USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. III 1865-1896 > Part 2
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INTRODUCTION
Queens, Suffolk, Richmond, Rockland, and West- chester, were ranked as normally Democratic. The habits of half a century in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys still endured. Tammany had conspicuous friends among the country leaders, such as Albert P. Laning of Buffalo and Sanford E. Church of Albion, but the balance of power lay outside the city. In a later day Daniel Manning and then David B. Hill managed the party, in which Tammany was a subordinate factor so long as the Kings county organization under the leadership of Hugh Mclaughlin stood, as it generally did, against the successive Tammany leaders. But after 1890, when the County Democracy and Irving Hall organizations had gone out of existence, Tammany was the sole organized representative of the party in the city and gained in influence accordingly. Then followed the formation of Greater New York, the overthrow of Mclaughlin, and the gradual extension of the Wig- wam's power over the outlying boroughs, until it could go into a State convention with the weight of half the Democratic voters of the State, and yet in the election carry no "up-State" county but Schoharie and fre- quently lose Kings.
Doubtless the long period of Republican ascendancy in the nation, following the Democratic committal to free silver, accounted in large measure for this solidity, and it is significant that when the reaction came in 1910 the old Democratic counties of Chemung, Columbia, Greene, Seneca, Sullivan, and Ulster showed the per- sistence of their submerged traditions. Yet the rural distrust of the city leadership undermined the party
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
through the State. Tammany's preponderance brought ambitious county leaders under its control, but tended more and more to alienate independents from their organizations and centralize the Democracy into a city party, despite the fact that there is no antagonism between city and country as regards the issues that have determined the partisanship of most voters, and that the adherents of both parties are so evenly distributed through the State that in four-fifths of the counties a comparatively small shift in the vote would change a county's political complexion. Either party casting a bare 50 per cent. of the vote is assured of a plurality of from 40,000 up, depending on the vote of the smaller parties, and the State is often comfortably carried one way or the other by 47 per cent. of the vote.
The major parties are so evenly balanced that, except as the State is swept by a country-wide impulse, either party once in power is likely to be dislodged only when it is divided and its opponent united, or when long occupation of office has developed popular distrust. Democratic apathy toward the Liberal coalition in 1872 elected John A. Dix Governor. Two years later Dix himself fell victim to the coldness of his own party managers and the Democrats held the Executive office until John Kelly bolted Governor Robinson's renomina- tion in 1879. Republican factional feuds in turn elected Grover Cleveland, and the Democratic hold continued until factional bitterness, combined with the weight of the Maynard election return scandal, gave the Repub- licans sixteen years of power, which ended only when they were divided by what developed into the Repub-
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INTRODUCTION
lican-Progressive schism. Democratic demoralization, culminating in the impeachment of Governor Sulzer, returned the Republicans to power until the insistence of Governor Whitman upon being a candidate for a third term against manifest Republican dissatisfaction with his policies resulted in his defeat and the election by a narrow margin of an out-and-out Tammany Gov- ernor, Alfred E. Smith, while the Republicans still held the Legislature and the elective State offices.
The ability of the Republicans, through the principle of legislative apportionment prescribed by the Consti- tution, which bases legislative representation upon political units rather than population, generally to hold the Legislature even when they lose the Governorship, is of great political significance. It has been a conserva- tive force, preventing the subordination of State to city policies, but also depriving the Democrats of full power and responsibility in carrying out their own views of administration. This handicap is naturally denounced as unjust and undemocratic. But it cannot be avoided by any apportionment, however fair, based on the principle that political units as such are entitled to representation, and that a great concentrated population with one local interest and responding easily to one mass sentiment should not be permitted to override by mere weight of numbers the diverse interests of smaller communities, each with its own problems and its own political consciousness. An apportionment that dis- carded territorial representation and was based abso- lutely on population would so centralize power as to make all but one corner of the State practically
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
impotent and a great number of places with established economic interests and social traditions practically voiceless. If this is to be avoided numerical inequalities between districts must be regarded as a necessary expe- dient for the protection of all in view of the peculiar distribution of the State's inhabitants as compared with its territory, resources, and organization into bodies politic. Nevetheless it provokes continual complaint and unfortunately has often resulted, generally it must be said with metropolitan backing, in the denial to the metropolis of that local freedom of which the rural communities are naturally jealous for themselves. Yet despite this there is no essential antagonism, political or economic, between city and country. Each is dependent on the other. Each would be of diminished importance in the nation without the other. Together they make a commonwealth of substantial unity and unrivalled prestige.
In 1865 New York was still governed by the Constitu- tion of 1846. This instrument of extreme decentrali- zation was the product of the movement for a larger popular voice in politics that marked the rise of the Jacksonian Democracy. Rural interests and simple economic conditions still predominated. State regula- tion of corporations was in its infancy and extended little farther than a mild supervision of banks and insurance companies. A Railroad commission had been established in 1855, but abolished two years later. The State maintained a Commission of Emigration and a Health Officer and Port Wardens in New York City. The Governor, elected for two years, had comparatively
CHARLES ANDERSON DANA
Charles Anderson Dana, editor; born in Hinsdale, N. H., August 8, 1819; worked in a store in Buffalo, N. Y., when 18 years old; studied Latin by himself and prepared himself for Harvard, entering in 1839, but leaving in 1841 on account of eye trouble; afterward given bachelor's and master's degrees; became a member of the Brook Farm colony in 1842 with George and Sophia Ripley, George William Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, Mar- garet Fuller and other philosophers; joined the staff of the New York Tribune in 1847 and remained as editor until April 1, 1862; went to Albany in 1861 to advance the cause of Horace Greeley for United States senate; employed by Secre- tary Stanton in special work for the war department, 1862; assistant secretary of war, 1864-1865; organized and became editor of the New York Sun, 1867, the first number appearing January 27, 1868; died at Glen Cove, L. I., October 17, 1897.
DANIEL STEVENS DICKINSON
Daniel Stevens Dickinson; born in Goshen, Conn., Septem- ber 11, 1800; moved with his parents to Chenango county, N. Y., in 1806; studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1826; began practice in Binghamton, N. Y., in 1831; state sen- ator, 1837-1840; lieutenant governor, 1842; president of the senate and president of the court of errors, 1842-1844; a presi- dential elector on the Polk ticket, 1844; appointed to the United States senate from New York to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Nathaniel P. Tallmadge and afterward elected and served from November 30, 1844 to March 3, 1851; elected attorney general of New York state in 1861; United States district attorney for the southern district of New York; died in New York City, April 12, 1866.
25
INTRODUCTION
little appointing power, for the heads of the great State departments, including the Canal commissioners and the Inspectors of Prisons, were elective. His control over legislation was limited to a veto that might be overridden by a two-thirds vote of merely those present in the Senate and Assembly, and he could only veto an appropriation bill as a whole. In 1874 the Governor was empowered to veto items in appropriation bills, and two-thirds of all the members elected to each house was required to override a veto. The Legislature also was limited at a special session to consideration of matters proposed by him. Two years later the vesting in the Governor of authority to appoint the Superin- tendent of Prisons and the Superintendent of Public Works greatly increased his political power in a direction in which it has been steadily extended by the subsequent creation of a host of commissions, so that by 1914 he had 558 offices subject to his appointment.
The Legislature in 1865 was the most powerful and popular organ of government. It consisted of a Senate of 32 members, elected singly by districts for two years, and an Assembly of 128 members, chosen singly by smaller districts for one year. It authorized expendi- tures amounting to a little more than $12,000,000, nearly $6,000,000 of which was for war activities, almost one million for canals, and two millions for the payment of bonded debts. The ordinary expenses of government were a little over three million dollars. The passage of private and local bills was almost unrestricted, and legislative procedure gave oppor-
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
tunity for tricky amendment and hurried putting through of selfish schemes.
The judiciary was elected by popular vote, and the term for even the highest Judges was only eight years. There were thirty-three Justices of the Supreme Court and eight general terms of the Supreme Court exercis- ing appellate jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals con- sisted of four Judges elected to the tribunal and four Supreme Court Justices sitting with them for short terms. This arrangement had been made in the expec- tation that the elected Judges would introduce a lay element into the court, as the Senators had done in the old Court of Errors, but the people were less enamored of amateur administration of justice than the Constitu- tion makers supposed, and no man not a lawyer was ever chosen to this bench.
This plan of decentralization resulted in weak and divided Executive authority, inefficient courts, and a Legislature with power open to abuse and with slight accountability to the people as a whole, since each mem- ber had only to please the voters in a small district. Its defects had already started a reaction that was apparent in the Constitutional convention of 1867, which pro- posed to increase the Governor's power, to lengthen the term of Senators, and reestablish the old plan of Assem- bly representation by counties, instead of by small districts each with a single member, and to limit special legislation. This Constitution was, however, rejected, except the Judiciary article, which established the present Court of Appeals and lengthened the higher judicial terms to fourteen years. The people a little
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INTRODUCTION
later rejected a proposal to return to an appointive judiciary. Some of the reforms suggested by this con- vention were obtained through the Constitutional com- mission of 1872 and subsequent amendments, but the commission's plan for the appointment of most of the chief State officers by the Governor failed, as did a similar suggestion made by the Constitutional conven- tion of 1915. Nevertheless, though the people have thus repeatedly refused to sanction any wholesale centraliza- tion in the name of efficiency, step by step the Gov- ernor's influence over the Legislature has been increased and his administrative authority strengthened, until the Executive power is greater than it ever has been before in the history of the State.
The State's revenues in the Civil War period were drawn chiefly from the general property tax, levied largely on real estate. For many years prior to 1843 the income from public lands, invested funds, auction duties, and salt made the general taxation of real and personal property unnecessary, but thereafter the tax levy was relied on in increasing measure until, in 1865, more than 90 per cent. of the general fund came from that source. Bank taxes were first imposed in 1839 and in that year yielded $113,500, their largest return prior to 1902. Corporation taxes had been levied from 1827, but not until 1882 did their returns reach a million dollars. These amounted to nearly $14,000,000 in 1917. Inheritance and organization taxes, first imposed in 1885 and 1886, together raised $15,000,000 in 1917. In 1896 an enormous addition to the indirect revenues of the State was made by its share of the centrally imposed
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
liquor tax, which by the Raines law superseded the local licensing system. Twenty years later the State's share of this was over $13,000,000. The year 1905 saw the indirect system extended by a tax on the transfer of stock, amounting in 1917 to nearly $8,000,000. The next year an annual mortgage tax, soon changed to a recording tax, which has brought in yearly from one to two millions, was imposed, and direct taxation became merely nominal until 1911, when a new levy of over $6,000,000 became necessary to raise a general fund of more than $50,000,000. At this time a secured debt tax was imposed that immediately raised $1,400,000 and in 1917 returned $766,000. Direct taxation was increased in 1912 and 1913, raising $11,000,000 in the first and $6,400,000 in the second year. Then, after a lapse of one year, $20,500,000 was thus raised-with one exception, that of 1874, the largest direct tax in the history of the State. Smaller levies have been made since. Finally in 1919 the loss of both State and local revenues, incident to the enactment of prohibition, led the State to turn to a general income tax in the expectation of raising over $40,000,000 to be divided between the State and its subdivisions. With a funded debt of more than $236,000,000 in 1917, and total expenses, including sinking fund charges, of over $80,000,000, the State faces a serious problem in adapting its resources to the ever-increasing demand to extend government enter- prises.
New York came out of the Civil War financially in sound condition. On September 30, 1860, the funded debt of the State, including the canal and general fund,
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INTRODUCTION
was $33,612,976. The State paid its way as it went and would actually have reduced its debt had it not been for the large bounty loans made in 1865, amounting to $25,566,000. On September 30, 1865, the debt was $25,475,540, but the bounty loans brought it up on December 10 to $51,041,540, the highest sum ever reached until 1910, in the new era of expansion, after the State debt had been all but nominally extinguished in 1893. Nevertheless, the census returns for 1865 showed clearly what the war had cost the people of New York. In 1860 the State's population was 3,880,735. In 1865 its population was 3,831,777, or a decrease of 48,958. New York City's population decreased from 813,669 in 1860 to 726,386. Critics of the Secretary of State, Chauncey M. Depew, declared that the count was faulty, but Depew, probably with justice, attributed the decrease to extraordinary efforts for the maintenance of the war, and after careful inquiry in towns showing marked increase or decrease reported explanations that threw an interesting light on the changes that had been going on in the economic life of the people. Sixty-six towns reported that their decreased population was due to emigration to the west. Thirty-seven towns attributed it to consolidation of farms, fifteen to the exhaustion of forests and the discontinuance of lum- bering in their neighborhoods, eleven to wholesale removals to the Pennsylvania oil regions, and eleven to the removal of laborers on the completion of railroads that had employed them. Eighteen towns reported that they had been decimated by disease, especially diph- theria. While thirty-two towns reported that they had
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
lost by the general prostration due to war, twelve recorded an actual loss in population by deaths in the military service, and eighteen towns confessed loss through removals to Canada to avoid the draft. On the other hand, causes for increase were found in the growth of manufactures in special localities, in the extension of railroad business, in the development of suburban communities, which was then just beginning, and in immigration.
In the fifty years after the Civil War the population of the State nearly tripled. The ordinary running expenses increased from a little over $9,000,000 in 1865, including nearly $6,000,000 for the State's activities in the war, to nearly $35,000,000 in 1910, $47,000,000 in 1916, and over $64,000,000 in 1917, including $9,000,000 for the war. Yet this tremendous increase in expenditure, so out of proportion to the increase of population, is considerably less out of proportion to the increase in wealth. The total assessed valuation of real and personal property grew from $1,550,879,685 in 1865 to $10,121,277,461 in 1910 and $13,054,319,369 in 1917. The growth of wealth not assessed for direct taxation has been vastly greater. While the assessed valuation of property has increased somewhat more than eight-fold, the ordinary expenditures of the State, excluding debt service and war emergency costs, have increased eighteen-fold. Between 1865 and 1910 the expenses of local government have probably quad- rupled, though the total of city, village, and local school taxation, necessary to determine this exactly, does not appear in the State's records for the years before 1900.
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INTRODUCTION
Between 1910 and 1917 direct taxation for local purposes almost doubled, from $153,000,000 to $276,000,000. Part of the increased State expenditure is accounted for by transfer to the central authority of work once paid for by local taxation. Thus the State hospitals for the insane, costing over $10,000,000 a year, have taken over all the patients once cared for by city and county institutions, a reform initiated under Gov- ernor Hill. The State's charities, such as the care of the blind, the feeble-minded, and tubercular and delinquent children, cost ten times what they did in 1865, but that outlay is called for by the popular standard of humane conduct and public welfare. The $10,000,000 charged from the general fund to educa- tion, as against $43,000 in 1865, is due partly to an increase to meet higher standards at higher costs with a growing school population, and partly to bookkeeping changes and the abolition of the old school funds. To the scientific service of agricultural interests the State devotes over $3,000,000 a year, as against $18,000 as late as 1875 and $500,000 in 1885.
In addition the State has also embarked on great constructive enterprises. It has continued the work of DeWitt Clinton by enlarging the canals to meet the needs of modern traffic and created a funded debt of $148,000,000 for that purpose. A debt of $80,000,000 has been incurred for the system of improved highways initiated by Governor Black and greatly developed by Governors Odell and Hughes. The State has taken liberal measures to preserve its natural resources and scenic beauties. The Forest Preserve, in addition to
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
large annual expenditures through a quarter of a cen- tury, has involved a bonded debt of $2,500,000. The establishment of the Niagara Falls Reservation under Governor Cleveland was the first step in a policy lead- ing to the acquisition, by gift or purchase, of Saratoga Springs, Watkins Glen, the Letchworth property at Portage Falls, Fire Island Park, and the great Palisade Interstate Park, for which the State has incurred a debt of $5,000,000, and a large number of smaller reser- vations.
Neither of the leading political parties has made itself the avowed champion of this expansion as a settled policy. From time to time each has deprecated it, and then promoted it. The logic of events, the growth of population and business, bringing new social, sanitary, and economic problems and new demands for public regulation, rather than any theory, has directed the movement. In fact the attitude of the political parties has been almost altogether opportunist. With New York almost always a debatable and generally pivotal State in national elections, the chief concern of its party leaders has been national. With some noteworthy exceptions, such as Warner Miller's high license plat- form of 1888, and Tammany's disposition to shape its relations to outside politics entirely with regard to its paramount local interests, State policies have held a subordinate place in the manœuvers of parties. In spite of that, perhaps rather for that reason, both parties, unbound by theoretical dogmas, have approached State problems in a practical spirit. In reviewing their record year by year, a steady advance may be noted in
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INTRODUCTION
improving the machinery of administration as new needs develop or new abuses are discovered and in making the law give better protection to the political rights and economic interests of the average man and woman. Ballot reform, primary reform, tenement house reform, railroad regulation, factory laws, pro- tection of women and children in industry, workmen's compensation, woman suffrage, and finally prohibition all testify to New York's readiness for innovation and hospitality to whatever promises social betterment. The story of the political struggles of half a century some- times opens on sordid pages; but not less in the record of the human weakness of parties and politicians than in the more frequent record of honest and intelligent effort to serve public needs through party machinery does it reveal the "slow and quiet action of society upon itself" that seemed to De Tocqueville the essence and virtue of republican government in America.
CHAPTER II RECONSTRUCTION AND THE POLITICAL PARTIES
1865
T HE close of the Civil War found neither political party in New York prepared to face the issue of peace with sureness or unity of purpose. A momentary period of joy in victory, quickly merging into one of universal mourning, obscured for only a little time the divided counsels and the passions that were to make a stupid blunder of the work of recon- struction.
Andrew Johnson inherited from Lincoln a policy toward the southern States that had already threatened a break between the Executive and Congress. The radical leaders, Charles Sumner and Benjamin F. Wade in the Senate, and Thaddeus Stevens and Henry Winter Davis in the House, had bitterly assailed Lin- coln's invitation to the southern people to reestablish loyal governments for themselves. On his accession, the radicals had great hopes of Johnson. "Johnson, we have faith in you. By the gods, there will be no more trouble in running the government," had been Wade's declaration on the occasion of his first call with other Senators on the new President.1 The stern attitude of
1George W. Julian, Political Recollections, p. 257.
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1865]
RECONSTRUCTION AND THE PARTIES
Johnson, who frequently declared that the Confederate leaders should be hanged, and his efforts to fix upon some of them responsibility for the assassination of Lincoln, gave at first some plausibility to this confi- dence. But Johnson was by training and tradition a State rights Democrat; he could battle against treason and for the restoration of the Union, but he could not bring himself to contemplate a restored Union differing materially in the balance of State and Federal powers from that which secession had attempted to destroy. Individuals might be proscribed and punished, but the southern communities, once restored to order, must be permitted to resume control of local affairs and partici- pate in the national government without restriction of their old constitutional rights. Slavery had destroyed itself, but the southern States must still be masters of their own suffrage policy and the makers of their own constitutional law.
Closely following Lincoln's policy, Johnson, on May 29, 1865, issued a proclamation of general amnesty with certain specific exceptions, among them those who owned over $20,000 of property. He proclaimed the restoration of rights of property, except in slaves, and outlined plans for the appointment of provisional Gov- ernors, who should determine the qualifications of electors and officials to reorganize the State govern- ments. The electors were limited to white men. This scheme went beyond Lincoln's in its proscription of the wealthy. It reflected the prejudice of Johnson, who had struggled from poverty to power in opposition to the southern aristocracy, and also his settled belief that
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