USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 24
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And now Theodore Roosevelt had galloped out on the political stage; I find myself using the word "galloped" as a matter of associa- tion, probably; one envisaged him in those days astride a horse, his favorite position, and his horse was not always the familiar quad- ruped of natural history, but a hobby, the moving spirit of a polit- ical race, or a reform, as the case might be; he galloped at all events, and had become a prominent figure in the political arena; a pic- turesque and challenging personality with remarkable energy and aggressive power, making friends, scorning foes, and pursuing his
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own boundless activity with indifference to both. He had thrown himself into the Civil Service Reform movement, and President Harrison made him one of the three commissioners who were put in control. But neither Harrison nor Cleveland had given it espe- cially strong backing; perhaps its objective-impartiality and free- dom from politics-was better promoted for that reason. Roosevelt was supremely resourceful and good at meeting opposition, hitting out relentlessly on behalf of his cause, an effective weapon against the spoils system. His boldness, his ungloved attack on the flagrant abuses of power, and his impetuous aggression, stimulated weaker movements. When he became Police Commissioner, and started his personal investigations of the New York force, he was already a hero to some extent, though there were plenty of enemies on his trail. Of his bravery there was no question, and the daily accounts of his accomplishments became alnost a romance.
My brother, who brought to us his enthusiasms as well as some of the difficulties which we could share at least by sympathy, was then much interested in the Knights of Labor, and had, I believe, become a member of the organization. They were, then, the fore- most labor organization in the country. There had been associa- tions of working-men, craft unions mainly, ever since the Civil War, but no centralization or actual coordination since 1874, when they were organized as a national body. From the very first they had ex- cluded unskilled labor. The Knights had started out a few years later, on a broader basis, and with greater idealism. Their order was to some extent a matter of religion, and initiations were at- tended with ritual, apparently of a slightly mystic character. Their aim was to keep the organization non-political, but they became in- volved in a measure of church opposition, for the Catholic Church was against them, at first mildly, later more seriously. There was a little infusion of socialism in their creed: it stood for public owner- ship of railways and utilities. Their president, Terence V. Powderly, was a friend of my brother, who became interested in the move- ment through his close association with the working-people. He was a person of refined appearance, some education, and perhaps more idealism than wisdom. He had an oratorical gift which gave him
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some power. He passed out of office in 1893, but meanwhile my brother's interest in the movement, which made some stir in the industrial world, had spread to a certain extent in the Episcopal church. The prestige of the Knights was declining then, although its losses were not generally realized. They had attempted too much and had changed their organization too often; it was top-heavy with a mass of unskilled workers who did not fit into any clear-cut policy, and whose ranks were recruited through immigration-Poles, Swedes, French, Bohemians. The more conservative unions, under Samuel Gompers, a cigar-maker, a shrewd, limited, but very aggres- sive leader, brought about a split which in the end led to the forma- tion of the American Federation of Labor. The strike and even the boycott became a more frequent resort.
The Knights gradually shrank to small numbers from a mem- bership claimed to have reached a hundred thousand. But my brother had already made many converts to its ideas, and we were greatly interested in the formation of the Church Association for the Advancement of the Interests of Labor, or the C. A. I. L., famil- iarly known as Cail.
My father was, I think, the first Bishop to join in starting this association which made good progress among the clergy in the East. Its work from the outset was bringing better knowledge of indus- trial conditions to the people of the churches. The Brotherhood of Man was a fine sentiment, to those privileged and religious people who acknowledged it, but actually its significance needed to be brought home to the individual conscience. A very formidable op- position to organized labor, partly because of the weaknesses of that body, particularly of the younger unions, had been growing up. Not only the manufacturing element, which dealt directly with union labor, but the intellectual and rational, were inimical to it. Its methods were questioned, and often held in contempt. It con- cerned itself solely with the craft wage-earners; there was no hope in it for sweated or unskilled labor. The Cail was not actually mili- tant in its character, but it championed the cause of the helpless, and brought an appeal through religion to the social conscience as far as was possible.
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In connection with its work I may perhaps recall a personal in- cident to which I still look back with amusement. I had been writ- ing a little, off and on, for two or three years, beginning with a serial in The Churchman, a story of which I am anything but proud today. I had written stories for children in that periodical, and also in The Youth's Companion, which paid very well, and accepted every- thing I sent in; also an occasional story or article for the Saturday literary column of the New York Times, and the Saturday issue of the New York Post. And at the moment Henry George's paper, The Standard, was a large daily sheet, the organ of the Single Tax. Mr. George was then a public figure as well as the writer of a book which was translated into forty languages, and wielded a strong influence. We were warmly interested in the doctrine propounded in Progress and Poverty, and my husband and I were among the friends and visitors who enjoyed Mr. George's hospitality. His house was thrown open every week to a crowd of guests and adherents, and it was possible to get talks with him there, beside his public utter- ances. He asked me now and then to write an article for The Stand- ard, and finally he and my brother came to me with a proposition which sounded like an adventure, to say the least. The General Conventions of the Episcopal Church had never taken up the mat- ter of social abuses; its time was given instead to discussions of canons, proposed innovations or alterations of the Liturgy, matters of ritual and their theological implications, and a host of routine questions carried over and resurrected each year with no prospect of settlement.
My father was openly impatient, as were many others. There was a crying need for more knowledge of, and sympathy with the great questions then confronting Church and State. Dr. Parkhurst was launching his famous attack upon the houses of vice in New York city, and the sensational details were published daily. All man- ner of civic house-cleanings were going on. But the church fought shy of it. Bishops were shepherds, and only the care of their own particular flocks concerned them. Something was wanted, it ap- peared, to force the great problems of the moment upon their con- sciousness.
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The plan was that an article should be written, and sent to all the clergy, pointing out this need, and delating upon the influence which might be exerted by strong leaders both in the Convention itself and through its assemblage of delegates, upon the church at large. I remember discussing it with Mr. George in a corner at one of his Sunday afternoons at home, when people streamed in and out of the house, finding acquaintances, or making friends of other land-taxers without the formality of an introduction. The host was invariably busy with one or two people at a time, and had to be seized upon summarily or inveigled back to his station as welcomer. He would dash up to one unexpectedly, and begin where he last left off in the midst of an interrupted discussion, getting as far along with it as he might, but very likely borne off before it was well un- der way. He was no respecter of persons, however, and had not the accustomed group of satellites who preempt a great man's attention on all occasions.
That day, I recollect, he said to my husband, "Come along, and we'll talk about that article. You've got to see that she does it." Be- tween us we settled on a sort of allegory, a tale of a mysterious stranger going into a meeting of a convention and telling the door- keeper that he was charged with a message to the church from the oppressed people in the tenements and sweat-shops, dens of vice, and so forth, and would like an opportunity to speak. The refusal of this privilege, on the ground of ecclesiastical exigencies and im- portant projects before the House, was the gist of the story. Mr. George decided that this was what he particularly wanted, and gave me but a short time to get it finished for The Standard. He sent a copy of it, I believe, to every bishop, and most of the clergy, of the Episcopal Church, at the time of the meeting of the House of Bishops. I signed it with the name Jacob Armitage, under which I had written other articles.
The paper received between thirty and forty letters in reply, some of them favorable, some voicing great disapproval. One espe- cially dear friend, the Reverend William Reed Huntington of Grace Church, who had been an inmate of our family in the old Boston days when assisting my father, and was then my little daugh-
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ter's godfather, wrote one of the most severe arraignments, taking me apparently for a clergyman and deprecating my disloyalty, as he terined it. Naturally he never knew to whom he had been writing. I had not told my father who was responsible for the article, for I wanted his unbiased criticism. I was so thrilled by his warm ap- proval, expressed when he was visiting us, that even then I did not reveal to him that he was praising his daughter's work. Years passed before world issues and evils were taken before the tribunal of bishops, but work went on, nevertheless, among the individual clergy. By and by the Church League for Industrial Democracy, of which such women as Vida Scudder and Mary Simkhovitch were leaders and founders, took up the work of the Cail to a large extent.
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A PART IN POLITICS
With the ignorant prejudice of the ordinary nineteenth-century woman against political influence, I began by hating to have my husband mix himself up with politics and partisanship, though I was a partisan myself. It was the era that might be called pre-citizen- ship for women; they were gradually becoming cognizant of social evils, and I had certainly had training enough in early Syracuse days to be ready for reform interests. But then, as in the nineties, the whole field of political activity was seething with corruption, a slough in which few outsiders had ventured to set their feet. Equal suffrage was just visible on the horizon, a vision kept bright by the very women I had seen in my girlhood at their early convention in the seventies. Among my older sister's friends it was in the prophetic stage. Better knowledge of women's possibilities was disseminated through many channels. They were coming into their own in new fields.
But failing a right to equality in the business or political world, the average woman looked upon party affiliations as beneath the dignity, if not the respectability of the enlightened citizen. When Archie joined the Young Men's Democratic Club I was sure he would meet with corrupting influences. Nevertheless I had a great curiosity to see just how they worked. We were too congenial a pair to have separate mental compartments for particular interests; we discussed every sort of encounter or enthusiasm. It was the begin- ning of my own civic interests. After a political meeting we talked far into the night; he was always ready to describe the evening's adventures.
His friend Frederick Hinrichs, a somewhat older man, and the
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moving spirit of the Young Democrats group, looked to him for ac- tive support. He was a leading influence in the club through some of its exciting crises; once after a dissension he was almost dislodged from the chairman's seat on the platform, and I swelled with pride at his heroism.
Seth Low, who had championed the cause of Civil Service re- form, had become a leader of one of the campaigning clubs. He was a scion of the old Low family of Brooklyn, and as my father had said of Governor Seymour in our old Syracuse days, a high-minded Christian gentleman. That described him; a man of the nineteenth century, not politically strong, but discerning and sympathetic with reform. Horace Deming, an ambitious Republican, had a large following in the membership of the Young Republican Club; the Young Men's Democratic Club had organized soon after the first Cleveland campaign in 1884, with the object of restoring Jefferso- nian ideals to the Democratic party, and furthering specifically a re- form in city government. In that field of course they competed with Tammany. Edward M. Shepard, a prominent and wealthy politi- cian, by inheritance a Tammany adherent but a rebel against the in- iquities of that organization, was an early president of the Young Men's Democratic Club, and was followed by Frederick Hinrichs of Brooklyn, a fine speaker and independent thinker.
Hinrichs was a Free Trader, as were various prominent Brook- lyn men, like Henry Ward Beecher and Thomas G. Sherman; they were already regarded as dangerous radicals by certain large busi- ness interests, almost as communists are today but came from higher social ranks. Cleveland had made it a matter of special presidential policy, and after his defeat by Harrison in 1888 had still adhered to his creed.
In 1892 David B. Hill, the boss of the regular Democratic party, aspired to candidacy for its nomination, and gathered seventy-two delegates to represent him at the national convention in Chicago. This was a menace to the reform contingent. The Young Men Democrats were determined to oppose him, and my husband was at the head and front, with Hinrichs, of a move to frustrate the scheme. A few days after the State Convention had elected the
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Hill delegates, he had an inspiration, and decided to see Hinrichs and Shepard, and try to initiate a movement for Cleveland's re- election if the latter could be persuaded to run. He would be the salvation of the party. Archie started forth with a friend, remarking that Hinrichs had courage enough for anything. He came back with good news.
"Fred thinks it's a pretty heavy contract," he said, "and we'll have to have the club back of him, but he's agreed to go and see Cleveland tomorrow, and ask what the chances would be of his con- senting to run. He's the one man that can save the situation, and beat Hill."
We were in suspense for twenty-four hours and more. Then word came that Cleveland was interested, and had asked just one question; "What are the people going to do about it?" He was re- nominated at a special convention in Syracuse. The independent delegates were not allowed seats on the platform, but sat at the front of the audience. Hinrichs made a capital speech for the protesting body, and his ringing declaration as he pointed to these delegates, "We are the People!" was one of the slogans of the campaign. Many leading men also became Mugwumps, as they were scornfully desig- nated-Mr. Kernan of Utica and Mayor Grace of New York, Fred- erick Coudert, Thomas Mott Osborn, who later became an out- standing fighter for prison reform, and Charles Fairchild of Cazenovia; the last two Central New York men, and friends of my father, who was also deeply interested in the campaign. Mr. Fair- child was made Secretary of the Treasury in Cleveland's cabinet, and Mr. Hinrichs became a friend and associate of Senator Bayard of Delaware, at that time Secretary of State, and later our Ambas- sador to the Court of St. James. Mr. Hinrichs' own account of that victory, consummated over the unanimous opposition of the reg- ular Democratic organization, is stirring. The Young Men's Demo- cratic Club was triumphant, and during following years my hus- band was twice its president.
Election days were curiously solemn, in our neighborhood at any rate; I don't know what took place in Tammany territory. They were not like Sunday, with cheerful bells and best clothes. Business
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was suspended, and all day the streets of Brooklyn remained quiet. Men walked off to the polls from early morning on. The polling- places were usually at saloons, which was later urged against wom- an-suffrage. Children were taken to dine with their grandparents, the father of the family perhaps being absent. They did not play in the streets. Offices were closed. Liquor was plentiful, and was used as a medium of exchange in bribery, though mostly under cover. Especially on days of national elections these conditions prevailed, but even when mayors and other local officials were up it was per- ceptible. My husband used to run in of an afternoon, sometimes reporting close votes or possible disturbances in parts of the city. We grew more and more restive as the hours wore on before the closing of the polls.
When the lamps were lighted, however, the scene changed, and a holiday tempo reigned; the working people and the young be- took themselves to places of amusement, the business men to their offices or to windows, whence the returns, thrown upon screens at the top of the newspaper buildings or high towers, could be seen. The theaters also reported to excited audiences. Crowds watched from the sidewalks; figures were received with groans or huzzas. Till after midnight the frenzy kept up. The successful candidates were escorted to, or visited at their homes by joyful crowds and made speeches from balconies. The streets echoed with trumpetings from bands or the humbler horns of the proletariat, and the police went about watching bonfires.
For us two, the night of that election which put Frederick Hin- richs into office-a political "spoil" it might have been called, as Commissioner of Tax Arrears, was the harbinger of a couple of fortunate years. He appointed Archie his deputy, which meant a good salary, a larger apartment, the settlement of debts and free- dom from worry so long as that particular party remained in power. Now I had what my somewhat battered New England conscience pronounced a sinful elation. Relief at last from financial insecu- rity; help in the housekeeping, something put away for illness or emergency, and a release of new energy with the prospect of time for outside work as well as for the writing which had become more
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than a mere resource, were the results of a political appointment, an interruption in my husband's profession, and an involvement, no doubt, in obligations which might at any moment become threaten- ing.
I went through a considerable mental revolt against this in- voluntary satisfaction, and was annoyed to think that my husband could take it as complacently as he did. Diplomacy was a new word, an addition to our virtuous vocabulary, and one fraught with aların. But the two tax-collectors looked upon their accession to of- fice seriously, apparently confident of their fitness for the job, and with the goal of recovering some millions of dollars for the city in the shape of old unpaid taxes on large tracts of land. They became so absorbed in this undertaking that I found myself grumpily jealous of their unwonted ardor. I made truce with my own qualms at last, coming to the old conclusion that this experience would teach us something in any case, and give us a chance to understand the polit- ical life of a great city.
Experience, experience; that solemn fowl, as Oliver Wendell Holmes puts it, that cackles a great deal more than she lays eggs. We all cackle with her, of course, and return to sit on our own nests, expecting great results. I must record, however, that it made us jubilant when Archie was tended a bribe by a man who wanted to forestall the assessment and sale of a piece of property on which he had not paid taxes for years. The man laid a large roll of bills on the office desk with the remark,
"Of course you won't put up those lots, Sessions; you're a good friend of mine."
"An annual ceremony," Archie wagered grimly.
The bills were "left lay" till surreptitiously removed by their owner, and the sale expedited. Apollyon had been laid low, and we had been in at the death. What a shame that such opportunities were not open to the weaker sex!
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Politics however, were not the whole of my husband's public activities. He was busy in the service of the Municipal League. He was delegate from Brooklyn to the Conference at Philadelphia in 1894, and again at Cleveland the next year, and delivered addresses before various political organizations on the burning question of municipal government reform. I remember feeling terribly helpless and futile now and then, when we were discussing those things. Be- ing a mere female, going to church societies and Girls' Friendly meetings, writing articles, mending stockings, and making over other people's clothes to fit my child and myself or trying out eco- nomical menus, seemed to offer so very little contribution to the community. And then quite suddenly there came the chance for a real responsibility.
I was a member of the large and active Brooklyn Woman's Club, and as nearly as I can remember it was through that club that I re- ceived a proposal to take the presidency of a Long Island branch of the Consumers' League, then well started in New York with Mrs. Maud Nathan at its head. The history of that association has been so well described by Mrs. Nathan in her book, The Story of an Epochmaking Movement, that I do not need to explain how great an opportunity this opened up.
Information regarding conditions of working-women in New York City alone needed to be brought home to the purchasers and the general public. In every branch of business and industry, from sweatshops to fashionable tailors' establishments and dry-goods stores, investigation was challenged. The New York League, which had gained its inspiration from a woman who had herself known the
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worst evils at first hand, was at work trying to make consumers real- ize the menace to the entire public, not only from the point of view of humanity, but from actual threat of disease and poison. Volun- tary inspection had been begun in New York City, but Long Island was still untouched through lack of workers. It needed an organiza- tion which could work hand in hand with the present one, first of all helping to spread the knowledge of its needs and objects.
I don't know how I ever came to accept that proposal so quickly and impetuously, but it carried such persuasive force that I had agreed almost before I knew it. I who had thought a broken leg in- teresting, was still impetuously ready to set sail for unknown shores in a fog, without even studying a chart. But it was put to me as a job. in which I should have strong backing. I was to have twelve vice- presidents, each of them the head of a separate organization, so that the scheme would be spread at once before a large public. All I should have to do would be-we all know how the duties of an offi- cial are minimized when people are urging one to shoulder them. The truth is, however, that eyes are dazzled by the sight of a new field for exploration, particularly when one has been looking at all life and action from a quiet corner. So I agreed, blindly or unad- visedly if you like, to take the job.
There were interesting preliminary meetings. I was glad to meet my sister's friend Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, the founder of the Charity Organization, and Mrs. Florence Kelley, with whom I was destined to come into closer touch in later years. She was the head of the Chicago branch of the League, and was living at Hull House. We had Jane Addams and Ellen Starr as guests at Forty Acres the summer before, and had heard much of Mrs. Kelley from them. Then there was Miss Watmough of Philadelphia, who had started a branch of the League there. One special departure projected that year was a plan for getting hold of consumers, and utilizing their power by means of a label to supplement the White List of fair deal- ers which was already circulated in New York. A black list was of course illegal, and the New York League had been publishing the names of stores in which good conditions, wages and hours pre- vailed. Even that was attacked, of course, and I remember certain
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