What is the significance of the shame of the cities

Sam Bass Warner, Jr. Finally, it is difficult now in the days of incredibly sophisticated media technology to accept Steffens's main assertion that "the people" are as guilty as their governments because they tolerate corruption.

Reports of reality are easily faked and people's behavior in response to such reports can be managed. Steffens did not fake reality. He did not even want to reveal new realities, despite a reputation that made him out to be a kind of special prosecutor digging out facts and relationships never before known outside a city's criminal ring. Steffens said it himself: "The exposition of what people know and stand for is the purpose of these articles, not the exposure of corruption.

By night, Pittsburgh was, physically, "Hell With the Lid Off," but by day Steffens found that it was, politically, "hell with the lid on," and he wanted to find out why it was still on.

To do that he had to write in such a way as to make politics and political characters unforgettably real in the consciousness of those who must rise against them. Language itself—the careful choice of words—could do as much as anything to call a reader's attention to the articles' contents. McClure, Steffens's editor and publisher, said he wanted words like "shame" and phrases like "enemies of the republic" scattered through the muckrake pieces because they shocked people and heightened the effect of bad news appearing month by month in the magazine, so Steffens wrote of "The Shame of Minneapolis," "The Shamelessness of St.

Louis," and "Pittsburgh: A City Ashamed. But language was only the beginning. The real attraction of Steffens's work was his skill at weaving tales of corruption around personalities. No impersonal forces of economics or demography shaped Steffens's cities; they were in the grip of bosses and reformers with sharply defined personal histories and characters. Every city had a boss like St. Louis's Colonel Ed Butler or Minneapolis's "Doc" Ames, and when there were two bosses in one city, they worked as one.

Each got both these things; but Magee spent his wealth for more power, and Flinn spent his power for more wealth. Magee was the sower, Flinn the reaper. In dealing with men they came to be necessary to each other, these two. Magee attracted followers, Flinn employed them. You may blame the politicians, or, indeed, any one class, but not all classes, not the people.

Or you may put it on the ignorant foreign immigrant, or any one nationality, but not on all nationalities, not on the American people. But no one class is at fault, nor any one breed, nor any particular interest or group of interests. The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.

When I set out on my travels, an honest New Yorker told me honestly that I would find that the Irish, the Catholic Irish, were at the bottom of it all everywhere. The first city I went to was St. Louis, a German city. The next was Minneapolis, a Scandinavian city, with a leadership of New Englanders. The next city was Philadelphia, the purest American community of all, and the most hopeless. And after that came Chicago and New York, both mongrel-bred, but the one a triumph of reform, the other the best example of good government that I had seen.

Another such conceit of our egotism is that which deplores our politics and lauds our business. This is the wailof the typical American citizen. Now, the typical American citizen is the business man. The typical business man is a bad citizen; he is busy.

I found him buying boodlers in St. Louis, defending grafters in Minneapolis, originating corruption in Pittsburgh, sharing with bosses in Philadelphia, deploring reform in Chicago, and beating good government with corruption funds in New York. He is a self-righteous fraud, this big business man.

He is the chief source of corruption, and it were a boon if he would neglect politics. But he is not the business man that neglects politics; that worthy is the good citizen, the typical business man. He too is busy, he is the one that has no use and therefore no time for politics. When his neglect has permitted bad government to go so far that he can be stirred to action, he is unhappy, and he looks around for a cure that shall be quick, so that he may hurry back to the shop.

Naturally, too, when he talks politics, he talks shop. His patent remedy is quack; it is business. The business man has failed in politics as he has in citizenship. Because politics is business. Many politicians have gone out into business and done well Tammany ex-mayors, and nearly all the old bosses of Philadelphia are prominent financiers in their cities , and business men have gone into politics and done well Mark Hanna, for example.

The politician is a business man with a specialty. When a business man of some other line learns the business of politics, he is a politician, and there is not much reform left in him. Consider the United States Senate, and believe me. The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. Whatever hinders it, is wrong; it must be.

A bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is necessary to my business. He takes essentially the same view of the bribe, only he saves his self-respect by piling all his contempt upon the bribe-giver, and he has the great advantage of candor. I make no pretensions to virtue, not even on Sunday. But there is hope, not alone despair, in the commercialism of our politics.

If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political merchants, they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do is to establish a steady demand for good government. The bosses have us split up into parties. To him parties are nothing but means to his corrupt ends. Because if the honest voter cared no more for his party than the politician and the grafter, then the honest vote would govern, and that would be bad—for graft.

It is idiotic, this devotion to a machine that is used to take our sovereignty from us. If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation. If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in—then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it.

That process would take a generation or more to complete, for the politicians now really do not know what good government is. But it has taken as long to develop bad government, and the politicians know what that is. Are the people honest? Are the people better than Tammany? Are they better than the merchant and the politician? President Roosevelt has been sneered at for going about the country preaching, as a cure for our American evils, good conduct in the individual, simple honesty, courage, and efficiency.

If my observations have been true, the literal adoption of Mr. Why, that would change all of us—not alone our neighbors, not alone the grafters, but you and me. No, the contemned methods of our despised politics are the master methods of our braggart business, and the corruption that shocks us in public affairs we practice ourselves in our private concerns.

Rockefeller, a boss of railroads like J. Morgan, and a political boss like Matthew S. Louis and Minneapolis. His work culminated in a well-documented record of Gilded Age corruption in the cities; and, with the addition of the editorial annotations, Chronology and Introduction of this edition, the reader is placed in a position to gain an overview and considerable insight into the general, moral and social-political phenomenon of corruption.

This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies. Professor H. Callaway has published widely in both the US and Europe on the philosophy of language and meaning, and on the interpretation of American intellectual history.

His publications include scores of professional articles in scholarly journals and a dozen books. His work in American philosophy and intellectual history includes many professional articles and reviews, and critical editions of works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James. He too is busy, he is the one that has no use and therefore no time for politics. When his neglect has permitted bad government to go so far that he can be stirred to action, he is unhappy, and he looks around for a cure that shall be quick, so that he may hurry back to the shop.

Naturally, too, when he talks politics, he talks shop. His patent remedy is quack; it is business. There is hardly an office from United States senator down to Alderman in any part of the country to which the business man has not been elected; yet politics remains corrupt, government pretty bad, and the selfish citizen has to hold himself in readiness like the old volunteer firemen to rush forth at any hour, in any weather, to prevent the fire; and he goes out sometimes and he puts out the fire after the damage is done and he goes back to the shop sighing for the business man in politics.

The business man has failed in politics as he has in citizenship The condemned methods of our despised politics are the master methods of our braggart business, and the corruption that shocks us in public affairs we practice ourselves in our private concerns.

Rockefeller, a boss of railroads like J. Morgan, and a political boss like Matthew S. The boss is not a political, he is an American institution, the product of a freed people that have not the spirit to be free. Section 2: The Shamelessness of St. Louis March, But it was pertinent. It was the question then; it is the question now. Will the people rule? That is what it means.

Is democracy possible? The accounts of financial corruption in St. Louis and of police corruption in Minneapolis raised the same question. They were inquiries into American municipal democracy, and, so far as they went, they were pretty complete answers.

But when their shame was laid bare, what did they do then? That is what Tweed, the tyrant, wanted to know, and that is what the democracy of this country needs to know. In other cities mere exposure has been sufficient to overthrow a corrupt regime. In St.

Louis the conviction of the boodlers leaves the felons in control, the system intact, and the people — spectators. It is these people who are interesting — these people, and the system they have made possible.

The convicted boodlers have described the system to me. There was no politics in it — only business. The city of St. Louis is normally Republican. Founded on the home-rule principle, the corporation is a distinct political entity, with no county to confuse it. The State of Missouri, however, is normally Democratic, and the legislature has taken political possession of the city by giving to the Governor the appointment of the Police and Election Boards.

With a defective election law, the Democratic boss in the city became its absolute ruler.