Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ;, Part 16

Author: Peters, John Punnett, 1852-1921, ed
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: New York, London, G. P. Putnam
Number of Pages: 578


USA > New York > New York City > Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ; > Part 16


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While the lawyers were fighting in the courts, gath- ering and presenting evidence and the like, and Mr. Fulton was agitating and organizing mass meetings and securing the adherence of new clubs and organizations in the different parts of the city, a sharp legislative


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A Message from Croker


battle was being waged in Albany by Ford and Fallows. Popular indignation had become so aroused that few legislators were willing individually to oppose the wishes of the people, but neither organization had as yet taken action on the proposed legislation, and the leaders of both organizations, in the Senate at least, were understood to be against the bill. The great difficulty in legislative fights of this character is to trace the secret influences which block the progress of bills or change their form. A bill is hung up, hear- ings are given, amendments are introduced, the bill is recommitted, it is put through the Assembly in one form and through the Senate in another, and finally it falls between the two houses and no one person or party can be held responsible. It is not even possible always to ascertain whether amendments are offered in good faith, what they really mean, and who are friends and who are foes. Individually, almost every one professed to be in favor of the bill, but this one thought it should be amended in this way and that one in the other.


There were some curious little episodes in the long fight. By this time all the churches on the West Side and some elsewhere had become participants. Father Galligan and the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name especially were a tower of strength. They took care of the Roman Catholic churches, we of the Protes- tant. On Saturdays a statement of the situation was prepared and sent out to the various churches, in which distribution the press rendered also most efficient service. On Sunday, March 6th, Mr. Richard Croker, then head of Tammany Hall, attempted to reach the rector of St. Michael's Church on the telephone, to assure him that from that time on he would use all his


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endeavors to have the Tammany legislators array themselves on the side of the people. St. Michael's at that time had no telephone, and it chanced that the pastor of the Bloomingdale Reformed Church had a name strikingly similar to that of the rector of St. Michael's, namely, Madison C. Peters. To him, there- fore, by accident, Mr. Croker made his communica- tion. That was the first intimation that the political leaders realized the seriousness of the people's move- ment. The following evening, at a mass meeting held at the West Side Republican Club, a letter was read from Mr. Croker to the same effect, which was greeted with tumultuous cheers. At the same time Judge Scott rendered his decision granting an injunction to St. Michael's Church and the Blind Home on grounds which promised ultimate victory and which showed how supine and derelict the city authorities had been and were in permitting such robbery of the streets. There was great rejoicing that night, some one chimed the bells, and the whole neighborhood thought the bat- tle was won. There was very serious danger of ultimate disaster as a result of over-confidence.


The Third Avenue Company continued to press the work of construction on Amsterdam Avenue, for the injunction covered only that part of the avenue in front of the property of the complainants. The Tammany Mayor and Corporation Counsel and the Commissioner of Highways, who had it within their power to stop the work instantly, took no steps to intervene. Indeed, throughout the Mayor acted as though he were attor- ney for the company against the city, even insulting the people's representatives who appeared before him. In Albany the people's bill remained in committee, which was also considering amendments presented by the


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Demonstration at Albany


corporations to take out its fangs. It was announced that the Senate Railroad Committee would consider and report the bill on Wednesday the 9th. Then, at the suggestion of Mr. Louis A. Lehmaier, a public demonstration of a new sort was undertaken. Up to this time the people had protested through the press and in mass meetings, sometimes three or four being held simultaneously in the churches and halls along Amsterdam Avenue, or even in other parts of the city, for the whole city was now beginning to take part in the fight. Now it was resolved to hold a great mass meeting in the capitol at Albany itself. Notice was given through the press and at meetings that on March 9th a delegation of the people would go to Albany to demand action on the bill. Almost 1100 people took part in that demonstration-representatives of all the political clubs on the West Side, of the School Board, and individually of a number of public and private schools, of all the colleges, churches, and insti- tutions, and of a number of trades and organizations. It was by all odds the most imposing demonstration of the sort ever made, and represented every class and interest on the West Side, in addition to many rep- resentatives from other parts of the city. Those who had organized the demonstration arranged it in proces- sion at Albany, and 1100 angry New Yorkers, headed by the rectors of the Church of the Holy Name and St. Michael's, arm in arm, marched from the railroad sta- tion to the capitol. When the head of that procession had reached the top of the capitol steps, the tail of the procession had not yet left the station. The Railroad Committee of the Senate took occasion to as- sert its disdain of such popular demonstrations by choosing this opportunity to present an amendment


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to the bill, drawn in the interest of the Third Avenue Railroad Company and brought to Albany by the Tammany leader. But before the delegation reached New York on its return, a telegram delivered on board the train showed that the Senate would not stand by its committee, and the following day the Assembly passed the people's bill. Still there was delay, and the usual legislative tricks of amendments and references. On Saturday, March 12th, the following letter was addressed to all the clergy of New York without regard to denomination, and it was estimated that on Sunday the 13th the rectors and pastors of no less than a hun- dred churches throughout the city read this letter to their people and urged and advocated active support of the committee in charge of the Amsterdam Avenue fight:


AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY.


Satisfied with the knowledge that the combating of evil is as much a part of religion as the encouragement of good- ness, and inasmuch as a crime is about to be committed that will endanger the lives of the children in our neighborhood, we call on all ministers as the servants of Him who has said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me," to unite with us in arousing the citizens of New York to the grave danger which menaces their children, wives, and parents, their liberty, their rights, and their property, and ask them to espouse in their pulpits the cause of the people fighting to save Amsterdam Avenue from such an engine of destruc- tion as four trolley tracks would be.


In preventing this outrage on Amsterdam Avenue they are also preventing the establishment of a precedent which, if created, may some day result in their suffering from the danger against which we would guard our loved ones.


We, therefore, ask them to make our cause their cause. There is to be a mass meeting of citizens held on Monday


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Appeal to the Clergy


night at Durland's Riding Academy, Fifty-ninth Street and the Boulevard, to protest against the abrogation of the rights of citizens to use their streets as best suits their con- venience, and we entreat all clergymen to urge their con- gregations to attend, and if not able to attend to write to their respective senators and members of Assembly asking them to vote for the Ford bill without amendments.


Yours respectfully, REV. JAMES M. GALLIGAN, Catholic Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. REV. JOHN P. PETERS, St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church.


The next night a great mass meeting was held at Dur- land's Riding Academy, one of the largest meetings of the sort ever held in New York. The presiding officer, John Harsen Rhoades, and the speakers were conser- vative business men and lawyers. The deep indig- nation of the people against the railroad companies was manifested in the utterances of the presiding officer and the other conservative business men with him, which were radical and almost inflammatory; and when Mr. Rhoades suggested that in order to con- trol the railroads it might be necessary to resort to municipal ownership, the whole vast audience, of the most eminently respectable type, cheered up- roariously. The people were ready for anything against the railroads. By this time the leaders of both parties realized the seriousness of the situation, and that officially neither party could afford to antagonize the popular will so definitely expressed. On the follow- ing Sunday, March 20th, Senator Ford and Assembly- man Fallows came to the rectory from a conference with the acting leader of the Republican party to ask the rector of St. Michael's Church to hold a confer- ence with him, with regard to the proposed legislation.


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Friendly influences had been at work with the leader of the Republican party, Senator Platt, then absent in Florida, who had sent his commands to the party managers to support the people's measure. He was at the moment himself hastening back to take charge of the situation. At the conference which ensued the Republican leader was frank to say that although the Republicans commanded a majority in the Legislature they were unable to control that majority in legisla- tion adverse to the corporation interests, and he ac- cordingly advised a conference with Mr. Croker, as the head of Tammany Hall, and arranged the same for that afternoon at the Democratic Club. At that con- ference Mr. Croker expressed himself as entirely in sympathy with the wishes of the people and explained with brutal frankness the relation of the railway com- panies to the two political parties in the city and State, and their great power in those parties. He offered to present to the Executive Committee of Tammany Hall a proposition to instruct the Democratic mem- bers of the Legislature from New York city to vote for the measure to protect Amsterdam Avenue, advo- cated by the people's committee, either in its present form or with such amendments as that committee might see fit to adopt later. Mr. Croker was frank to say that, while he believed Tammany Hall could control all its own members, the money of the corporations and other influences would undoubtedly be used against the bill, and there was no power which under such cir- cumstances could control the up-State legislators. The next day, Monday, the Tammany Executive Committee passed the vote which Mr. Croker had suggested, and from that time onward the solid vote of the Tammany delegation was cast for the people's measure, with only


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Money at Albany


such amendments or changes as the people's com- mittee itself proposed or formally accepted.


At the outset of the fight the two street railroad companies had stood together against the public in- terest, but now the Metropolitan abandoned its com- rade and joined the popular side. A conference was held at Mr. Sterne's office between the legal repre- sentatives of the two companies and the representa- tives of the people; and the Metropolitan Railway, through its representatives, withdrew its opposition to and expressed its approval of the people's bill. All the more desperately the Third Avenue Company, which would be the immediate loser by the passage of the people's bill, fought at Albany. The leader of the Tammany delegation telephoned down that the representative of the Third Avenue Railroad was in Albany "with half a million in his pocket" and that it was "hard to hold the boys." To the honor of Tam- many discipline, however, be it said that not one man failed to obey orders. Finally Governor Roosevelt took a hand in the fight in behalf of the people, but at the same time insisted upon an amendment, to let the Third Avenue Company down easy, which in the judg- ment of the committee might raise a question of consti- tutionality about the bill. However, this seemed to be the best that could be done, and so with this change the people's bill, practically prohibiting four tracks of electric street railway on Amsterdam Avenue, was finally passed by the unanimous vote of both houses of the Legislature on April roth, approved by the Mayor, no one appearing against it, and signed by the Gover- nor April 20, 1899.


While the Tammany delegation at Albany had voted with the people, the Tammany administration in New


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York city stood by the railroad company. In spite of Judge Scott's decision the Corporation Counsel would not bring suit to restrain or oust the company, the Commissioner of Highways would not revoke the street opening permit, and the Third Avenue Railroad still continued the work of construction of an electric subway. Finally the rector of this church called on Mr. Croker at III Broadway on behalf of the people's Committee and called his attention to the fact that, in the first place, it had been from the outset in the power of the Tammany city administration to stop the work of the Third Avenue Railroad Company had it so de- sired; and that, in the second place, the continuance of that work in the face of the legislation obtained in Albany, and the professions of Tammany Hall that it would support the people's Committee in its efforts to protect Amsterdam Avenue, must inevitably make it appear that it was playing a crooked game. The facts in the case laid before him, Mr. Croker appre- ciated the truth of the statement, and, the Corporation Counsel entering at that moment, demanded of him what was meant by such action. The Corporation Counsel laid the blame on the Commissioner of High- ways, who was summoned by telephone and somewhat peremptorily advised of his duty and his opportunity, and within the hour the permit was withdrawn and the work of construction stopped. So ended one phase of a very remarkable struggle, which had taught the people of New York their own power, and shown, furthermore, the influence which the Christian Church possesses in this city, when it will use its influence in behalf of the real interests of the people.


But the fight to rid Amsterdam Avenue of its four tracks was not finished until this present centenary


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Sneak Bills


year. One result of its two years' fight against the people was the practical bankruptcy of the Third Avenue Railway Co., which was forthwith absorbed by the Metropolitan, so that the surface lines of the entire city west of the East River were in the hands of one company. Then commenced a fight to secure by indirection what had been directly prohibited by law. Year after year sneak bills were introduced at Albany which, under the guise of a railroad franchise in some other part of the State, or permission to lay tracks on some other street, contained provisions which would have nullified the anti-four-track legis- lation of 1899. It was a very sad and humiliating spectacle. Directors who counted themselves respec- table men, some of them members of Christian churches, and lawyers of capacity, who ranked high in their profession, combined to rob the public under the guise of law. The streets which had been seized by the company without payment or warrant of law were now made theirs by acts of Legislature, defective char- ters were mended up and new charters given free. Incessant vigilance was needed to protect Amsterdam Avenue. The Independent Club, the West End Asso- ciation, the Riverside and Morningside Heights Asso- ciation, the Republican and Democratic Clubs, the Transit Reform Committee of One Hundred, and other organizations maintained committees which were ready to be called together for action at a moment's notice, either to go to Albany to oppose bills, or, if necessary, to organize mass meetings.


The last of such mass meeting was held in St. Michael's Parish House in 1905. A sneak bill had passed the committee and reached third reading in the house. A representation of the West Side committees called


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on the Mayor to act for the city in opposing the bill. His attitude was unfriendly. Instantly a mass meet- ing was called, and by the time it convened a despatch was in hand from the Mayor arraying the city against the bill. At Albany the city representatives of both parties (the bill had been introduced by the railroad's up-State agents) acted with such promptitude and effectiveness that its promoters suffered an ignominous defeat on the floor of the House.


In 1902, the outer tracks on Amsterdam Avenue be- ing now practically unused and constituting a nuisance as well as a continued menace, the Borough President Mr. Cantor, notified the company to tear up the tracks within thirty days, or otherwise he would tear them up at their expense. The railroad company secured an injunction, and for some years the matter was fought back and forth in the courts. The city author- ities did not display any very great zeal in the case, however, and the matter was kept alive at all largely through the persistency of Mr. Charles De Hart Brower, chairman of the Amsterdam Avenue Committee of the Independent Club. Finally, in 1906, the Attorney- General of the State gave Mr. Brower permission to bring suit for the annulment of the charter of the Forty- Second Street, Manhattanville, and St. Nicholas Railroad 1 Company on Amsterdam Avenue, and Mr. A. Walker Otis, chairman of the similar committee of the West End Association, was appointed Deputy Attorney- General for the prosecution of the suit. The company then offered to remove its tracks if the suit for annulment were not pressed, and in June of this year an order of the court was issued for the removal of the tracks and the restoration of the avenue to its former condition. So in this our centenary year, after a


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Transit Reform Committee


fight extending over sixteen years, the people have at last won the victory.


To make the story complete it should be added that the Ford Franchise Tax bill, also passed in 1899, was originally introduced as a part of the Amsterdam Avenue fight. It was originally proposed as a sort of flank movement, no one at the time supposing that such a measure could be passed in one session of the Legislature, if at all. Ford took the bill and made it his own, but he was able to carry it through only be- cause of the tremendous popular sentiment aroused by the Amsterdam Avenue fight. So a measure of State and national importance was an indirect outcome of a fight for local relief.


Another measure of almost equal importance may be traced to the same struggle. As the result of the Amsterdam Avenue fight the Independent Club, with which it had begun, maintained a constant watch on street railroad conditions. In 1903 the wretched transit conditions then prevailing and the absolutely indecent overcrowding on both the elevated and sur- face railroads led to the appointment of a new com- mittee and the commencement of a new fight. This committee, of which Mr. J. H. Cohen was chairman, called a mass meeting in St. Michael's Parish House to protest against the existing conditions, which meet- ing resulted in the formation of the Transit Reform Committee of One Hundred. It was through the work of the legal committee of this committee that the railroads were compelled to give the transfers called for by law, but theretofore refused by them. The efforts of this committee to find out the law governing the railroads, the actual terms of their charters, and their obligations toward the public revealed such a hope-


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less condition of incapacity on the part of the State Railroad Commission to cope with the situation, that this committee found itself obliged to take the lead in an endeavor to secure legislation which should remedy these conditions by creating a competent and efficient railroad commission for New York city. A bill to create such a commission was introduced in the Legislature year after year, and opposed by the railroads and the political "machine." Finally last winter Governor Hughes took up the measure which his fel- low citizens of the West Side had so long championed, modified it and broadened its scope, and brought to a successful issue the work which they had undertaken to perform. So in this our centenary year the Am- sterdam Avenue fight may be said to have had its com- plete fruition. This whole episode has been treated at some length because of its intrinsic interest and its importance both in the history of the neighborhood and in the history of the church itself.


It is difficult to describe the work of the parish with- out seeming to emphasize unduly the part played in that work by the rector. It is in fact the work of many men and women which has made St. Michael's parish what it is to-day. Many souls striving together, many acts of daily sacrifice, much service of many whose names are never known except to one or two, many little things done by many men, women, and children have built the real church of St. Michael of which this outward church is but a symbol,-but these are things which can be told in no book, and yet with them untold less than half the story of the parish has been written.


In concluding this chapter, which covers the period of my own rectorship, I can only lay before my readers


ST. MICHAEL'S CHOIR


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A Hundred Years' Growth


dry and bare comparisons to show how the church has grown in the hundred years of its history. In 1807 and for many years thereafter there were but twenty or thirty communicants at the outside; there were five or six baptisms, marriages, and burials, and ordinarily no confirmations, in a year. The church could support but half a rector, and that only if Trinity would pay the better part of his salary. A hundred years ago St. Michael's was a mere chapel of ease for a few well- to-do summer residents, with a plain and cheap wooden building seating perhaps 200 people. To-day St. Michael's is a great church of the people in the midst of a crowded portion of the city, with a handsome church building of stone, seating 1600, and a large and well- equipped parish house, not a few of the rooms in which would seat as many people as did the first church.


There are 1711 communicants on our roll, an increase of almost 100 within the year; for with the continued increase of population the church is still steadily grow- ing. These 17II names, it should be said, represent actual communicants, those who have received the communion during the year, although that number has never received communion together at one time. The largest number receiving communion on one day, Easter, 1907, was 1190, and during the week following 339 more received that blessed sacrament. Our mem- bership of baptized persons is 4812; 125 baptisms were recorded in the year past, of which 23 were adults; 99 persons were confirmed, 84 couples married, and 133 persons buried. Our Sunday School now numbers 742 scholars, of whom about 600 belong to the parish proper, the remainder to The Sheltering Arms, and 74 teachers.


Our budget for the year, as reported to the


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Diocesan Convention, represents a total expenditure of $35,278.18, of which $24,700.62 was spent on the current expenses of the parish, including all salaries, fuel, etc., both for the Parish House and the church; $2327.50 was spent in providing for the poor in the parish and neighborhood; $556. 10 for the Sunday School; $1545 for repairs and improvements of various descriptions in church and Parish House; and $2405.57 for other objects within the parish, that is for work in the gymnasium, guilds, and the like. For diocesan work, including the City Mission Society, the Arch- deaconry, the Mission to Seamen, and various diocesan charitable objects, $1008.53 was contributed. For work without the Diocese, principally the mission work of the Church at home and abroad, the amount of our contributions has been $2734.86. The total amount raised by the congregation was $17,736.94, of which $11,666.05 was for ourselves and $6070.89 for others, as represented by missions, charity, and various benevo- lences. A comparison of the totals of receipts and disbursements will show to what extent the church is dependent for the support of its work upon the en- dowment, and to what extent upon the voluntary con- tributions of its members.


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ST. CECILIA GUILD Sunday School and Special Choir


PART II LIVES OF THE RECTORS OF ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH


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REV. JOHN VANDERBILT BARTOW, First Rector, 1808-1810




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