USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 97
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*Chapter XXVI.
+Chapter XXVIII.
#Chapter XXVII.
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the Southern New England Railroad, connecting the Canadian Grand Trunk with an open har- bor in Narragansett Bay, was checked soon after the sinking of the "Titanic," 1912, and the death by drowning of Charles M. Hays, who had been one of the most vigorous promoters of the new enterprise. The World War,§ 1914, and the unprecedented demand for commodities for export started a fresh period of industrial and business prosperity in Rhode Island, to con- tinue through the three years during which the United States avoided entering the struggle, and the years beyond of participation in the war.
WORLD WAR-Save for its stimulating effect upon business and production, the World War seemed remote from the United States in 1914; the cloud had come nearer two years later, when, on June 3, 1916, 53,000 men and women participated in a "preparedness" parade. Rhode Island militia was mustered into the service of the United States within the month, and sent to the Mexican border. A German submarine "posted a letter" in Newport on October 7, 1916, and another visited New London November I. War was declared April 6, 1917. Registration days, military census, drafting of the new National Army, and other military preparations fol- lowed in rapid succession. Rhode Island furnished troops promptly and regularly, and the Rhode Island troops sent overseas maintained the state's reputation. The winter of 1917-1918 was nnusually severe, and, besides, the state suffered from an epidemic of influenza. Armistice Day, November II, 1918, was celebrated without preparation as no other day has ever been observed in Rhode Island. .
The state building and construction program, abated somewhat during the war. was resumed immediately afterward. New buildings for Rhode Island State College, Rhode Island College of Education, the penal and charitable institutions at Cranston; new courthouses for Newport County and Providence County ; bridges to bind the new state roads under construc- tion, including the Washington Bridge across the Seekonk; a new office building to accom- modate an overflow from the State House, were among the projects undertaken following approval of bond issues totalling millions of dollars. The road building program itself was financed principally from taxes on automobiles and on gasoline, the latter substituted for a land tax collected as part of the state tax assessed on town and city valuations. The general pros- perity prevailing, in spite of occasional complaint against the continuation of wartime high prices, was indicated, if in no other way, by the rapid increase in the number of automobiles owned as private passenger cars, and popular acquiesence in the state building program, proved by unfailing large majorities favoring bond issues. Wartime industries, suspended because the product no longer was wanted, as a rule were replaced by others ; the discontinuance of night work and overtime was hailed as relief from excessive pressure rather than an indication of slackening trade.
There were, nevertheless, other factors in the situation which were less reassuring in their nature and portent. The electric railway system, discarded by the steam railroad company because of enforcement of federal anti-trust laws, long since had ceased to be prosperous and seemed to be drifting toward eventual and inevitable bankruptcy. A labor strike in Bristol in 1920 was attended by violent demonstrations ; the town was declared to be in a state of insur- rection, and militia was ordered on patrol duty. The factory was reopened at the end of a fort- night, and the militia was withdrawn. Early in 1922 a general strike of textile workers in cot- ton and woolen mills was ordered ; militia was sent to several places because of threatened violence. The textile strike continued through the summer with depressing effect on general business because two of the principal industries were affected. Railroad shopmen went on strike in July. Street railway employes were disaffected because of the introduction of one-man cars (a motorman-conductor replacing motorman and conductor). Economic readjustment, part of the shifting from wartime to peace time activities, was in progress, the changes affecting
§Chapter XXXIX.
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working conditions and wages; employes were in a mood to resist what to them seemed to be the pushing of the burdens of the new order upon them. Actually the period of wartime super- prosperity was definitely at an end in Rhode Island as elsewhere, and the return to normalcy involved reorganization of industrial plants and distress in some instances for workers. Blame for the situation, placed upon the political party in power, was an important factor in the fall election of 1922.
RECENT POLITICS-Politically, the outstanding event of the second decade of the twentieth century in Rhode Island was the defeat by Peter G. Gerry of Senator Henry F. Lippitt as can- didate for reelection in the first popular election of United States Senator. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States had preceded this upset in state politics, there being no reason to believe that Senator Lippitt would fail of reelection by the General Assembly, had the method of choosing Senators not been changed. Another amendment* to the federal Con- stitution doubled the potential electorate and the popular vote in 1920, although the General Assembly had, in 1917, as a concession to persistent agitation for women suffrage made pro- vision for participation by women in the choice of presidential electors. What had been planned as limited suffrage by legislative grant was changed to unrestricted suffrage by constitutional amendment. No other amendments to the federal Constitution effected changes so promptly and so noticeably in Rhode Island. After the biennial election amendment of 1911 there was until 1928 no change in the Constitution of Rhode Island.
The Democratic victory in the senatorial election of 1916 had been due in part to union labor's opposition to Senator Lippitt ; on the same day Governor Beeckman, Republican, was reelected with the largest plurality ever given a candidate up to that time. Senator Gerry as a candidate for reelection in 1922 was opposed by ex-Governor Beeckman, who had courted pop- ular favor assiduously. Exposure of alleged use of money to win Democratic support for Beeckman, although the latter asserted that proper use for legitimate campaign expenditures had been intended, affected the latter's campaign adversely. The effective Democratic organi- zation which had been fashioned for Gerry in 1916 was revived in 1922, and Gerry won again. The Democratic party had become militant once more; with young men prominent as party leaders, it was demanding abolition of the property qualification as a restriction on suffrage, reapportionment of representation in the General Assembly and a constitutional convention for consideration of these and other changes. For the time being the Republican party was dis- tressed by factional quarrels. That part of the new educational legislation of 1922 which had transferred from town and city school committee to the State Board of Education the function of approving private schools for attendance under the compulsory law was made an issue prin- cipally by Franco-Americans, who interpreted the new law as aimed at suppression of the teach- ing of the French language in their schools. To the factors of militant Democracy, internal discord in the Republican party, Franco-American unrest, and alleged corruption was added the unsatisfactory economic situation indicated by strikes. The Democrats won the general election, and increased the party strength in the General Assembly so much as to make the sessions of 1923 and 1924 memorable.
Urging their demand for a constitutional convention the Democrats by effective filibuster- ing in 1923, particularly in the senate, delayed the passage of the appropriation bill. Eventually the Governor vetoed the appropriation bill, and the Republican majority, because it lacked in the House the strength to pass the bill over the veto, was constrained to concede the passage of measures which increased the Governor's participation in the administration of state finance, forecasting a budgetary system under executive direction. The dominating figure in the sessions of the General Assembly had been the Lieutenant Governor, who, as presiding officer in the Senate, ruled the body with an iron hand, in spite of a clear majority favoring the Republican
*Woman Suffrage.
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RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT
party. The filibuster was resumed in 1924, when the Lieutenant Governor and the minority piled up an impassable blockade against the enactment of legislation and the passage of the appropriation bill ; the price set for discontinuance of the filibuster was provision for a consti- tutional convention. After day after day of fruitless meetings terminated by adjournment, a test of physical endurance was undertaken. The Lieutenant Governor remained on the dais without relief until the placing in the chamber of a bomb loaded with a suffocating gas drove the members of the Senate out. Republican Senators, with one exception, removed from the state, leaving the Senate thereafter without a quorum. The session of 1924 expired by limita- tion on January 6, 1925, no resolution of final adjournment having been passed. In the fall election of 1924 the Republican party was returned to power on the issue of law and order and as a protest against revolution by starving the government through failure to provide appro- priations. The Lieutenant Governor, candidate for election as Governor, suffered overwhelming defeat. The General Assembly elected in 1924 proposed three amendments to the Constitution, which were approved by the next General Assembly, and ratified by the people in 1928. These provided for biennial instead of annual registration of voters, increased the representation in the Senate of towns and cities with more than 37,500 electors, and abolished the property qualification, except in financial town meetings. The General Assembly elected in 1924 also enacted legislation regulating state finance, established a state budgetary system, and created the office of Finance Commissioner. It made provision also for a department of state police.
Interest in the election of 1924 may be measured by the facts that 51,000 electors more than in 1922 and 43,000 more than in 1926 went to the polls and voted. The large vote was due in part to interest in the election of a President of the United States, and a United States Sen- ator from Rhode Island. Calvin Coolidge carried Rhode Island by 40,000 majority and 48,000 plurality. Jesse H. Metcalf, as Republican candidate for the Senate, had 32,000 plurality over Governor Flynn. For Governor Felix A. Toupin, Lieutenant Governor and storm centre as presiding officer in the State Senate, polled 4000 votes more than Governor Flynn had in 1922, but was defeated by ex-Governor Aram J. Pothier by 36,000 plurality. Interpretation of the election exclusively as a victory for law and order and as a repudiation of the filibuster as revolutionary must be tempered by consideration of the large vote for Toupin and the coinci- dence of presidential and senatorial elections with the state election, unless the 51,000 new voters who visited the polls may be pictured as an army of freemen and freewomen called out to save the state from lawlessness.
In the middle election of 1926 Governor Pothier's vote was reduced by 33,000, and his Democratic opponent's by 10,000, and the Republican plurality by 23,000. The presidential election of 1928 called out 37,000 voters more than in 1924. The Democratic candidate for the presidency, Alfred E. Smith, who was popular in Rhode Island, carried the state by 1400 plurality. Governor Case, candidate for reelection, with 1001 votes less than Governor Pothier had polled in 1924, was reelected by 8000 plurality. Felix Hebert defeated Senator Gerry, can- didate for reelection, by 3000 plurality.
The total vote cast in 1930 was 222,000, less by 14,000 than in the presidential election of 1928. A referendum on prohibition and the election of a United States Senator had aroused interest. Rhode Island remained Republican, although both Connecticut and Massachusetts were swept into the Democratic column in an election which left the result as to party control of the Seventy-second Congress in doubt. Senator Metcalf, candidate for reelection, defeated ex-Senator Gerry by 2500 plurality, and Governor Case was reelected by 3500 plurality. Dem- ocrats carried three of the four new senatorial districts in Providence, achieved control of the city council in Providence for the first time in the ninety-eight years of city government, and control of the cities of Central Falls and Woonsocket. While abolition of the property qualifica- tion played its part in the three city elections, other factors affected results in Central Falls and Woonsocket. In Providence, curiously, Senator Metcalf piled up a vote which more than offset
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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
losses in strong Republican towns which were sufficient to defeat him had the balloting in Providence coincided with the landslide in the municipal election.
The results of five elections in ten years indicate that Rhode Island normally is Repub- lican, but that the minority Democratic party has persistent strength. In critical years, with issues sharply drawn, a discriminating independent vote may help the Republicans to pile up imposing pluralities or place Democrats in office. The effect eventually of the suffrage amend- ment of 1928, which abolished the property qualification, remains for determination in later elections. Republicans remained in control of city councils in Cranston, Newport* and Paw- tucket in 1930, notwithstanding the extension of suffrage. They lost Central Falls principally because of the defection of a thoroughly organized racial bloc. They lost Woonsocket because of local municipal issues of transcendental importance in the northern city. They lost Provi- dence, partly because of resentment in the city arising from the transfer from popular to indirect election of three city officers. The control of Providence in the future will depend principally upon the ability or inability of the Democratic party to justify its ascendancy by efficient administration, but also somewhat upon the possibility or impossibility of welding the Democrats into a harmonious organization strengthened by its possession of a large number of offices to be awarded to faithful party adherents. A city which rolls up twice the plurality for a favorite candidate for Mayor that it gives favorite candidates for Governor and United States Senate, which votes one party ticket in municipal election and another in a general elec- tion held on the same day, has independent strength sufficient to encourage careful canvassing. The election of 1930 as a whole emphasizes the lesson of many other elections in three cen- turies-Rhode Islanders know how to use the ballot to express the popular will and achieve it.
CONTINUITY OF CONSTITUTION-Except during the period of the Andros usurpation, 1686-1689, there has been no hiatus in constitutional government in Rhode Island. The Consti- tution in the form in which it is because of amendments is the product of changes beginning almost immediately after the Charter of 1663 was granted. Before the substitution of Consti- tution for Charter in 1842 the more significant constitutional changes were (1) proxy voting ; (2) definition and modification of qualifications for suffrage; (3) separation of General Assembly into houses ; (4) relinquishment by the General Assembly of the function of filling vacancies by reason of failure by the people to elect Governor, Deputy Governor and assistants. Since 1842 amendments to the Constitution which have not been annulled have related to ( I) elections and the qualifications of electors; (2) sessions of the General Assembly ; (3) filling vacancies in elective offices ; (4) grand committee ; (5) membership of General Assembly ; (6) veto power; (7) Supreme Court ; (8) pardoning power; (9) chartering of corporation; (10) eminent domain. Over the period of almost 270 years from 1663 the changes in the Constitu- tion may be summarized, with reference to agencies,f as follows : I. General Assembly (I) as grand committee relinquished legislative power to bicameral legislature, and large part of func- tion of electing officers to Governor or Senate, (2) as Legislature lost sole legislative power, as the latter was restricted by the veto, (3) as a representative body passed from representation of the whole state and the towns to representation of the towns and representative districts ; (4) was successively (a) restricted by the Charter, (b) omnipotent, and (c) restricted by the Con- stitution. II. Senate, consisting originally of twelve members-Governor, Deputy Governor and ten assistants-elected for the whole state on general ticket, became a body representing towns and cities, and afterward a body representing towns and cities and four senatorial dis- tricts in Providence ; relinquished judicial power as courts were created ; acquired powers to approve appointment of, or to elect, important state officers by action of the General Assembly. III. House of Representatives, consisting of representatives of towns, became a body repre- senting constituencies of 100 representative districts, of which only twenty-five were undivided
*Democratic mayor.
tThe agencies are identified by their names in the twentieth century.
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RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT
towns. IV. Governor, presiding officer of General Assembly in grand committee and of Senate, and agent for the General Assembly rather than an executive officer, was replaced by Lieuten- ant Governor as presiding officer in grand committee and Senate, and acquired restricted par- doning. veto and appointive powers. V. Lieutenant Governor, originally member of the Senate, became presiding officer in the grand committee and Senate. VI. Supreme Court, once identi- fied with the General Assembly, and after creation as a separate agency restricted by the power reserved by the Assembly to entertain and decide appeals and reverse judgments, (1) became independent of the Assembly through refusal to permit or recognize appeals from its judg- ments and decisions; (2) asserted right as separate constitutional agency to determine the con- stitutionality of legislation ; and (3) became a final appellate and revisory body entertaining and deciding appeals from lower courts of justice, and also from boards and commissions exer- cising judicial functions. VII. Electorate, successively (I) adult males admitted to freemanship and qualified by ownership of land; (2) adult male citizens of the United States owning land and adult male native citizens of the United States qualified by registration and two years of residence; (3) after 1886, additional to other classes, adult male naturalized citizens of the United States who enlisted from Rhode Island, served in army or navy during the Civil War, and were honorably discharged; (4) after 1888, additional to other classes, adult male natural- ized citizens of the United States qualified by registration and two years residence; (5) after 1928 (by amendment to federal Constitution) women on the same qualification as to age, resi- dence, citizenship, registration, etc., as men; (6) after 1928, adult citizens of the United States resident one year and qualified by ownership of land, and other adult citizens of the United States resident two years and registered. The Constitution of 1842 excluded persons not taxed from voting in financial town meetings, and, in the instance of Providence, which was the only city in the state, excluded non-taxpayers from voting for members of the city council. The second restriction did not apply in Newport and Pawtucket as these municipalities became cities, until 1888, when the Bourn amendment, at the same time that it enfranchised non-landholding naturalized citizens, applied to all cities the same exclusion of non-taxpayers from voting for city councilmen provided in the Constitution for Providence. The amendment of 1928 (I) abolished the property qualification for election of city councilmen ; (2) retained the taxpaying qualification for financial town meetings; and (3) authorized the General Assembly to create municipal budget commissions with authority to impose taxes and expend money in cities and in towns, in the last, however, only upon request of the financial town meeting. VIII. Towns and cities as units for representation-in the first bicameral Legislature one house represented the whole state, the other the towns ; under the Constitution the unit for representation was the town or city, with representation equal in the Senate and related to population in the House, the Governor as presiding officer and the Lieutenant Governor as a member of the Senate continu- ing recognition of the whole state interest; under amendment XIII, 1909, towns and cities electing more than one Representative surrendered town-city-unit representation for repre- sentation by districts ; under amendment XIX, 1928, Providence surrendered city-unit repre- sentation in the Senate for representation by districts. The Lieutenant Governor continues as a member of the Senate, and is presiding officer since the withdrawal of the Governor, 1909, with vote only in the instance of a tie. The political changes as a rule, indicate adjustment by compromise rather than clear victory in accomplishing programs. Thus Providence in 1909 exchanged representation by a solid bloc of one-sixth of the members of the House of Repre- sentatives for representation by one-fourth the membership, elected in districts and invariably divided into party blocs, the effect being to weaken the influence of the largest city in the Legis- lature. The extension of suffrage was compromised ( 1) in the instance of the Bourn amend- ment by the restriction of suffrage in the election of city councils, and (2) in the amendment of 1928 by the authorization for legislative creation of budget commissions to control taxation and expenditure. The latest amendment lays to rest campaign discussion of "antiquated suffrage
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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
restriction persisting in Rhode Island," urged before every election, in spite of the plain fact that suffrage has been less restricted in Rhode Island after 1888 than in a great many states, including more than one of the New England group.
THE CITY-STATE OF 1930-Rhode Island in 1930 is a city-state. Seventy percent of the people reside in cities ; 82.5 percent reside within the metropolitan greater city of Providence, which stretches from Woonsocket along the valley of the Blackstone River to Narragansett Bay, thence along the east shore to Fall River and on the west shore so far as East Greenwich. Ninety percent of the people live under urban conditions ; less than five percent in the open country or subject to rural environment. Electric service is almost universal, even in rural sections ; the number of homes supplied with current for light and power, gas for cooking, tele- phone service, running water and sewer drainage approaches eighty percent. The population of Central Falls exceeds 20,000 per square mile, that of the city of Providence 11,000 per square mile. By counties the population per square mile is : Bristol, 1055; Kent, 281 ; Newport, 355; Providence, 1301 ; Washington, 90; whole state, 645. Population centres, in instances of sep- aration by open country, are linked together by miles of splendid roads. It is conceivable that the entire area of 1053 square miles ( 1300 square miles including water ) could be administered under a central state-municipal government, combining all necessary functions, efficiently, con- veniently and economically, and that an administrative organization of a new and progressive type might be developed were it not that Rhode Islanders cling tenaciously to the traditions of their historic towns and view with suspicion and misgivings restriction of town autonomy or accession of controlling power by the state government. With many Rhode Islanders the theory of a state established by a union of towns and cities persists, reversing and ignoring the consti- tutional and legal origin of towns and cities as corporations created by the state. Attachment to towns is strengthened somewhat, besides, by the unique balancing of political ascendancy betwixt towns and cities maintained by the constitutional apportionment of representation in the General Assembly. Thus the apportionment of seventy-five percent of representation in the House of Representatives to towns and cities so populous as to have more than one Repre- sentative is offset by the apportionment in the Senate of twenty-five of forty-two seats, or nearly sixty percent, to the twenty-five towns so small as to have only one Representative apiece in the House. The twenty-five small towns have an effective veto on legislation, and the con- sequence is that lawmaking proceeds principally by compromise betwixt small towns on one side and large towns and cities on the other. The term city-state is justified in several ways, thus : (I) By the compactness with which the state is populated and the environmental condi- tions affecting residence; (2) by the residence of seventy percent of the population in cities ; (3) by the respect of tradition ; (4) by the prevailing theory of town right paralleling the state right theory in national politics ; (5) by the strength maintained by small towns in politics and government. To a certain extent the emphasis upon the town has represented the tenacity of old Rhode Island persisting in spite of the inundation of immigration to cities and larger towns. The segregation of alien cultures has offset the influence which might be attached to gross num- bers had there been a distributing of newcomers. Rhode Island in the twentieth century is thus the product of the past, preserving the traditions of its founders through the maintenance intact of the old town spirit, and combining with its ancient inheritance an accumulating richness through acceptance of the best which has been brought to Rhode Island. The evolution of democracy has proceeded through the adaptation of principles fundamentally sound and accu- rate in the first instance, but needing restatement periodically in fresh formulae, to meet the needs of situations becoming more complex because of larger population and the new intimacies arising from the nearness attending modern life as contrasted with the remoteness from neigh- bors which was characteristic in earlier periods. Rhode Island proved the rule that men live well together under circumstances in which each is master of his own conscience and responsible
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