USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 41
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The reputation that Hughes earned as a skillful and fearless investigator made him the outstanding candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1906. Although he was not acceptable to the party's regu- lars, they agreed to his nomination because they realized that no one else had even an outside chance of defeating the Democrats. To oppose Hughes the Democrats nominated William Randolph Hearst, who in 1905 had headed an independent ticket in the New York City mayoralty election. The ensuing campaign was one of the most bitter in New York's history, and Hughes was the only Republican on the state ticket to be elected.
When Hughes became governor, he had no political past. He had never held any office before his appointment as counsel for the gas investigation, and he had never given the Republican party anything beside his vote. After graduating from Brown University and Columbia Law School, he entered private practice in New York. Following a short interlude of teaching at Cornell, he returned to the city and the law. Although he won several notable cases as a trial lawyer, he was known by almost no one outside the legal profession before he began his career as an investigator. In 1905, during the insurance hearings, he was nominated by the Republi- cans as their candidate for mayor of New York City. Although it was understood that he would not have to campaign and that he could continue as counsel for the Armstrong committee, he believed that the nomination would place him in an ambiguous-if not compromising-position, and he refused to be a candidate. He made no effort to secure the gubernatorial nomination, and when he assumed office in January 1907, his only com- mitments had been made to the voters during the campaign.
Hughes was not a party leader, and during his two terms as governor he was usually opposed by the regular Republican organization. He was, however, a successful executive who repeatedly defeated the politicians by violating all the rules of politics. He refused to compromise on matters
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of principle, he placed the general welfare ahead of party welfare, and he appealed to the voters directly whenever he wished their support. He was, moreover, a progressive in an age of progressivism. While most state Re- publican leaders continued to act as if nothing had changed since the days when Roscoe Conkling had bossed the party, Hughes won widespread popular support for his espousal of a series of reforms that were designed to eliminate economic and political abuses. During the progressive era, Roosevelt was the only New Yorker to gain greater renown as a progres- sive; but Roosevelt owed his reputation to his activities in Washington rather than in New York, and his reform record as governor did not match that of Hughes.
Soon after becoming governor, Hughes alienated the party's bosses by refusing to accept their candidates for the major appointive positions in the state government. When Roosevelt at the request of the organization intervened in the dispute, Hughes let it be known that it was his-and not the President's-responsibility. Although Hughes's prestige enabled him to force the machine into accepting many of his nominees, he ran into a solid wall of opposition when he sought to remove Otto Kelsey as super- intendent of insurance. John Raines, William Barnes, Jr., and other regu- lars protested that Kelsey had never even been accused of dishonesty. While conceding this point, Hughes maintained that the superintendent of insurance was incompetent and would have to go. To the party's pro- fessionals this seemed a revolutionary and irrelevant basis for judging a public servant. Raines announced that he would "fight Mr. Hughes tooth and nail for the rest of the session," and on May 3, 1907, the Senate rejected the governor's request for Kelsey's removal. Hughes had lost his first bat- tle, but he was engaged in a war.
Despite the opposition that Hughes had aroused among the party's pro- fessionals, he was able to force the legislature to approve his plan for a thorough reorganization of the state's program for the supervision of pub- lic utilities. Although the state commission of gas and electricity had been established on his recommendation in 1906, he soon became convinced that the problem of economic regulation required a more comprehensive solution. Accordingly, in his first message to the legislature in 1907, he proposed that the Board of Railroad Commissioners, the Commission of Gas and Electricity, and the Rapid Transit Board of New York City be replaced by two public service commissions, one of which would have authority over New York City and the other over the rest of the state. Each of the commissions would be authorized to investigate the affairs of the companies under their jurisdiction, fix rates, set minimum standards of service, "provide for the safety of employees," and "generally to direct whatever may be necessary or proper to safeguard the public interest and to secure the fulfillment of the public obligations of the corporations
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under its supervision." When these proposals were incorporated in the Page-Merritt bill, there seemed little possibility that the measure could be passed over the opposition of both the leaders in Hughes's own party and the state's most powerful business groups. The governor, however, took his case to the people in a series of speeches that he delivered in every part of the state. Old Albany hands laughed at the governor's naïveté, but the voters responded by deluging the legislature with mail favoring the measure. Three weeks after Hughes had started his speaking tour the Page-Merritt bill became law. A reporter wrote that the governor had forced "an insolent and hostile legislature to its knees."
In his second year in office Hughes again demonstrated that it was pos- sible for a governor with popular support to defeat a recalcitrant legis- lature. At his suggestion the Agnew-Hart bill was drawn up to repeal an existing statute that legalized bookmaking at the state's race tracks. Although he had no moral objections to either gambling or horse racing, the state constitution forbade gambling, and it was for this reason that he advocated the repeal of the law in question. The Agnew-Hart bill passed the Assembly, but it was bitterly opposed in the Senate. Hughes then made a direct appeal to the voters for their support, but the measure failed in the Senate by a tie vote, and the legislature immediately ad- journed. The governor countered by ordering a special session to recon- sider the measure. Meanwhile, the death of a senator made it necessary to hold a special election in the Niagara-Orleans district. Hughes stumped the district for the candidate favoring the Agnew-Hart bill. His candidate won the election and provided the vote needed to pass the bill in the special session of the legislature.
By the end of his first term Hughes had alienated everyone but the voters. The bosses would have shelved him if they had dared, but his popularity made this an impossibility, and he was renominated for a second term on the first ballot. Opposed in the campaign by Lewis S. Chanler, the Democratic lieutenant governor, Hughes was re-elected by a larger plurality than he had received in 1906. Throughout most of his second term, he sought to secure reforms in the state's governmental and electoral machinery. In his messages to the legislature and in numerous speeches to the voters he advocated direct primaries, the short ballot, and the abolition of the Senate's check on the governor's power of removal. Despite the persistence with which he argued for these proposals, they were not approved by the legislature until some years after he had left office.
In addition to the major reforms that Hughes championed were a num- ber of other acts that revealed his progressivism. He created commissions to investigate economic and political abuses, obtained a more equitable apportionment of the Senate and Assembly seats, co-operated with As-
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semblyman Al Smith to secure the adoption of a bill limiting campaign expenditures, and was instrumental in the enactment of a bill for the regulation of telephone and telegraph companies. He also had an out- standing record as a friend of labor. Under his sponsorship New York in 1910 passed the nation's first workmen's compensation law (which was later invalidated by the Court of Appeals), and in his two terms as gov- ernor he signed fifty-six laws that were designed to assist and protect work- ers. When he retired, a New York City labor paper wrote that he was "the greatest friend of labor laws that ever occupied the Governor's chair at Albany." More important, however, than any bill or bills that he sponsored was the fashion in which he revitalized democracy in New York. In October 1910 the New York Evening Post wrote:
This new breath which he breathed into our political methods came largely from his steadfast reliance upon reason and justice. No public man ever treated a democracy more consistently as a fair-minded court that could be prevailed upon to see where the weight of argument lies and what is the right thing to do. . . . We gratefully acknowledge that he has ennobled our public life and quickened our hope in democracy.
In October 1910 Hughes resigned as governor to become a justice of the United States Supreme Court. In the fall elections of the same year the Democrats elected John Alden Dix governor and won control of both branches of the legislature. On assuming office Dix recommended a com- prehensive program of progressive legislation that included proposals for direct primaries, popular election of United States senators, an income tax, factory inspection, and an increase in corporation taxes. The legis- lature, however, ignored almost all his suggestions. During his first year in office the regular business of the legislature was postponed for months because of an intraparty struggle over the selection of a United States senator. Tammany's candidate, William F. Sheehan, was opposed by a group of Democratic independents headed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was serving his first term in the state Senate. It was not until the end of March that this dispute was settled with the selection of a com- promise candidate. By this time the Democratic majorities in the Assembly and Senate were so hopelessly divided that they were unable to agree on any of the governor's proposals. In the following year the Republicans, who had regained control of the legislature, were equally unco-operative. By the end of his term Dix had alienated both the reformers and regulars, and he was not renominated by the Democrats.
William Sulzer, who was elected governor by the Democrats in 1912, was a Tammany candidate from New York City. But he was also a mer- curial man who on more than one occasion had defied the machine. He had a remarkable hold on the city's voters, and he had served five years
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in the Assembly and eighteen in the national House of Representatives. Throughout his legislative career he had sponsored numerous progressive measures, and as governor he urged the adoption of a sweeping program of reform.
Sulzer began his term as governor with the statement: "I am free . . . and shall remain free. ... No influence controls me but the dictates of my conscience." But Boss Murphy had other ideas. Before taking office Sulzer had informed the boss that he intended to be governor in his own right, and Murphy had reportedly answered, "Like hell you are." Sulzer, refusing to be intimidated, ignored Tammany applicants for jobs. When he rejected the machine's candidate for highway commissioner with the assertion, "I am the Governor," Murphy replied, "You may be the Gov- ernor, but I have got the Legislature, and the Legislature controls the Governor, and if you don't do what I tell you to do, I will throw you out of office."
As soon as Murphy realized that he could not rule the governor, he prepared to destroy him. On August 11, 1913, a legislative committee that had been appointed at Murphy's instigation reported that Sulzer had falsified the accounts of his campaign expenditures. On the follow- ing day the Assembly voted to impeach him. In September he was tried on eight charges by a court of impeachment consisting of the members of the Senate and Court of Appeals. He was convicted on three of the charges, for a majority of the court ruled that he had misrepresented the expenditures of his campaign funds, had committed perjury, and had suppressed evidence. On October 17 he was removed from office. A victim of political vengeance, Sulzer had been convicted of crimes that he had committed before becoming governor. In the final analysis he was re- moved because he refused to obey Murphy's orders.
When Sulzer was forced from office he was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Martin H. Glynn. Although he received far more co-operation from the legislature than had either Dix or Sulzer, he was unable to pro- vide the state with the type of executive leadership that had been so notably lacking since Hughes had resigned from office. Glynn ran for a second term in 1914, but he was defeated by Charles S. Whitman, a Re- publican who had attracted considerable attention throughout the state as a crusading district attorney.
The repeated conflicts between the executive and legislative branches of the government during the Dix, Sulzer, and Glynn administrations tended to obscure the fact that it was in this period New York adopted a series of significant labor laws. These statutes, which were largely con- cerned with conditions affecting workers in New York City, received the wholehearted support of Tammany Hall. Murphy never displayed any
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interest in reform as such, but he recognized the need for backing legis- lation that would aid and protect his constituents. He was, moreover, represented at Albany during these years by two of the ablest statesmen ever produced by Tammany Hall. Robert F. Wagner was the leader of the Senate Democrats, and Alfred E. Smith occupied a similar position in the Assembly. Both men were machine Democrats, faithful followers of Murphy, and outstanding reformers.
Although Tammany assemblymen and senators in the past had backed measures designed to aid the workingman, it was not until 1911 that its representatives at Albany took the lead in developing a comprehensive program of labor legislation. In that year, following the death of many girls in the Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire in New York City, the legis- lature appointed the State Factory Investigating Commission. With Wag- ner as its chairman and Smith as vice-chairman, the commission spent two years examining every phase of the conditions of labor in New York's factories.
Both Smith and Wagner were skilled legislative leaders, and it was largely through their efforts that almost all the recommendations made by the Factory Commission became law. During the first year of the com- mission's existence the legislature adopted measures to regulate sanitary conditions and eliminate fire hazards in factories. The legislature also adopted a "one-day-of-rest-in-seven law" and set up a series of regulations to protect women and children in industry. In 1913, when Wagner was president pro tem of the Senate and Smith speaker of the Assembly, the legislature enacted virtually all the Factory Investigating Commis- sion's recommendations that had not already been made law. Among the most important labor laws passed in 1913 was the Workmen's Compen- sation Act. The 1913 session of the legislature also enacted ballot reform and direct primary bills and ratified the amendment to the federal Con- stitution for the direct election of United States senators. Finally, in 1915, Wagner and Smith, although members of the minority party, were largely responsible for the legislature's enactment of the Widowed Mothers Pen- sion bill. When Smith retired from the Assembly in 1915 to run for sheriff of New York County, he and Wagner had compiled a record that has never been surpassed in the history of the New York legislature. Their contribu- tion to the welfare of the workingman is indicated in part by a statement in 1913 of the New York State Federation of Labor:
Your legislative committee desires to call the attention of the delegates to the ... unprecedented number of labor laws placed on the statute books of this State. No Legislature in the history of the State Federation surpassed the session of 1913 in the passage of so many or so important remedial meas- ures for wage-earners of New York State, and we doubt if any state in the
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Union can now compare with our Empire State in its present code of labor laws. The result this year is due to the State Factory Investigating Commis- sion, of which Senator Wagner is chairman and Speaker Smith vice-chairman.
Despite the great variety of reforms adopted by the legislature in the period before World War I, little was done to provide the state with an efficiently centralized government and responsible officials. In 1915, how- ever, a constitutional convention presided over by Elihu S. Root sought to remedy this deficiency with a series of amendments that made the gov- ernor the chief executive in fact as well as in name. The proposed consti- tution gave the governor the power of appointment and removal over practically all executive officers except the attorney general and comp- troller, both of whom remained elective; more than 160 boards and com- missions were consolidated into seventeen departments; the piecemeal approach to appropriations was supplanted by an executive budget; and the tax system was made uniform throughout the state. These changes did not ensure good government, but they did make responsible government possible. On the other hand, they were not completely acceptable to any of the major interest groups within the state. Rural Republicans objected to a system of taxation that would have eliminated many of the abuses from which they profited. Many Democrats were opposed to the con- tinuation of a method of apportionment from which the Republicans bene- fited and to those provisions that gave the governor control over both appointments and the preparation of the executive budget. Progressives maintained that the proposed framework of government was the product of reactionary theories that had been propounded by Root and his fellow conservatives. Trade unions feared that the new constitution would de- prive them of many of the rights that they had recently acquired. The amendments prepared by the convention were submitted to the voters in three parts, and each part was overwhelmingly defeated.
During World War I, the state government turned from domestic re- forms to plans to aid the defense of both the state and the nation. Al- though the preparedness program was for the most part the responsibility of the federal government, the legislature in 1916 adopted the Slater Act for military training of high school boys and the Stivers Act for militia conscription. During Whitman's second term (1917-1918), state problems were completely subordinated to those of the nation. Following the United States declaration of war, a commission was established to control the production and distribution of food; a compulsory work law was adopted; the military training program for school and college students was ex- panded; and a bill designed to prevent sabotage was enacted.
The war years also witnessed the final victory of the woman's suffrage movement in New York. In the period following the Civil War, the vari- ous national organizations demanding the vote for women drew their
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most enthusiastic support and most of their funds from New York. Eliza- beth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were in this period the ac- knowledged leaders of the movement in both the state and the nation. In 1872 Miss Anthony attracted nation-wide attention not only by insisting on voting, but also by refusing to pay bail following her arrest after she had voted and by refusing to pay the fine imposed on her by the judge who tried her case. But this was an incident-although a spectacular one -in a protracted campaign waged by a number of courageous women who annually petitioned their representatives in Albany, held countless meetings, made innumerable speeches, wrote and distributed propaganda, haunted the halls of the state capitol during every legislative session, and pestered every prominent man they managed to meet. At the state con- stitutional conventions of 1867 and 1894, they unsuccessfully sought an amendment granting women the right to vote, and they worked tirelessly for a similar amendment to the federal Constitution.
Despite their energy and pertinacity, the suffragettes had little to show for their efforts, and it was not until the first decade of the twentieth century that the movement began to gain the support that was to ensure its success. Several new organizations, made up of either men or men and women, were formed to assist the National American Suffrage Asso- ciation, which carried on the earlier tradition of agitation, and the National Woman's party, which was formed in 1913 and pursued a consistent policy of militancy. Moreover, for the first time several wealthy women began to give their support to a crusade that in the past they had either ignored or ridiculed. Although Miss Stanton died in 1902 and Miss Anthony in 1906, there were now many others to carry on their work, and Miss Carrie Chapman Catt emerged as the generally acknowledged leader of the movement in both the state and the country.
By 1910 the suffragettes were committed to an aggressive campaign that was as spectacular as it was effective. The old methods were not abandoned, but many new ones were added. Suffragette societies were organized along the lines of political parties; huge parades were held in New York City; motorcades toured the state distributing literature; street- corner speakers urging the vote for women became a commonplace in large cities; a one-day strike of women was threatened; and almost any stunt that would attract publicity was used. These tactics and the long campaign of education that had been carried on by earlier suffragettes finally produced results. A bill for amending the state constitution was passed by the legislature in 1913 and repassed in 1915, but was rejected by the voters at the polls. The process was immediately repeated, and this time it proved successful. The legislature passed the bill in 1916 and 1917, and the voters approved it in the fall of 1917. Two years later the nineteenth amendment to the federal Constitution, providing for woman
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suffrage, was submitted by Congress to the states; and on June 10 the New York legislature, meeting in special session, unanimously ratified this amendment.
When the United States entered World War I, New York's reformers were left with a great deal of unfinished business, but they could also look back on several notable achievements. They had given the state's citizens an opportunity to increase their control over the government, made the state's administrative machinery more efficient, regulated a number of different types of business enterprises, reduced fraud and cor- ruption in public life, and enacted a series of labor laws that were as advanced as those of any other state in the Union. As remarkable as these accomplishments were, they were to prove merely a prelude to the greatest era of reform in the state's history.
Chapter 30
Al Smith and Reform
Law, in a democracy, means the protection of the rights and liberties of the minority. . . . It is a confession of the weak- ness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause, when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with Us .- ALFRED E. SMITH, 1920
THE end of World War I marked the advent of one of the most reaction- ary periods in the history of the United States. Americans, apparently weary of crusades at home and abroad, rejected the ideals of the pro- gressive era and made the worship of business prosperity the new secular religion. The federal government sought to aid rather than regulate business; organized labor declined in numbers and militancy; the Ku Klux Klan ranged over many states in the South and West; and individuals holding unorthodox economic and social views risked jail sentences, de- portation, or (in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti ) their lives. Conservatism had supplanted progressivism, and the mass of Americans viewed the new order with equanimity, if not approval. In the midst of the compla- cency and reaction of the 1920's, however, New York remained an island of progress and reform.
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