared by an able commission appointed by the Mayor in 1875. The plan was adopted in 1877, and an appropriation of $3.713,000 was made to carry it out. It involved the construction of about thirteen miles of intercepting sewers, the establishment of pumping works at Old Harbor Point, and a tunnel, under Dorchester Bay, to the outlet in deep water beyond Moon Island. The work has not yet (1880) been completed.
To carry on the important work of procuring an additional supply of water from Sudbury River, to which reference has already been made, the Mayor urged the appointment of a paid commission, organized on the same basis as the health and fire boards; and on the petition of the city coun- cil the Legislature of 1875 passed an act authorizing the appointment of such a commission, to be known as the Boston Water Board. The board was organized in the following year, and all the powers conferred by the statutes of the Commonwealth, in relation to supplying the city with water,
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
were delegated to it; but in the exercise of its powers the board is subject to the supervision of the city council.
In his first address the Mayor referred to the inability both of the State and the city police to execute the law prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors, and stated that he would " use all legal means to carry into effect a law which should have for its object the regulation and restraint of the liquor traffic." In the following year the Legislature passed a license law, and its execution in the city of Boston was given to a board of threc li- cense commissioners, appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council.
By an act of the Legislature passed in 1874 the mayor was authorized to appoint, subject to the approval of the board of aldermen, three persons to constitute a board of registrars of voters. Previous to that time the preparation of the voting lists had devolved upon the city clerk. There was much dissatisfaction with the manner in which the ward officers per- formed their duties of receiving, counting, and returning votes. The city charter provided for the annual election of a warden, clerk, and six inspec- tors, by the qualified voters in each ward. These offices were filled in many instances by persons who were barely able to read and write, and who werc utterly incapable of properly performing the duties. The aldermen con- stituted the returning board for the city; and being called upon after every election to recount more or less of the votes, the grossest errors were often discovered in the ward returns. In 1876 the mayor was authorized, with the approval of the aldermen, to appoint three of the six inspectors of elec- tions in each ward. By putting the responsibility for the selection upon the mayor, and increasing the term of office to three years, it was expected that an honest and intelligent discharge of the dutics would be sccured; but the reform did not go far enough; interested parties still controlled a majority of the ward officers. In 1878, therefore, on the petition of the city council, the Legislature passed an act authorizing the board of assessors of taxes to divide each ward of the city into voting precincts, containing as nearly as practicable five hundred registered voters; and, in addition to a warden and clerk elected by the inhabitants of the precinct, the mayor, with the approval of the aldermen, was authorized to appoint two inspec- tors, representing different political parties. Under this system it is con- paratively easy to detect errors or frauds either in the registration of voters or in the returns of elections.
In 1875 the Legislature passed an important act to regulate and limit municipal indebtedness. It provided that cities and towns in this Common- wealth should not become indebted to an amount, exclusive of loans for water supply, exceeding in the aggregate three per centum on the valuation of their taxable property; but in any city or town where the indebtedness amounted, at the time the act was passed, to two per centum on its valua- tion, permission was given to increase the debt to the extent of an additional one per centum. At the time the act took effect this city was indebted
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BOSTON UNDER THE MAYORS.
more than two per centum on its valuation (about two and three fifths), and was therefore authorized to increase the debt one per centum on its valua- tion of May 1, 1875, namely, $793,961,895. Any debts contracted for other purposes than constructing general sewers and supplying the inhabitants with pure water are made payable within a period not exceeding ten years, and the city is required to raise annually by taxation an amount sufficient to pay the interest as it accrues, and eight per centum of the principal until the sum raised is sufficient to extinguish the debt at maturity. Debts in- curred in constructing sewers may be made payable at a period not exceed- ing twenty years ; and for supplying water, at a period not exceeding thirty years. The Mayor seized the opportunity afforded by the passage of this act to urge upon the city council the policy of raising by taxation, annu- ally, a sufficient amount of money to pay for all expenses incurred by the city, except for the enlargement of the water works. He was able to show that, if the government abstained from contracting new loans, the sinking funds already established would free the city from all except the water debt in eight years; but while the government was ready then, and indeed has at all times been ready, to applaud any general proposition looking to the reduction or extinction of the debt, its virtuous resolutions have seldom stood in the way of any scheme which seemed to meet the popular favor ; and it may fairly be presumed that the indebtedness of the city will be kept very near the limit authorized by law.
Perhaps the most notable event of Mr. Cobb's administration, certainly the one which possesses the greatest historical interest, was the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. On the even- ing of June 16, 1875, there was a very remarkable meeting in Music Hall. Many of the men who had taken a leading part in the war of the Rebellion - rebel and patriot; the soldier of the Union and the soldier of the Con- federacy - met for the first time in peace and with a common object, -the commemoration of the most important of the series of events which re- sulted in the creation of an independent nation. The Mayor's address of welcome was admirably adapted to the spirit of the meeting, and met with a very cordial response from the city's guests. On the following day there was a great procession, composed of various military and civic bodies, and an oration on the site of the historic battleground by Charles Devens, Jr., at that time a justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth.
Mr. Cobb was succeeded in the mayor's office by Frederick Octavius Prince,1 who was elected in December, 1876. He was the candidate of the Democratic party ; and partly through the influence of the national elec- tion held the month previous, and partly through his own personal popu- larity, he received about five thousand more votes than his opponent,
1 Mr. Prince came of a good family, long in his native city and at Harvard College, and resident in Boston, where he was born Jan. 18, subsequently became a member of the Suffolk 1818. He was graduated at the Latin School Bar.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Nathaniel J. Bradlee, who was not only the candidate of the Republican party but of the Citizens' organization. Mr. Prince had held no office in the city government previous to his election as mayor, and his knowledge of municipal affairs was somewhat limited; but his readiness and ability as a public speaker, and his tact and courtesy as the representative of the city, especially on festive occasions, have been accepted as an offset, to some extent, for any shortcomings in the business administration of the office. Having been elected as the special representative of a party, he found some difficulty in making the demands of his supporters agree with the best interests of the city; and he did not always succeed in doing so. It may be said, however, that he endeavored to carry out the policy of re- trenchment inaugurated by his predecessor, and that during the first part of his administration his efforts in that direction were measurably successful. In 1874 the tax levy had reached the enormous sum of $12,000,000. The panic of 1873 had proved most disastrous to the owners of real estate, especially to a large class of speculators in the lands recently annexed to the city. The policy pursued by the local assessors of maintaining a high valuation of real property created much dissatisfaction, and there was a general demand not only for a reduction of valuations, but for a reduction of expenses. In response to this demand the city's expenses were reduced in 1875 and 1876 to the extent of $2,775,098 ; and the valuation of real estate was reduced in 1876 from $558,000,000 to $526,000,000. In 1877 a further reduction of over half a million dollars was made in the tax levy, without detriment to the public service, and the real estate valuation was reduced to $481,000,000; but the spirit of economy which prevailed at the begin- ยท ning of this year did not continue to the end. An order was passed by the city council to run the East Boston ferries at the city's expense; and although the Mayor was informed by the city solicitor that the order was illegal, he gave it his approval. The opponents of the measure went to the supreme court, and obtained a writ of mandamus directing the city to con- tinue to collect the tolls established by the board of aldermen. The ap- propriations for carrying out the plan for improved sewerage ($3,713,000), for erecting a new building for the English High and Latin schools ($350,- 000), and for a Back Bay park ($450,000), -measures initiated by previous city governments, - met with general approval.
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