CHAPTER XIV. THE EIGHTIES. POPULATION INCREASES TO 253,139—FIRST TRAIN ON THE CINCINNATI SOUTHERN GOES THROUGH TO CHATTANOOGA—HARRISON, THE "BOY PREACHER," CLAIMS THREE THOUSAND CONVERTS—RAILROAD RIOTS—THE "BERNER" RIOT—DESTRUC' TION OF THE COURTHOUSE. Except for two events of first-class importance the "eighties" are dull and unimportant years. It is true that innumerable things happened, any of which, taken alone and described in detail, would make a book. In 1880 the number of inhabitants had risen to 253,139. The first train on the Cincinnati Southern went through to Chattanooga and the event was celebrated by a banquet in Central Music Hall, at which three thousand people sat down. The national democratic convention was held. The Times and the Star consolidated. A company was formed to light the city with electricity. The Little Miami depot was built. The Metropolitan National Bank, the Security Insurance Company, the Union National Bank and the Exchange National Bank were established. The "Boy Preacher" Harrison held revival meetings and claimed three thousand converts. In 1882 there was a violent struggle between the more strict and the lower elements over "the Sunday closing law ;" the National Forestry Congress and the American Library associations held annual meetings ; dinners were given to George Ward Nichols and Judge Alphonso Taft. In 1886 occurred the railroad labor riots. In 1888 there was a bitter contest over the Owen law which closed the saloons on Sunday. This also was the year of the great centennial exposition of the Ohio valley and central states. Over a file of the newspapers of this decade one could linger for many days ; but soon all interest would be absorbed by those two events which will forever characterize the eighties, one ,of a purely sporadic nature, the flood ; the other symptomatic in the highest degree, the courthouse riot. In 1883 there occurred a rise of the Ohio river of such stupendous proportion as to throw its predecessors entirely in the shade. Of these predecessors there had been many. A river which drains twenty thousand square miles of country, much of which is mountainous, will have its ups and downs. From the first year of their arrival Vol. I-17 - 251 - 252 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY the pioneers began to respect the varying moods of the mighty but unstable stream. It was a flood which convinced them that Columbia could not be the metropolis of the northwest, because it was too easily overflowed. The location of our city was made with reference to this danger, and, although it has often been disturbed by the great annual freshets, it had never, until at this time, experienced a real catastrophe. Of these great risings of the waters; the first authentic record was made in 1832, when on February the 18th the river reached the abnormal height of sixty-four feet and three inches. The next great disaster occurred in 1847, December 17th, when the waters rose to sixty-three feet and seven inches. Naturally, the residents accepted these records as the limit of the river's antics and their buildings and their businesses were all adjusted to what they thought its utmost power to overflow its banks. On the 15th of February, 1883, however, the monster put forth a supreme effort ; rose to sixty-six feet and four inches and produced widespread disaster. The pumping engines of the city water works were stopped ; but fortunately there was a supply in the reservoirs large enough to tide the people over. The gas works, however, were submerged and the city was enveloped in darkness. More than fifteen hundred business houses, together with innumerable residences, were partially inundated and twenty-four hundred people thrown upon the public for charitable assistance. In Covington, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton the situation was equally desperate. Upon the suggestion of Melville E. Ingalls, the chamber of commerce organized relief committees and help was given generously. It was hoped when the crest of the flood had passed that the merciless river had done its worst ; but in the very next year its power was exercised in a far more terrible manner still. The first two weeks of January were cold, with frequent light falls of snow, which on the 14th and 19th were increased considerably and were varied with sleet and rain, while the temperature fluctuated wildly from zero to sixty degrees above. On the twenty-ninth there was a general rainfall over the southern half of the water-shed and the streams began to swell in an ominous manner. The Ohio rose steadily and at seven o'clock on the 4th of February had attained a height of forty-nine feet and eleven and one-half inches. On the next day the river-wise ones began to scent danger; but the general public pursued the even tenor of its way. News from all directions began to come in and to reveal a critical situation. The Licking, the Big Sandy, the New, the Kanawha, the Muskingum, Youghiogheny, Monongahela and Allegheny were vomiting immeasurable volumes of water into the choked channels, and streams like the Kentucky and Miami contributed to the trouble by holding its waters back. On February 6th the levee at Lawrenceburg gave way and the full extent of the peril began to manifest itself by this and similar disasters. At once the lethargy of the city was broken and the safe sprang to the help of the imperilled. Henry C. Urner, president of the chamber of commerce, appointed a committee and a fund of $3,000 was appropriated. S. F. Dana was chosen treasurer and Sidney D. Maxwell secretary. The common council authorized the city to borrow money to a sum not exceeding a hundred thousand dollars to meet the CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 253 emergency. All men now prepared for the worst, and it came. On February 14th the crisis was reached and the height of seventy-one feet and three-fourths of an inch was registered. At the end of ninety minutes a fall of one-fourth of an inch was announced, but this Was arrested and for five hours the waters stood unabated. Then the fall began at the rate of a quarter of an inch per hour and by the end of February the flood had dropped to a stage of twenty-five feet and six inches.. During these tragic days the situation along the river front was terrible. Railroad communication with the outside world was absolutely cut off. The water and gas supplies were irregular. People were compelled to navigate the streets below Third in boats and entered their houses through the second-story windows. Enormous amounts of merchandise were destroyed. Two buildings on Pearl street, Nos. 123 and 125, collapsed, killing ten people and injuring many. For a time it seemed as if the disaster was as unmitigated as it was terrible ; but subsequent reflection has discovered that, as is inevitable in all such tragedies, there is a mysterious compensation in the awakening of human sympathy and the generous expenditure of this highest form of human energy. All classes of people were stimulated to heroic endeavors to assist the sufferer. A fleet of boats, with Captain W. P. Walker as admiral, began a systematic work of rescue. The schools were closed and the buildings turned into places of refuge. The regiments of militia assisted the police. A soup house was opened. Entertainments were given to secure funds, and at one of them in the music hall, Madame Sembrich, the prima donna, passed down the aisles with a collection basket and $6,170.14 were realized, while the entire amount collected in Cincinnati itself :was $96,680.12 and from sources outside $97,751.22. Events like this possess a powerful dramatic interest and exert a certain form of influence upon a city ; but as we have otherwhere observed, they do not origitenate in the soul itself. They have little effect upon the character. They are not - to be despised and ignored, of course ; but in such investigations as ours it is necessary to place the emphasis upon those movements which are intellectual, moral and spiritual, which spring out of the free spirit of the city itself and not out of the accidents of fire and flood. Riot of 1884 It is to one of this latter character to which we turn attention now—the riot of 1884 ; an event so catastrophic and appalling in an American community as to challenge credulity and to stagger comprehension. It offers, in fact, a profound problem in municipal psychology. It would have been a startling phenomenon at any time ; but coming so close upon the heels of the aesthetical influence which we have just described, it is bewildering. Why was it that within a few short years after the general awakening of the people to the significance of beauty there should have been so widespread an indifference to truth and goodness ? That there was such an indifference admits of not the slightest doubt nor that this indifference took the form of lawlessness and of bloodshed. No explanation of such a phenomenon can be convincing that confines itself to the mere moment of the outburst. This riot was not the spasmodic upheaval of a passing mood. It was a manifestation of abiding character. It did not flash 254 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY up out of nothingness, but was an explosion of inflammatory material deeply buried in the city's soul. The fact of the matter is that in the very nature of our city there was a congenital tendency to settle certain questions with the brick-bat and the torch, instead of the slow process of the law. Riots. It will be recalled that as early as the 12th of February, 1792, John Bartle, a merchant, was decoyed into Fort Washington and beaten by an officer. In the trial which followed, a local attorney denounced the outrage and thereupon the officer and thirty soldiers appeared upon the scene to take revenge, but were set upon by the angry citizens and rudely handled. In 1820 there was an outbreak of the same lawless spirit when the Miami Exporting Company's bank failed and a scene of destruction and bloodshed was only prevented by the courage of Isaac .G. Burnet. In 1836 occurred the race riots, in which the office of the Philanthropist was wrecked ; in 1842 another bank riot, when the Miami bank vaults were looted ; in 1848 the riot over the Mexican soldiers, falsely accused of a dastardly crime ; in 1853 the Bedini riots, when the German element mobbed the papal nuncio ; in 1855 the Know Nothing riots, when the foreign elements came into collision with the party that wanted America for Americans ; in 1861 another race riot, precipitated by an attempt of Robert Black of Kentucky to carry back a slave into bondage ; and, finally, the greatest of all, the riots in 1884. Such numerous and so flagrant attempts to settle the problems of government by violence would certainly seem to prove some sort of virus in the city's blood. It would be impossible, probably, to discover all the sources of this disposition; but there are three about which we may feel reasonably certain. In the first place, there was that "double seat" of authority, the civil and the military, which provoked those early conflicts between the citizens and the soldiery. In the second place, Cincinnati has always been sensitive to that irrational malady of "race antipathy." Innate prejudices of color and ancestry have excited animosities from the first moment of our existence, toward the red man first, and then toward the black man, later on. In the third place, an ambition to be "the freest city on the globe" has always burned in the bones of a large element of our people and from that ambition to anarchy, it is a short and easy step. Whether these facts afford a complete explanation of the phenomenon or not, it is certain that a mental state or spiritual mood of lawlessness had existed long years before its most signal outburst in the riot of 1884, and that it had been manifesting itself both at the polls and in the courts of justice. Elections. The story of our municipal elections in the eighties, following the notorious "repeating" in the state election of seventy-six, is calculated to flush an honest voter's cheek with shame. The physical obstacles to an honest ballot were very great and possibly proved a source of corruption in themselves, for there was no law requiring the registration of voters and ballots were printed and distributed by ward committees, thus enabling the committeemen to bestow or withhold them, almost as they pleased. Besides this, the wards (which were almost as large at that time, as at present) were divided into but two precincts, so that CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 255 on the one hand the voters could not be personally known and, on the other, the large number of ballots to be counted multiplied the opportunities for deception. As if these clumsy methods were not certain enough to make an honest vote impossible, the three judges of election were chosen at the polls, and a gang of political black-legs could always elect their men by the display or the use of force. And besides, there were two parties and three judges, so that two could always out-vote the third in case of a challenge. Undoubtedly these miserable arrangements would have superinduced dishonesty in the most ethical of decades ; but in one of so low a tone as the "eighties" it was certain that the consequences would be appalling. And they were ! The stories of "miscounting," of "repeating," of "stuffing," excite a feeling of amazement, while those of buying ballots and of breaking the heads of those who refused to vote the proper ticket awaken a feeling of horror. "Young boys half grown" (says a contemporary report), "downy-faced saplings, ranging anywhere below eighteen years of age, voted in troops, to the great amusement of the ordinary democrat. At last a colored republican ventured to challenge one of them, when the gang of older toughs set upon him, dragged him into the street and beat him shamefully. Thus the voting began and in fifteen minutes one hundred and twentytefour slipped into the box. The reappearance of the same faces at last became monotonous even to the democratic challengers and judges, and they refused to receive the votes, saying, "Hold up awhile, boys ; that's enough just now. "While standing there, a man in the crowd noticed a man going up the plank (the narrow path to the box) whom he had seen voting at least once before. He called to him the attention of the police, who was standing by the railing. The officer replied, "What the hell of a difference does it make to you ?" and at the same time gave him a push. The hoodlums about the polls then took up the informant, chasing him up the street until he took refuge in a machine shop, where they kept him prisoner for some time." This is a dark picture ; but not in any sense an exaggerated one. There was something "rotten" in our Cincinnati "Denmark." The corruption in the body politic had festered out in open sores. The Administration of Law. For a second evidence of the existence of a spirit of lawlessness in the "eighties" we turn to a study of the administration of justice. In the criminal courts, there were lawyers who seemed to have so lost their sense of the dignity and responsibility of their calling as to be willing to use their knowledge and their talents to procure the exoneration of even the notoriously guilty. The police are said to have no longer expected the conviction of criminals. When crime goes unpunished long enough it entrenches itself behind almost impregnable barriers. Having become invincible, it gains a respectable standing, even in the commercial world and acquires a money power. In the eighties it had become a source of wealth and could pay handsomely for protection. As a matter of course, the demands for unscrupulous lawyers produced an immediate supply and a crowd of legal harpies hung around the temple of justice. They were men of considerable talent, and at their head (incarnating all the 256 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY more attractive as well as the most repellent characteristics of their class) stood a man by the name of T. C. Campbell. For years he juggled with the laws, the jurymen, the criminals and the people until, at last, he went one step too far. There is a line beyond which sacrilege may not pass and he reached it in the Berner case. He and his ilk had defended all sorts of criminals, thieves, adulterers, gamblers, body snatchers anal assassins,, and with every acquittal the list of crimes grew longer and darker. This terrible state of affairs had long caused apprehension in the minds of exceptionally thoughtful people ; but no one realized to how great an extent the masses of plain, honest, law abiding citizens had become conscious, that the foundations of society were being undermined until an exceptionally dramatic case of pettifogging and contempt for law occurred in one of our courts. William Berner, a young German, and Joseph Palmer, a light mulatto, had attacked and beaten to death their employer, William Kirk, the keeper of a livery stable on West Eight street near Mound, for no greater reason than to secure a little money which they knew he had. After the murder they had taken the bloody corpse away in a wagon and dumped it into a thicket, with as little concern as if it had been the body of a dog. The crime was so horrible, so inexcusable and so indubitably proven that the public could not possibly imagine how the wretches could escape the hangman's rope, until they learned that Thomas Campbell had been retained for their defence. And even then, neither they nor the presiding judge were really apprehensive of an acquittal. When, therefore, William Berner, the white man, (whose case was shrewdly separated from that of his colored accomplice) was declared by the jury to be guilty only of manslaughter, Samuel R. Matthews the presiding judge, in a fit of righteous anger denounced the jurymen and imposed upon the culprit the extreme penalty of twenty years in the penitentiary No sooner was this verdict of the jury known than a wave of indignation rolled over the whole city and a public meeting was arranged in which to give expression to the general sense of the outrage. It was set for the evening of March the 28th and Music Hall was packed. Dr. Andrew C. Kemper occupiec the chair and many leading citizens supported him as vice-presidents, while speeches were made by such distinguished men as ex-Judge A. G. W. Carter, General Hickenlooper and the chairman himself. What the speakers said was calm and temperate in tone. Not an inflammatory word, in fact, was uttered. Then purpose was to give expression to the universal disapprobation of the tendency toward lax administration of law, together with the rights and duties of. American citizenship. Had all the people inside the hall and outside been as temperate as the orators of the occasion, the subsequent tragedy could not possibly have happened. But the calm indignation of the more thoughtful had become violent resentment in the hearts of the masses Of thoughtless and irresponsible people who go to make up the body of such a crowd. They muttered their impatience and they threatened vengeance. The scene became stormy and ominous; but such people as these are incapable of desperate measure. There is need of another element to create a riot. Behind any wave of social unrest, there must be the driving power of the criminal class before it can be made to overflow the bounds of law and order. That class, unfortunately, is never far away. In CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 257 every great city there are multitudes of vagabonds and scoundrels just underneath, but terribly close to the surface of the quiet sea of life. Sensitive to every symptom of dissatisfaction with existing institutions, they are ready at any instant to fling themselves into any movement that threatens destruction and promises an opportunity for plunder. Some of these wretches had mingled with the crowd inside ; but more were waiting out of doors and when at last the throng poured forth, a sudden cry rang out, "To the jail !" It fell from the lips of a youth of twenty-one, and four ignorant colored men, springing forward, took it up and became the center of the gathering storm. In an instant, the reason of the crowd was dethroned and it became a mob, imperiled by passions more irrational and uncontrollable than those of brutes. Rolling and thundering forward like a herd of buffaloes, the vast and ever increasing crowd of dehumanized wretches rushed wildly toward the jail. A telephone message preceded them and Sheriff Morton L. Hawkins made such preparations as he thought were necessary. He had taken the precaution to send Berner off to Columbus, whither the miserable creature arrived after he had escaped and been recaptured. When the terrible news came over the wire, the riot alarm was sounded ; the fire marshal was summoned and the police force assembled. If the preparations were not completely adequate it was, no doubt, because, in the first place, it was impossible for the authorities to comprehend the gravity of the occasion and, in the second place, because the jail was supposed by all to be impregnable except to artillery operations. The doors were closed ; the guards stationed and the attack awaited. It was not long delayed. The frightful monster (for it seemed a thousand times more like an organism than a mass ; a unit rather than an aggregation) moving upon ten thousand legs had traveled with extraordinary speed. Weapons and instruments of every kind were appropriated wherever found—guns, pistols, crowbars, picks, axes, together with planks and beams for battering rams. In an incredibly short time these were thundering at the doors, which, shattered by their powerful blows, caved in and thus admitted the besiegers. Before the inrushing flood, sheriff, attendants, policemen—all were swept away like debris by a river in freshet. Through the corridors the tide of maddened wretches poured, and peering into every cell, cried out "Are you Palmer ? are you? are you ?" and the calmest answer of all came from the lips of the very man they sought. "No," he replied, as they questioned him, "Can't you see that I am white ?" and by his sang froid escaped a horrible death. Defrauded of its prey by the absence of the German and the wit of the African, the passions of the insatiable monster were only inflamed the more. If it could not punish the guilty it might plunder the innocent ! If life could not be taken, property at least might be destroyed. With a renewed frenzy the mob inside began to gut the jail and the one outside to try to enter. By this time the patrol wagons were arriving, but their progreSs was arrested by the solid mass of men and they were stuck like boats in a sea of glue. Suddenly, a shot was fired from somewhere and a boy of seventeen fell dead. The mob had tasted blood and it was certain now that serious trouble was ahead: There was a tunnel into the jail of which the police force knew, of 258 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY course, and through it they made their way into the interior, while the crowd began to enter by the doors and windows which they had smashed or battered down. The confusion increased ; the dangers multiplied and the only, hope was assistance from the militia which had been hastily summoned. At last the speediest companies arrived and, plunging into the tunnel, made their way quickly through. The gas had been turned off ; but when it was suddenly lighted, the dazzled eyes of the soldiery saw a crowd of captives in charge of the police ; and mistaking them for the mob itself, began to shoot. In the melee which followed two of the militia and four of the officers were wounded and one of the rioters, it is supposed, was killed. No doubt, the inexperienced militia was panic stricken when they made so gross a blunder ; but it was no more than might have been expected from any similar troop and after this single spasm of terror, they steadied down, and during the rest of the riot remained as cool as veterans. The arrival of the militia and their evident determination to fight to the death, if need be, astonished and angered the mob. In accordance with that universal instinct which leads all men to justify their acts, however bad, the furious crowd of hoodlums considered itself the injured party and determined to avenge itself upon the soldiers for doing their evident duty. This new fuel being added to the fire of passions, the mob began to try to burn the jail and to smoke its defenders out. So desperate were their efforts that the soldiers were compelled to shoot them at sight. Several were hit and one innocent man ( Joe Sturm, the driver of patrol wagon No. 3) was killed at his post of duty. The firmness of the militia began at last to impress the mob. It cringed a little and then slowly backed away. Another relay of the militia arrived and the two companies, marching out into the streets, quickly cleared them and drove the rioters to cover. So far as the jail itself was concerned the trouble for the night was over; but the scene of danger was merely shifted. As the mob broke and crept sullenly away, it planned revenge. By a sort of instinct it turned toward the Armory at Court and Walnut, where it hoped to discover .the instruments to carry out its purpose. It found no ammunition, but appropriated a stand of arms and, beating a drum which it had discovered, hastened to the store of B. Kittridge & Company on the east side of Main between Fourth and Fifth. There they found guns, but no ammunition until, after their .departure, they returned again. This time they carried off a considerable supply of powder; a small brass cannon and anything else they could lay their hands upon. It was too late, however, to do anything more, and they slowly broke up into 1 fragments, and the fragments into individual units, each one sneaking away to snatch a little sleep and be prepared for darker developments on the morrow. The morning of Saturday dawned upon a terror stricken city. All day long the people, trembled. The rioting was not renewed in the daylight, but the expectation that it would begin again in the darkness shook the people's hearts with fear. At the jail the militia and police remained on duty and were Comforted by the promised help of the state militia. When the shadows began at last to fall, CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 259 a tremor ran through the city and it shuddered like a living thing. These vibrations of terror were felt by the police and the soldiers assembled in and about the court house and they began erecting barricades to defend themselves from an approaching, although invisible, danger. After consultation with Colonel Hunt of the First Regiment, Chief of Police Reilly and General Matthew Ryan, Sheriff Hawkins formed his lines about the court house. When the garrison had done all that it knew how or was able to do, it settled down to watch the -crowd, which it saw was undergoing an ominous transformation. All day, throngs of intelligent and law abiding people, evidently impelled by curiosity aloie, had wandered about before the barricades. But at twilight they quietly melted away and were replaced by sinister and terrible figures which stole through the shadows like beasts of prey. Presently a gentle agitation began which developed, a little later, into violent waves of excitement. Blasphemous threats were heard. A single stone was hurled ; and then a volley ; and about the same time somebody fired a pistol and a series of shots were heard. Soon after a forward movement began, and as if animated by an impulse from some central brain, a storming party attacked the iron doors of the court house and broke them down. Another spasmodic movement followed, inaugurated, it is believed, by some young Kentuckians, and a flying column burst into the county treasurer's office. Piling the furniture in a mass, the wretches saturated it with coal oil and applied a match. As the flames leaped up, they left them to do their work of destruction alone, and, rushing from room to room, they repeated their incendiary tactics in each. While thus engaged, .their companions on the outside were rushing wildly about to discover some way of increasing the destruction. Suddenly, when swirling around the corner of South ,and Court, they encountered a squad of soldiers and there was a sudden flash and a roar of musketry. The crowd paused ; it shivered ; it shrank back in terror and ran up a white flag, under whose cover it carried off its dead, dying and wounded. In the meantime the court house was burning and the spectators were treated to an exhibition of diabolic humor. In the fierce light which fell upon the portico of a neighboring building, a human form was suddenly seen and a loud voice amidst derisive laughter and shouts of approval, offered to sell the building and its contents at public auction. While this demoniacal scene was being enacted, the sphere of trouble widened, and, at the same time, the means for its repression steadily increased. Other companies of soldiers were filing in and so detachments could be spared for outside service. One of these was commanded by a young attorney whose name was John J. Desmond, a man respected, admired and beloved both as a lawyer and a captain of militia. With intrepid courage he led his column to its task and as the crowd surged back before it, a devil in human _form took deliberate aim at that shining mark and fired. The aim was all too accurate and he fell, a martyr for the city's peace. Upon such a scene of disaster and death, the first detachment of state militia (the Fourth Regiment of Dayton) suddenly arrived. What they saw appalled them and, to their undying shame, it has to be recorded that they turned and 260 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY fled. The disgrace of this was greater than their friends at home could endure and the jeers and contempt which greeted them in their home city sent some of them back on the following day to retrieve their forfeited honor. The Fourteenth Regiment from Columbus was made of different stuff. At the Little Miami depot they formed into line and, swinging through the streets with, determined tread, encountered the mob at Main and Court. There was a furious rush of the Sans Culottes at the serried ranks ; a sudden volley and a wild retreat. Crash, crack, went the rifles and the crowd rolled back. A gatling gun was trundled out of the jail to assist them. The mob had met its master ! The majestic figure of law and order, incarnated in an armed and courageous soldiery, had sent the anarchistic element of the social system cowering to its lair. In the quiet and peace which followed this critical encounter, the fire department, helpless till then, (because their hose would have been cut had they attempted to extinguish the flames) appeared upon the scenes and attacked the conflagrations. The northeast corner of the court house was partially saved but practically all the records of the clerk's office, a large part of those in the probate court and the auditor's office, the entire law library (with the exception of one volume) and some of the records in the recorder's office were destroyed. The retreat of the crowd before the militia was the end of the trouble about the jail; but a mob dies hard. Defeated in its purpose to lynch the two murderers, it had tried to satiate its passions by the destruction of the property of the public. Drunk with the sight of blood and fire, it rushed off at a tangent and paused before the gun store of William Powell & Company to procure the instruments of further trouble and destruction. But it reckoned without its host, for the men who kept that store required no governmental or municipal aid to defend their property Guilford Stone and several clerks had built a barricade across the store and when the crowd burst open the doors, received them with a volley which took a toll of five dead men. Before so unexpected and unwelcome a reception the crowd rolled back and fled ; but, skulking about, attempted to fire the building with petroleum and to blow it to Pieces with two cannon which they had found and seized. In the midst of these desperate efforts, Lieutenant Burke came suddenly upon them with a squad of police and, after taking a few prisoners, scattered the last fragments of the disorganized mass of rioters far and wide. The next day was Sunday ; but its sacred quiet was disturbed by angry mutterings of vengeance and threats of dire destruction. Here and there excited groups gathered and were scattered with difficulty by savage charges of the police. Towards evening the soldiers were compelled to fire blank cartridges at a crowd at Court and Walnut streets. As it produced no marked effect a volley of bullets followed and the result was magical. A little later on it became necessary to try the effect of a gatling gun upon several of these storm centers and it proved to speak a language which needed no interpretation. Gradually it was becoming evident that the forces of law and order were in the ascendency and the hot blood of the rioters cooled. When the United States troops ordered to the city began to arrive, their courage oozed away entirely and in a few hours the city was restored to its accustomed peace. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 261 The full significance of this great tragedy is not easy of comprehension. Its number of deaths may be counted, it is true. There were fifty of these and twice as many people suffered serious wounds. The value of the property destroyed may also be estimated—except that of the priceless documents which were burned. But the actual effect of such a convulsion upon the mind, the heart, the conscience of a city, which is the principal thing is, probably, incapable of complete analysis. Whether it purifies them like a thunderstorm ; or impregnates them with the germs of disease, like a pestilence, who- can tell ? That this complete conquest of the lawless element produced immediately good results in the administration of justice by the courts, was evidenced in the speedy and frequent conviction of criminals. But that it did not eliminate the mob virus of the body politic was proven by another outburst of a similar character in 1886 when the freight handlers of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad struck for increased wages and attempted to incite a riot to secure accession to their demands. For a time the trouble threatened to become serious; but Colonel Moore and a squadron of police, well trained in the tactics necessary for such an emergency, met them upon their march and turned them back. They retired, but with threats of revenge, and so widespread was the excitement among the laboring classes (thirty thousand of whom were out upon a strike) that the militia was summoned once more and placed under the command of Mayor Amor Smith, Jr. For his summary method of procedure the mayor was heartily denounced by the lawless element but won the confidence and respect of those citizens who are the bulwarks of the social system. To him and his able assistants the people owed the suppression of what bade fair to become a bloody insurrection. "The crowd may generate moral fervor ; but it never sheds light. If at times it has furthered progress, it is because the mob serves as a battering ram to raze some mouldering but infested institution and clean the ground for something better." This "better" will be the creation of gifted individuals or of deliberative bodies ; but never of anonymous crowds. It is easier for masses to agree on a nay than a yea. Hence crowds destroy despotisms but never build free states ; abolish evils but never found works of beneficence. Essentially atavistic and sterile, the crowd ranks as the lowest form of human association." A quarter of a century has passed since the last of these riots and were it not for one disagreeable fact we might sincerely hope that the old spirit of lawlessness had been finally subdued. But disrespect for law may take a thousand different forms. At certain times and in certain places it manifests itself in piracy, highwaymanship, incendiarism, assassination, lynchings and riot ; but at others in the far more subtle and dangerous form of bribel-y and graft. It is the same evil spirit still, and that it has not been thoroughly exorcised we shall see, a little later on. As we have said again and yet again, no single event and no single aspect of a period must be permitted to stand for the whole, no matter how great or important it may be. This flood and this riot are the most vivid scenes of this decade, but they are not the only ones and it will afford relief to our minds oppressed by tragedies so dark, to close the chapter with a brief notice of the great Centennial exposition of 1888. 262 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY It was inaugurated, of course, to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the city. On the 4th of July an impressive pageant opened the proceedings, which continued uninterruptedly through one hundred days. Everything was on a scale of grandeur. The best talent of the city was devoted to the exhibition of its wealth, its culture and its achievements (and to those of the nation, as well). In every respect but that of its finances the affair was a grand success. Its guarantors, however, made up the losses and it stands as one of our greatest municipal triumphs, a landmark of history ; a fitting memorial of one of the most brilliant attempts at city building in the annals of our race. From whatever point of view it is considered, the construction of a city the size of Cincinnati in one hundred years is a sort of miracle. The consciousness of the need of long stretches of time for such stupendous tasks discloses itself in the constant reiteration of the time worn proverb, "Rome was not built in a day." Few sayings are more often on the lips of men ; few facts more deeply felt than those which it expresses. It takes power, it takes wisdom, it takes wealth, it takes all the forces in control of man to build a great city ; but it also takes .time! Peter the Great performed the gigantic feat of constructing the physical elements of the capital of his vast empire in a few short years; but how small a part of a great city are the buildings, after all ! The mere assemblage and organization of material elements into architectural form may be accomplished with an almost lightning-like rapidity. But when you come to the other factors in the make-up of a great city, the element of time is indispensable. Without the lapse of time you cannot possibly develop the soul of the city ! It takes time also and long reaches of it to create the "atmosphere" of a great city ; to perfect its institutions ; to complete its organizations ; to establish its identity ; to develop its personality. Think of the centuries that have been required to confer upon London, Paris, Constantinople, Rome and Athens those characteristics which, taken together, compose their mysterious individualities ! As the celebrants of that centennial in 1888 looked over the great city which they and a generation or two of ancestors had builded, they may be pardoned if they felt a little honorable pride. "Is not this great Babylon, which I have builded ?" Nebuchadnezzar could not help exclaiming as he surveyed the most splendid of his achievements. To have had the smallest part in building a great city ought to excite a similar emotion. When men and women attain at last a full comprehension of the significance of the parts they play in life, they will feel as the artisans of the middle ages did toward the great cathedrals which they built. To have contributed a little statue, a basterelief, a window coping, a flying buttress, or even to have helped excavate for the foundation, was an honor and a joy. CHAPTER XV. 1888-1911. "BOSS" COX AND "THE GANG"-BANEFUL INFLUENCE OF A FORMER SALOON KEEPER -THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE CITY UNDER HIS DOMINANCE-IS INDICTED FOR PERJURY-AN UNDESIRABLE CITIZEN-THE WANE OF "BOSSISM." Only those who have actually struggled with the problem of selecting the crucial people, events and institutions in the life of a great city, can possibly comprehend the difficulty of its solution. This difficulty has its origin in the subtlety of intellectual, moral and spiritual forces. You have instruments for estimating physical values and can discover to the minutest fraction the weights of materials and the distances of objects. But upon entering the domain of the immaterial we are confounded by the mystery of the relative value of these imponderable energies. In the realm of the inaudible, the invisible and the intangible, "the weak things of the world often confound the mighty" and the power of the God is not so much manifest in the thunder, the earthquake and the whirlwind as in the still, small voice. It is with a painful consciousness that the people, the events and the influences which seem to any one individual the most worthy of notice, are certain to be regarded by multitudes of others as utterly unimportant or even contemptible, that any historian attempts the perilous process of selection. He realizes that the men and women who appear to be saints to him are certain to be reckoned knaves to many of his readers and that happenings which he regards as epoch-making will be thought by them to be the meanest and most trifling incidents. And so, whether attempting to decide upon the importance of any particular person or tendency or incident or institution of the past which he knows only through others ; or of the present which he has seen for himself, the writer of a history encounters a serious and often painful embarrassment. Which shall he choose? By what standard shall he decide ? The things which filled the whole horizon yesterday, have sunk below the verge today ! Those which seem surcharged with fate today, will appear trifles, light as air, tomorrow. It is a difficult task, indeed, and one can only do his best to lift himself so far above the shifting, crowded, complex scene that in looking down (to him, as to the aviator), the little trees, the little hills and little houses shall have been lost in the great woods, the great mountain ranges and the great cities of the distant landscape. Out of all the immeasurable events ; out of all the significant movements ; out of all the wonderful people whose happenings and existences have composed - 263 - 264 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY the warp and woof of Cincinnati's history for the last two decades but very few can possibly pass before our eyes, at best ; but although many important ones will be left out, we shall see to it that none which are utterly trivial shall creep in. Two great streams of tendencies appear to have been flowing out of the soul of the city, during this period ; one purifying the waters, the other rendering them turbid and bitter. Not that there were only two! It takes as many rivers of as many different kinds of influence to make a city as of water to make an ocean. But the attempt to enumerate and estimate all of those even with which the ordinary observer may be quite familiar (because he has seen them with his own eyes), would be hopeless. Consider the hundreds of thousands of people and the innumerable business, social, civic, political, religious, educational, artistic organizations which have been struggling each for its own ends, indifferent, hostile or unconscious of one another ; the wheels within wheels; the currents and counter currents; the constructive and destructive influences, if you would understand how many and what gigantic forces it takes to build a city and how impossible it is for any historian to enumerate them all! Multitudinous and complex as these movements are, however, there are in most of the periods of a city's life a few pre-eminent influences ; a few creative forces, a knowledge of whose operations will best interpret the nature of its development. Those two which it will be the main purpose of the concluding portion of this study to develop are, in the first place, the deteriorating influence of the political system known as Bossism ; and the second, the influence of the deepening sense of civic righteousness as seen in the growth of such organizations as the Woman's club; the Business Men's club; the Improvement societies and many others. Bossism. The last two decades of our municipal life have suffered enormously through the rise and development of a political system in which the power of the people has been seized and wielded by a so-called "Gang," under the leadership of a person known as the "Boss." Every great city in America has been similarly afflicted ; but few have suffered more because in no other has there been developed a man with such extraordinary talents for manipulating the system as in our own. So great has been his power, so tight his hold, so penetrating and pervasive his influence, that George B. Cox is not unlikely to be regarded by future historians as the most remarkable character produced in our whole life as a city. With all the confidence of the great Louis, who confidently affirmed, "I am the State !" George B. Cox may have affirmed at any moment of these years, "I am the City." As Dr. Daniel Drake embodied in himself for a long series of years the best characteristics of the city's soul, so this astute, incomprehensible and apparently invincible person has incarnated the worst. There will be no attempt in this brief study to enlarge upon his personal 'faults, nor to charge him with all the municipal evils that have developed during the epoch of his power. He is, himself, the product and, in a sense, the victim of habits, ideas and tendencies CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 265 that existed before his birth. There are, also, domains in which he has never acted at all, where vices have developed through the operation of forces of whose existence even he never dreamed. But still he is, and for an indefinite time must remain, the type and symbol of bad citizenship, because he used his power not for the benefit of the public, but for himself and those political henchmen who have helped support his power. To think, for a moment, of the good which this remarkable man might have accomplished had he been early imbued with the best ideals of citizenship, is to be overpowered with sadness and regret. If he had happened to have combined with his extraordinary gifts for the management of men and the control of systems a love for Cincinnati, such as Savonarola felt for Florence, he might have left a name not less enviable than that of the mediaeval reformer. It is easy to regret and still easier to condemn ; but the impartial historian will also remember to pity and to pardon, when considering the baneful influences under which such characters and careers as Mr. Cox's have been all but irresistibly shaped. Those baneful influences are to be traced into the past—perhaps to the very beginning of our existence as a city. They belong to that series of events out of which our spirit of lawlessness sprang and which broke out in other days in deeds of violence, and in these later ones revealed itself in a more peaceful but far more dangerous form—the form of political chicanery ; of ballot stuffing and ballot buying; of grafting and bribery and, especially, attempts at corrupting the courts of justice. It has been observed that the decade from 1870 to 1880 was marked by the manifestation of many of the noblest characteristics of good citizenship ; but that the city turned a sharp corner in the "Eighties." Public benefactions ceaseed; the arts languished ; corruption set in and there was a recrudescence of the worst evils of the whole past. Few voices were heard to plead for righteousness. The newspapers were, in the main, indifferent to the great ethical interest of the city. "The Enquirer, strongly upholding the democratic party (when for its interests), attacked evil only from a partisan standpoint. The Commercial, brilliantly edited by Murat Halstead, was theoretically on the moral side; but kept a blind eye turned toward the republican party. The Gazette was sincere in its advocacy of the true welfare of the people but was absorbed by the Commercial in 1883. The Times and Star (united in '80 by Charles P. Taft), was at that time a clean sheet and earnestly opposed the rising tide of evil. The Post, established in this period, did not acquire much influence till later on." In the republican municipal convention of 188o, there was a sharp contest for city treasurer and rumors were soon afloat that money had been dishonestly spent to gain the victory. This was uncommon enough at that time to have excited great comment; but soon afterward it seems to have become so familiar as not even to awaken apprehension, and it was its increasing commonness which made the career of George B. Cox a possibility. It takes but a little time for sporadic cases of bribery to become general and to infect all classes and before long councilmen were charged with demands ing money for their votes upon the measures proposed for adoption, while the 266 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY hoodlums of the slums, quick enough to perceive their opportunity to get a little share of the boodle, demanded a price for their ballots. That these methods and their consequent evils were known to everybody and yet did not excite a universal horror, affords indubitable evidence that in a few short years the public conscience had become shockingly debauched. It was in this period of political debauchery that the figure of George B. Cox began to loom upon the horizon. The first glimpses which we catch of him are in the early "Seventies," mounted upon the seat of a grocery wagon and delivering goods to the people in the vicinity of West Sixth street, and the next when, a little later on, he had become the proprietor of a drinking and gambling saloon. In 1874 we find him installed in a coign of advantage at the corner of Central avenue and Longworth. From the first he manifested an ignorance of the sacredness, or a contempt for the authority of law, for he was constantly in trouble with the police. Hunted animals develop their powers of self preservation in ratio with the multiplication of dangers and this one soon discovered that the way to gain immunity from interference was to be elected to the city council. In 1879 he successfully achieved this coup and no sooner had he begun to play at politics than he found that he possessed the gifts for the game in a high if not superlative degree. Beginning with the little circle which revolved about his saloon, he built up a coterie of retainers upon whose loyalty he could depend unquestioningly to execute his every plan or wish. For a little while he remained in comparative obscurity, but the conditions which ripened him, ripened an opportunity for his talents. Those talents which at last began to bring him recognition were "to keep his own counsel ;" to "abide steadfastly by his word" and "to deliver the goods." As his circle of admirers and followers widened and he demonstrated his ability to control more and more votes, the politicians began to take him into consideration. In 1882, when he was twenty-nine years old, the youthful saloonkeeper had attracted considerable attention and by 1885, when his opportunity actually arrived, he was already formidable and no less a person than ex-Senator Joseph B. Foraker unwittingly opened the door through which the future Boss passed safely to his throne. Mr. Foraker himself had traversed a very different path to power. College-bred and fitted for his task by innumerable advantages, especially the gift of public speech, the fiery young attorney quickly achieved a distinction in his profession which led at last to his nomination for the gubernatorial office. He was defeated in 1883 ; but elected in 1885, although he failed to carry his own county in the contest. To regain supremacy there, became, of course, a political necessity and in casting about for the means to do so, he was advised by Dr. Thomas Graydon that George B. Cox possessed a power to get votes, of which he ought to take advantage. At the time when Mr. Foraker's attention was called to Cox, he was still, as it were, in embryo. He had revealed his talents ; but he did not possess the proper implements for their exercise. Therefore, it was necessary to increase his power and to secure him a better vantage ground. To do this (it is generally believed), a law was passed displacing the Cincinnati board of public works and substituting a new board, called that of public affairs. The former board was elected by the people; the latter appointed by the governor. If the supposed CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 267 purpose was the real one, the move was shrewd and, at any rate, it was successful. Governor Foraker appointed the board and among its members was Dr. Graydon. The board had at its disposal from twelve hundred to two thousand jobs and Mr. Cox was instructed to fill them with men upon whom he could depend. Of course, to be dependable they must be dependent; and the aspiring politician became the captain of an army as loyal as the Old Guard of Napoleon. Up to this time Mr. Cox had only been able to deliver the delegates from five to six wards, at bek, and was rivaled in his prestige and power by Amor Smith and George Moerlein, but by means of this new patronage he outstripped them both and (except for two considerable set backs), he climbed steadily up the steep stairway of success. In the first place, Theodore Horstman was elected city solicitor and, in the second place, W. H. Stevenson was elected mayor, in spite of all that Mr. Cox could do. So sudden a loss of prestige would have been fatal to a man of mediocre talents, but to Mr. Cox it was only a provocation and a stimulus. He nursed his strength anew and by a still more earnest application of his political methods, was soon at the helm again. It was money that he needed most and in order that he might secure it, easily and quickly he was appointed state inspector of oil, ostensibly as a reward ' for the remarkable services which he had rendered to his party. Up to this time, the methods of Mr. Cox had excited but little criticism, for he was comparatively an unknown man, but now the lime light was suddenly turned upon him. The Times Star became at first suspicious and finally certain that he was usurping the prerogatives of free citizens by his high-handed methods of running republican conventions and it bitterly denounced him as a bad citizen and an unscrupulous Boss. "He stands for the stranglers in our politics," it said, and summoned all good republicans to "repudiate stranglers and their infamous methods." So great a tumult was raised by these and other charges that a reform association was organized; a committee of 50o appointed and an independent ticket nominated. But the city was not yet awake to the danger, so that the effort failed of success. No wonder, then, that Mr. Cox, increasingly conscious of his talent for the manipulation of men and measures, should begin to reach out with both hands for power and wealth. Early in his career he had tried to secure a minor political office and failed; but now, in 1889, he felt himself to be formidable enough to run for the position of county clerk. It is one of the curious and sometimes inscrutable phenomena of politics that men who know how to win votes for others cannot succeed in getting them for themselves and this has been strikingly true of Mr. Cox throughout his entire career. In this present effort he was most signally defeated by John B. Peaslee, formerly superintendent of schools. Not even Napoleons are successful in every campaign and George B. Cox has suffered his share of failure. Another followed soon. The Gas company attempted to secure from the city a gas fuel ordinance and for reasons of his own the "vote-getter" co-operated with them and came within two, of getting enough ballots to pass the measures. Some failures are at least the equivalents Vol. I-18 268 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY of success and this one so clearly demonstrated the talents of this new factor in politics that he won the confidence of the managers of the great corporation which he had tried to help—a tremendous addition to his prestige and power. He had now gotten upon his feet and began to take long strides. His method of achievement was simple and effective. It was to secure the means of appointing his subordinates to well paid offices and in this way binding them to himself by the strongest of all cords—the bonds of self-interest. What he needed, most of all, to accomplish this end was the control of the various branches of the city government, and the first great plum he picked was the patronage of the board of public works. One after another of them then began, as it were, to tumble into his hands. In the decade from 188o to 1890 the progress of Mr. Cox in his effort to completely control the political and business life of the city was phenomenal.. Everything seemed to come his way ; or if it fled from his approach he had only to reach out his omnipotent hand to pull it back. In the extraordinary campaign of 1891, for example, his enemies tried to wrest the city government from his control by nominating an independent candidate, in the person of Theodore Horstman, a man who drew to him not only many of the most independent republicans, but democrats as well. There was only one way to prevent his election and the astute and determined leader took it. He put forward John A. Caldwell as the republican candidate and then connived with those democrats who were opposed to voting a "combination ticket," to put up as a party candidate Isaac Miller, who did not seem to understand that he was being made a tool to divide the votes and ensure the election of a republican. It was a shrewd trick, but was followed by another shrewder still. The Horstman men were making such deadly use of the war cry "Dethrone the Boss" (an inspired utterance of no less a man than Senator Sherman), that Mr. Cox decided to make him "eat his words" or nullify their effect, at least. That he succeeded, was, perhaps, the supreme evidence of his power. At any rate, the senator wrote a letter in which he declared "that this particular election was so much more a national 'khan a local issue that his war cry did not apply ! This letter and a similar expression from Mr. McKinley procured the election of Mr. Caldwell and helped to incorporate inexpugnably, in the political ethics of our city, that deadly error of mixing up local and national politics. Such schemes as these had been worked so often that at last a large element of the republican party became seriously disaffected and alarmed. The inherent fear and hatred of any kind of tyranny began to agitate their breasts and they determined to try in every way to break the chains which were slowly being riveted upon them. One of these efforts resulted in the establishment of a new daily called the Tribune, whose primary purpose was the purification of politics ; but the financial burden proved intolerable and it finally had to con-, solidate with the old Commercial. Thus, the last hope of an independent organ of opposition to the Boss and his now thoroughly organized Gang was suddenly taken away. With this obstacle removed, Mr. Cox pushed forward still more resolutely along his chosen. lines and persistently worked his favorite plan of decimating the ranks of the democrats by quietly offering their most efficient leaders political CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 269 situations tempting enough to detach them from their party. To this scheme he adds another as shrewd and effective. It had become evident that his greatest peril lay in the fusion of disaffected persons of both parties in an independent movement against him, and so he craftily secured the passage of the Dana law in 1896, making it unlawful for a candidate's name to appear on more them, one ticket, which forced the independents to divide up between them the two old parties or put up a third ticket. So high-handed a move produced an unexpected result. The disaffected republicans in 1897 proposed a fusion movement to the democrats, and John R. McLean, who saw an opportunity to assist his personal ambition to become a United States senator, promised to lend the support of the Enquirer to the movement. Gustave Tafel was nominated, and, by the conspiracy of these forces, triumphantly elected. At first this victory seemed a solar plexus blow for the boss and his organization but the inefficiency of Mr. Tafel's administration became the unexpected means of his restoration to power. Mr. Tafel was an honest and an earnest man ; but not fitted for the responsibilities and difficulties of his new position, so that everything went wrong. Inefficiency in almost every department alienated the good people and enabled the arch-tempter to corrupt the bad, which he did by his tried and trusty method of seducing them one by one through offers of place or boodle. Emboldened by success, he used them as tools and tried so many schemes of exploitation and plunder as finally to persuade a large element of republicans that the time for his retirement into a privacy (where he could still be as powerful and perhaps more so than ever) had finally arrived. In response to their wishes (or, more likely, because he foresaw the defeat of the party if it tried to get on without him) and the certainty of restoration, he published his famous letter of resignation. It fell like a bolt from the blue and produced spasms of rejoicing among the novitiates and of laughter among the initiated, who knew as well as the great actor himself that there would soon be a call from the pit for the reappearance of the hero. Nor were they wrong. By the following spring the general was in the saddle again, and his army upon the march. In the very next mayoralty election 1900) Cox came out into the open and set up his standards. He selected for his candidate Julius Fleischman, the son of one of our most popular citizens and a young man of exceptional promise. The fusionists opposed him with Alfred Cohen, a man of the highest character and of first-class ability ; but the people were too disgusted with the former administration to try another along the same lines and stampeded to Fleischman. Taking everything into consideration it may be said that Mr. Fleischman served the city faithfully and well. If he was not vigorous enough in his administration of the laws to satisfy the most ethical part of the community he certainly did not participate in the schemes of plunder which the people believed were being carried on while he was mayor. They believed that Mr. Cox had sacrificed the city to the gas company for gain. They believed that he tried to promote the sale of the Southern railroad at a price which would have been an infamy,for personal emolument. They believed that there was scarcely a department of the city's government which was not compelled to pay him tribute. They may have 270 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY been wrong, but they were firmly persuaded that they were right and, when the campaign of 1904 came on, the mutterings of revolt were heard again. A committee of twenty-six was formed, into whose hands the charge of finding a candidate and conducting a campaign was committed. They succeeded, after much futile solicitation, in persuading M. E. Ingalls, president of the Big Four, to run and, on account of his standing in the business world, his character and his ability, the reformers firmly hoped that he would win. But Mr. Cox, with an uncompromising will, insisted upon Julius Fleischman standing for a second term and after a hot and bitter campaign in which there were angry charges of bribery and every kind of fraud on the part of the "gang," he was triumphantly elected. The two years which followed were practically identical with those which had preceded, and only deepened the conviction in the bosoms of the reformers that the republican administration was hopelessly corrupt. In the campaign which occurred at the close of Mr. Fleischman's second term, Edward J. Dempsey was nominated as a protest and easily elected. He was not, however, strong enough to master the difficult situation in which be found himself. Untoward circumstances conspired to bring out his personal lack of political sagacity and to reveal the fact that combined forces which had elected him were not so eager for reform as for profit and power, so that at the following election all progress thus far made toward the overthrow of the "gang" was lost. Dr. Schwab, the republican candidate, achieved an easy victory, and thus secured for Mr. Cox another triumph and another vindication. This is a truly remarkable story and must create the impression that Mr. Cox is a child of destiny, so often has he returned from Elba. But nothing is more inevitable than the fatal denouement of a drama like this. In some way or another a weak spot in such a man's armor is certain to be found, no matter how long it may turn the shafts of rivals and enemies. During the administration of Mayor Dempsey a considerable number of anti-Cox men were sent from Cincinnati to the state legislature and among them was Henry T. Hunt, who led a movement for the investigation of the political situation in Hamilton county, now become so rank with corruption as to "smell to heaven." After long and protracted efforts he and his associates secured the appointment of the "Drake committee," and it drew out of its witnesses the long suspected fact that various banks had for years been paying interest on vast sums of money, not a penny of which had gone into the public treasury ! The fact was capable of but one construction, and Rud K. Hynicka, John H. Gibson and Tilden R. French, through whose hands this money had been passing, turned back into the treasury funds amounting to $214,998.76. Not only was this rottenness unearthed in the financial department, but it was also attempted in the judicial, as well. Hon. Ferdinand Jelke testified to the fact that he was asked by Mr. Cox to call at his office over the Mecca saloon and that then and there he was told that it was desirable for the court (composed of himself, Hon. William Giffin and Peter F. Swing) to reverse a certain decision in a suit of the Lane and Bodley company against the city ! To this suggestion Judge Jelke (knowing well enough that he was signing the death warrant of his political aspirations) announced firmly that the case would be tried on its records and in no other way. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 271 A decision was given by the common pleas, affirmed by the circuit and Supreme courts declaring the Drake committee illegal because appointed by only one branch of the legislature. This experience and many others finally made one thing clear as daylight, or so the people thought. It was that the judiciary of the city was in danger of coming under the thumb of the boss and that unless some judge could be elected who was thoroughly independent the power of the ring could not be broken. In 1908 a strategic opportunity to secure a man like this occurred through a shake-up in the democratic organization and Frank M. Gorman was elected to the bench in the Court of Common Pleas, while at the same time Henry Hunt was chosen as prosecuting attorney. The handwriting was now perceived upon the wall ; but the indomitable boss fought on. He had made his first unquestionable political error in treating the nominations of these two men contemptuously, but good fortune still attended him, for the calendar was so arranged that Judge Gorman could not serve in the criminal court for two years, by which time he dared to hope that another election would furnish them a more pliant and less dangerous prosecuting attorney. In this he met a bitter disappointment, for Hunt was re-elected in 1910, and on January I, 1911, he began his second term and Judge Gorman took his seat upon the criminal bench. It was as if the slow revolving wheels in a time lock had come at last to the predetermined combination, for the panel of talesmen for jury duty was exhausted before the quota was filled and the laws of Ohio permitted the judge to issue a special venire of men of his own selection. He seized the golden opportunity and summoned to the most sacred duty of citizenship Jerome B. Howard, John Uri Lloyd, Miles T. Watts, Lester Rothschilds, William G. Caldwell and others. Most of these men, if not all, were members of the City Club, an organtion to promote civic betterment and stood above reproach. Before this jury Mr. Hunt began his prosecution by presenting evidences hich convicted Jacob Baschang (a Cox lieutenant) of taking bribes from saloons and disorderly houses. Having run down a few of the minor characters whom he had been stalking, the prosecuting attorney now began to draw his net upon the principal object of the hunt. It was on the twenty-first day of May, 1906, that the trial was held, which resulted in the return of the interest money into the treasury of the city. At that time Mr. Cox had testified, on oath, that he had not received a dollar of this money and this testimony the youthful attorney now proceeded to attack by introducing Vivian J. Fagin (a former deputy county treasurer), who swore that he had carried some of the money to Mr. Cox with his own hands, and Messrs. French and Gibson ( former treasurers), who both affirmed that they had divided their share of these interest moneys with that same too grasping individual. It being a question of veracity between these gentlemen and the boss, the jury decided in favor of the former and indicted the latter for perjury—the only possible ground for a criminal prosecution, as the court had ruled that taking the money under the circumstances was not a criminal act. It looked for a time as if the quarry was hopelessly entangled in the net of justice; but those who knew the genius of the accused man and the power of money, 272 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY shook their heads. They were not surprised, therefore, when Mr. Cox, accused of this loathsome crime, employed the strongest legal talent within his reach and succeeded in escaping from the toils. To us laymen the intricate processes of law by -which this escape was accomplished through the ability of attorneys, are all brit impossible of comprehension. With wide open and wondering eyes we watched the mysterious processes of shifting the case from one court to another and swearing this judge and that one off the bench until at last it came into the court of Judge William L. Dickson, who summarily threw it out, on the ground that the indictments were not properly drawn, an act concerning which the Citizens' Bulletin editorially remarks: "Now that Judge Dickson's decision is at last out, quashing the indictments against Cox and holding him free from the pains and penalties of any perjury he may have committed before the grand jury of 1906, it may be permissible to point out one fact that the daily press may not explain with sufficient fullness. That is, that the decision does not, as indeed it could not, express any opinion as to Cox's actual guilt. It does not free him from the charge of swearing falsely, but merely holds that, even if he did, he could not be punished therefor. As of course one of the points in the case of greatest interest to the average citizen is the question whether Cox really did receive $65,000 in interest from past county treasurers, and if so, what caused this amazing generosity—it is to be hoped that, while Judge Dickson's decision closes one way by which these facts could be brought to light, some other may be found. Surely our retiring boss, whose truth-telling is notorious, cannot pretend that the cloud upon his veracity has been removed by a decree that he cannot be held responsible for any falsity in his sworn statement. Most men would not be satisfied with this left-handed clearing, but would insist on digging the matter to the very bottom. Will Cox ?" The legal processes which so bewildered the laymen's intellect did not, however, obscure their ethical perceptions. They are accustomed to do their own thinking and with regard to this affair arrived at some very definite and decided conclusions. They concluded, in the first place, that Mr. Cox was guilty, because he was afraid to stand his trial. They concluded, in the second place, that he can never recover his lost prestige, and that there is no more use in his case than in any other of trying to "put a dead leader on horseback." This has been a long story ; but it is entitled to all the time and space that it has taken, because of its deep significance. Few can doubt that the influence of this remarkable man has been the most powerful ever exerted by any single individual in the history of our city ; and fewer still that this influence has been for evil. As it is the purpose of this study to interpret the character of the men and the significance of the movements which have made our city what it is, it now becomes a duty to subject this remarkable man to at least a brief analysis, and we will begin with his personality. Physically, he is capable of standing up under great strain. Emotionally, he is so cold that his purposes are never thwarted by sentiments. Intellectually, his brain is the instrument of almost unerring precision. Ethically, he is dominated by one supreme principle—to keep his word. That he has been true to this standard of obligation even his enemies admit. But that it has been because of any inherent sense of the essential grandeur of the truth, they doubt, CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 273 since observing his unwillingness to have "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" disclosed in a fair and open trial in a court of law. The divine command imposed upon humanity—"not to judge, lest we be judged"—has not prevented the common people of Cincinnati from deciding that . Mr. Cox does not possess those lofty moral sentiments which entitle men to the reverence of their fellows. The more charitable are willing to judge him leniently, because of his environment ; but we cannot be relieved from the obligation of learning the supreme lesson of his character and career—the lesson,—that he lacks a sincere love for his fellow men and for the laws and institutions of human society. The trouble with Mr. Cox has been that he was not a philopolist. He did not -love the city in which he lived. He did not labor for its interests ; but used it to advance his own. To him, this great metropolis, with all its inhabitants, its institutions and its wealth was an opportunity for remorseless exploitations. He did not say to himself—"the city demands the consecration of all my powers to its welfare. I must subordinate my personal interests to those of its citizens. I must work for the public good." He only saw a public treasury to be drawn upon; great corporations to be mulcted ; men and women to be used as tools to aggrandize himself. In his long career there is nothing more noticeable than the fact that lie has never uttered a single noble sentiment upon the subject of the duties of citizenship nor taken his stand in any of the great movements for the higher life with the people who were willing to make sacrifices for righteousness. If at any time (as in the effort to stop the prize fight to raise money to pay the debt on the Saengerfest building) he arrayed himself with those who stood up for the honor of the city, it was so evidently a political reason which governed him that no one could think for a moment that he saw his course with the clear eye of duty. On May 15, 1911, the Enquirer printed a copyrighted interview by a New York World reporter in which Mr. Cox gave the fullest revelations of his thoughts and feelings which has ever been seen in public print. From beginning to end it is impossible to catch the note of unselfishness and but one single note of aspiration is sounded. "At the present moment I am striving to get the city home rule. The question of home rule is the greatest problem before the cities of the country today. No further progress can be made in municipal affairs until the cities become free. I am strong to have Cincinnati make its own laws, instead of being ruled by agitators from country districts. The cities of the country should make their own laws and I believe the time is close at hand when they will do so." Two curiously inconsistent confessions impress the reader of this article, strangely. "Next to my home life, I get the greatest pleasure out of politics. After all, politics is a game. I like it because I am successful. One usually likes to play the game where one is successful. It is human nature." "I would strenuously advise young men not to enter politics. If I had a n, I would forcibly prevent his taking any kind of an active part in it. In the first place there is no money in it and in the second place there is only abuse, whether you are successful or not." 274 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY The verdict of history will be, no doubt, that in Mr. Cox's confession that "Politics is a game" lies the principal evil of his career. Politics is not a game; but a calling and a mission. It cannot be played at ! It must be worked over and fought out! If Mr. Cox had only felt this ! If he could have taken his duty to the city as seriously as William Woodward did, or Ormsby W. Mitchell; or Dr. Daniel Drake ! So much for the personal element in Mr. Cox's career and now, a word or two about the general effect of that career upon the city's life. In the first place it has produced a wide spread and haunting suspicion of public men. So much evil has been actually known of those who held office that a thousand times as much has been conjectured as has really existed. The idea that all our political servants are corrupt or corruptible has taken a strange hold of our people. We suspect them of graft from the mayor to the garbage cleaner. An atmosphere of distrust envelopes all our city offices and in it even honest men are distorted into knaves. Now, nothing can be worse for a city than this; for, aft unshaken confidence in the integrity of our public officials is absolutely necessary to our stability and our progress. Life will go on without it, of course, for nothing can prevent its evolution. We continue to buy and sell ; to marry and give in marriage; to extend our commerce ; to multiply our buildings and to expand our borders. But without public confidence, this development is far more like the inflation of a bubble than the growth of an orange. Life becomes hollow, empty and unsubstantial. To a degree but little likely to be exaggerated these last two decades have been cursed by this lack of confidence in and respect for men in public life. To be "in politics" has become a synonym for being in disgrace. If you wish to outrage a good man you have only to ask him to run for .office and it you wish to gain the ever lastitx ill will of parents you have only to try to get their sons involved in a "campaign." By all classes of morally. earnest people it is taken for granted that the path of politics is the road to the pit. "He who enters here leaves hope behind." "Facile descensus Averni." To attribute all these evils to a single man would be absurd. They are to be traced to wide spread and almost universal conditions in American life. In all our great cities, the Boss has been an effect as well as a cause. He is the product of influences which have their origin deep in the soul of the nation. But, on the other hand, the fact remains that the individual in whom these wide spread evils are embodied, becomes the means of their dissemination and of the disintegration which they engender. Such men cannot be permitted to go unscourged by public opinion. They are "undesirable citizens." They corrupt the public morals. They destroy republican ideals. But the condemnation must be discriminating. There is nothing inconsistent with democracy in the existence of great leaders. If Mr. Cox had used his extraordinary talents for the public weal instead of his personal aggrandizement, he could have become the greatest benefactor of our city. In the second place, the political system established by Mr. Cox has to shoulder the responsibility for two ideas which have become so deeply entrenched in the body politic as to threaten its overthrow. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 275 The first is this, that the best government of a city is the one that furnishes the strongest guarantees for the stability of the big business interests. The principal defense of the administration of Mr. Cox has been that under it "business men knew what they could depend upon !" Great organizations might have to pay a high price for that feeling of security ; but it must be had, no matter what it costs ! It seems incredible that so many of our noblest men have swallowed this idea at a gulp and never once stopped to reflect that it carried with it the seeds of municipal and national destruction, The moment that people begin to buy protection, democracy is abolished and an oligarchy founded. Democracy is consistent with the wildest kind of fluctuations; but absolutely inconsistent with that stability which is guaranteed to the big business interests of paying money into the coffers of the gang. The second of these fatal ideas is this,—that "graft" is a legitimate profit in all sorts of business transactions. It seems incredible that the acceptance of any kind of reward for service can produce disastrous results, for is it not upon the principle of reward for service that business of all kinds rests ? But, everything depends upon the kind of reward ! Tips have turned the servants of Europe into flunkeys and are fast corrupting those in America. And commissions ( !) have made scoundrels out of salesmen in every line of business. Whenever and wherever men take gratuities for duties for whose performance they are already obligated, dry ':vot sets in, whether in politics or business. Under the system established by Mr. Cox these gratuities (this graft) have become legitimatized in the popular mind and immeasurable demoralization has ensued. In a public speech in Akron during the campaign of 1905, 'William H. Taft summed these evils up in the following eloquent language, and with them we shall close this chapter. "Today the Cox machine operates as smoothly, to control the nominations and elections in the city and county, as a nicely adjusted Corliss engine. The whole government of both city and county are absolutely under Cox's control, and every republican political convention nominates the men whom he dictates. "The government under the machine is constantly described as a very corrupt one. Such a government generally begets corruption. The importance of suppressing open and notorious graft in order to prevent defeat at the polls is known to the engineer of the machine, and he has perhaps exercised his power to suppress the inevitable tendency in such a machine. "But the power secured by the boss and his assistants under the machine has undoubtedly inured to their pecuniary profit, and it is seen in the large fortunes which they now have. How their money was made has not been disclosed. The large public utility corporations seem to regard the boss as a conserving influence, and are content to have the control of the machine continue as it is, because they regard themselves as thus insured against disturbance in their f ranchises. "The condition is one of absolute helplessness on the part of any independent republican seeking to take part in politics and to act independently of the machine, and the distressing effect is now seen upon all the young men ambitious 276 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY politically, as it either drives them out of politics and deprives the public of their probably valuable services, or if they go into politics, they must subordinate themselves to the tyranny of the boss. "If I were able, as I fear I shall not be, because public duty calls me elsewhere, to cast my vote in Cincinnati at the coming election, I should vote against the municipal ticket nominated by the republican organization, and for the state ticket." CHAPTER XVI. 1888-1911 CONTINUED. CIVIC BETTERMENT-IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO GEORGE B. COX IS WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT THE "FIRST GENTLEMAN OF AMERICA"-A GREAT WAVE OF REFORM-CINCINNATI ROUSED TO DUTY OF SELF IMPROVEMENT-RESULTS. It is a relief, indeed, to turn away from the study of those influences which have done so much to coarsen and degrade our city to those which, during the very same period of time, have been operating for its purification and betterment. In order to enjoy and comprehend a phenomenon so vast as a great city, it is necessary to remember all the time how wheels revolve within wheels ; how eddies and counter currents conflict with the general flow of the stream ; how the forces for evil breed forces for good ; how the general equilibrium is maintained by counter balances. One must correct the despair engendered by the study of such men as Mr. Cox, through contemplating the noble lives that have been lived and beautiful characters that have been produced in the midst of the very evils where they had their origin and growth. He must not forget that the same social system which produced a George B. Cox, for example, has also produced a William H. Taft. Playing together in the same streets, educated in the same schools, breathteing the same air, these two men grew up side by side—the one to regard the city as a storehouse to be plundered and the other as a sort of living personality to be loved and served. To those eloquent words just quoted from our illustrious citizen, we cannot refrain adding these which he uttered to the members of the Commercial club on the 25th anniversary of his wedding. GOOD FELLOWSHIP. "Mrs. Taft and I esteem the coming of the Commercial club here to attend our silver wedding as the chief pleasure of the occasion. It is an indication that you men of affairs have been willing to take the time to come here to give an expression of good-will and of fellowship which the objects of it ought to value most highly." The president then said that he had been away from Cincinnati for twelve years and that during that time much had happened to him, but that he fully expects to go back to the Queen city to spend his remaining days when he is out of public office. - 277 - 278 - CINCINNATI—THE CITY "And now, my friends," continued the president, "there is nothing in life, aside from domestic affections and the family interest, that compares with the friendships that one retains through life and that one earns by association, and nothing could give stronger testimony of my good fortune than the presence of this company about this board. SON GOING BACK. "It will be now, (when my son Robert comes back to Cincinnati to practice law) four generations that have lived there, and while it has been pressed on him and on me to have him go to some place where possibly his emoluments would be larger, I am determined, and he sympathizes with me, that he shall go to the home that knew his great-grandfather and his grandfather and his father, and that there he shall work out his life under the influence that I hope will be favorable to his success—at least, in restraining him within the path and the limitations of an honorable life." There vibrates in those words, we think, the true spirit of philopolism. The love of his home town tugs at the heart of the "First gentleman of America," even when occupying the highest position of honor and trust in the world. He dreams of the time when he can go back to mingle with his old friends and neighbors and take up the humble duties of citizenship. He wants his. son to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, to cherish their traditions, to pick up the burdens they lay down ; to repay the gifts of success and honor bestowed upon them by the city where he lived, no matter if he suffers loss thereby. These sentiments are noble ; but they are not isolated. Mr. Taft is only one of innumerable loyal and devoted Cincinnatians over whose lives these evil influences have rolled as water rolls over the stones in a brook. While many were being corrupted, more were being purified. While the evil influences were working like a virus, the good were leavening like a yeast. During all these ill omened years of gang rule, little springs of unselfish love and effort began to burst up in the desert and to form green and beautiful oases. There were men and women whose souls were stirred to heroic action by the needs and the opportunities of municipal life. A conception of the city as an object to incite love and stimulate effort somehow got abroad. In the stagnant sea of bad government there were little agitations set a going which have finally developed into great waves of reform. To trace these movements accurately we should have, of course, to go far afield, for they do not, ordinarily, originate in a single locality ; but must be looked for in other and often widely separated localities. In a country so vast as our own they are all but certain to spring up in a thousand different cities, and so, a study of the phenomenon of civic improvement (grown now to such vast proportions) would carry us into the nurseries of a hundred great municipalities where infant reforms were being rocked in cradles. A quarter of a century or more ago people everywhere began to waken up to the idea that cities could not safely be left to themselves to grow in accordance with the laws and forces which happened to be most potent. The fact that their growth must be dominated by intelligence and will was, here in America, a sort of revelation. But wealth had CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 279 been accumulated on a large scale ; leisure had been acquired and travel had disclosed to astonished eyes, the achievements of people in the cities of other lands. In addition to these and many other influences, the World's Fair at Chicago had produced a revolution in the minds of people about the possibilities of municipal improvement. The fairy scene that art had produced there (in 1893) opened the eyes of visitors to what intelligence, wealth and determination could do in the way of creating groups of buildings that should be not only useful, but beautiful even to sublimity. Everywhere people began to woneler why all. cities could not be made as attractive as that "White City" of dreams and enchantments. A new vision had come to men and women. A new science—the science of city building had been born. What citizens could do to improve their own home towns became an absorbing problem and multitudes of people in every state of the Union began to set themselves to solve it. That Cincinnati was roused but slowly to the possibility and duty of self-improvement is too well known to need new proof. The business setteback which it had suffered through the growth of its rivals, had cooled the enthusiasm and the pride of its inhabitants. In the early nineties, strangers entering Cincinnati after living in such towns as Boston, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, could not comprehend the mental attitude of its citizens. They never heard a boast about -.the beauties or possibilities of the metropolis o.f the Ohio Valley. Nobody apologized; but nobody bragged! It seemed to be taken for granted that Cincinnati had dropped behind in the race for pre-eminence, for good and sufficient reasons, and that its inferiority was predestined. These things, together with a feeling of helplessness in the hands of a political ring, had produced an almost universal apathy. Nobody seemed to care that the city was enveloped in a pall of smoke ; or that the drinking water was muddy, or that the parks were not adequate, or that, the streets were poor, or that business was being stolen away. People were making a good living ; they were friendly to one another ; their manners were charming; they enjoyed life gloriously and, if they wanted to see anything better - than they had themselves, it was easy to go East or slide across to Europe ! The idea of developing in their own home town the facilities and beauties which existed elsewhere had, seemingly, never entered anybody's head. But those fertile seeds that had been planted in the seventies had already commenced to germinate. Another renaissance had actually begun. What its princitepal causes were will be more clearly seen by those who come after us than by ourselves. Those of us who have lived through the days of mingled hopes and fears ; success and failure ; darkness and daylight in which so many opposing forces have conflicted with each other, will not be able to judge men and movements, institutions and organizations, without prejudice. We are too close to them to discriminate with accuracy. Too much of the dust of the arena is in our eyes. And yet, there are after all, some great outstanding men and women, some deep and genuine movements ; some vital and regenerative forces which we have felt or perceived so clearly that we cannot be wholly mistaken about them. To point them out and to indicate their relative values, as they seem to us today, may assist posterity to a better comprehension of our times than they could attain, perhaps, by reasonings of their own. Conscious of the difficulty of the undertaking, we 280 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY may not shrink from its attempt, and begin by setting forth the influence of the Business Men's Club upon this revival of civic interest. Business Men's Club. In 1892 a number of young men, all of them at that time quite inconspicuous, were spontaneously seized by a desire to know more about their city and to do something for its improvement. In order to gratify this wish and purpose, they organized a club and began holding monthly meetings, at which they listened to addresses by people who were able both to enlighten and inspire them upon the subjects of their investigations. For a time they made but little, if any, impression upon others, although they were themselves profoundly moved. In 1896, how. ever, there came a period of enlargement and the organization was reincorporated under the name of "The Young Men's Business Club" and its purpose was declared to be "to promote the best interests of Cincinnati." Its numbers began to grow, and, under the presidency of George M. Verity (now at the head of the great American Rolling Mill of Middletown) it reached a membership of 500. Gradually it enlarged the scope of its activities and began to make its influence felt in ever widening circles. The new sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of the city thus so vigorously developing, found expression in efforts to eliminate the smoke nuisance ; to develop the park system ; to improve the Ohio river, and a hundred others of similar character. Among these efforts was the publication, during the presidency of Mr. Verity, in book form of a series of fugitive essays which had appeared in the Commercial Tribune under the caption "The Philopolist." These little essays, crude as they were, gave some sort of expression to the new affection for their home town which was stirring in the breasts of these vigorous young men. With the passing years these young men increased in numbers, in wealth and influence. A series of hustling and ambitious gentlemen filled the office of president, one after another, and vied with each other in efforts to promote business, art, education and every other phase of the city's life. Gradually their sentiments crystallized and finally they found expression in the now famous motto "For the honor and glory of Cincinnati." The spirit which animated the members of the club was so contagious that the membership increased by leaps. and bounds, until it grew beyond the thousand mark and a need of increased conveniences drove the Club from one housing to another, until at last it appropriated the two upper stories of the Chamber of Commerce, where it fitted up commodious and even magnificent quarters. In that generous banquet-hall meetings were frequently held which affected the welfare of the whole city. Representative men from every sphere of life and every state in the Union have plead with eloquence for every cause and for every movement by which the higher interests of humanity were promoted. But, over and above every other interest, stood that of "the town they lived in." To promote its growth, to increase its wealth, to advance its reforms, has been the keynote of those gatherings, some of which have been memorable indeed ; and none more so than those which have been held to honor the Cincinnatians who have distinguished themselves by accomplishing some great and lasting good for the city. Such banquets have been given to Dr. J. M. Withrow for his effective work as a member of the school board ; to Dr. Holmes for similar exertions in behalf of CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 281 the City hospital and to Lee Ault for his gift of a magnificent tract for a park and his unselfish service on the board of park commissioners. This beautiful custom possesses the flavor and boasts the sanction of antiquity, having been borrowed from the ancient Athenians who had learned the deep lesson that no other incentive to noble conduct has ever been more powerful than the appreciation of one's fellow citizens. The Business Men's club has now become an institution of great proportions and, of course, has gained and lost by this expansion in numbers, wealth and influence. As its membership increases its activities are more than likely to lose their unity. That original homogeneity which gave it driving power has been sacrificed, in some degree, perhaps, to size ; but, on the whole, it has clung to its original purpose of making the town a better place to live in and has widened and deepened the meaning of the phrase "good citizenship" to an immeasurable degree. The Woman's Club. It certainly cannot be a mere coincidence that the Woman's club came into existence so nearly at the same time as the Business Men's, but must rather be another evidence of the universal stirrings of the new life, in the soul of the city. The latter was organized in 1892; the former in 1894 at the suggestion of Mrs. T. P. Mallon, Miss Annie Laws, Mrs. J. J. Gest, Mrs. H. C. Ferguson, Mrs. H. B. Moorehead, Mrs. Fayette Smith and Miss Clara C. Newton. Miss Laws was elected president and the full limit of membership (150) was speedily attained. The meetings were held at first in the rooms of the Society of Natural History, then in the Perin building; afterwards in the Mercantile library and now in a beautiful building on Oak street, the property • of the club. The origin and growth of the club are a part of that great upward movement in the evolution of womanhood which set in during the last century and is still proceeding with ever increasing momentum. It has already been pointed out that in our own city its agitations were early felt and revealed themselves, primarily, in artistic efforts. Undoubtedly, the Woman's club was a phase of this same unfolding life. The consciousness of a new place in the world and a new value to society was certain, sooner or later, to crystallize into a desire for organization. When the critical moment arrived, the organization was quickly and easily effected. From the first meeting, almost, the club became a potent factor in the struggle for civic betterment. These serious minded women threw themselves whole heartedly into every movement which contemplated a cleaner, better, nobler city. One of their earliest efforts was to secure playgrounds for children and the enthusiasm with which they swept away all obstacles and carried out their purposes, foretold the zeal and success which were to attend their efforts in a hundred other fields of endeavor. They have kept out of politics ; but in every other domain, almost, have struck the most fearless, telling blows for righteousness. Nor has their influence been confined to the club itself, for innumerable other organizations of a similar character have either sprung from the parent stem or found their inspiration and moral support from it. In fact, the present social life of our city consists, to a great degree, of these organizations among women for literary, artistic, religious, or social purposes. What this fermentation will result in when the whole lump is leavened by the yeast of 282 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY this new movement, no one is wise enough yet, to foretell. The right to vote in the election for the school board was early secured by the energy of the most aggressive advocates of women's rights and already a movement .has been launch to elect Miss Edith Campbell to a position in that honorable body. Whatever this tendency of women to enter into all the various spheres of human activity may lead to in the future, up to the present moment its influence has been wholly good. The life of the city has been purified and uplifted by what they have hoped and planned and achieved, and it is to the Woman's club that much, if not most, of the recent accomplishments must be traced. For a single example, the establishment of kindergartens in our city schools is directly and almost solely attributable to the influence of its members. There is something astonishing (to one who has been poring in vain ove the pages of past history to discover woman's influence upon public life) to stumble upon this sudden and prodigious output of energy. An institution like this Woman's club in the thirties and forties, would have been as anomalous as Mrs. Trollope's bazaar ! And yet today it has taken its place in the scheme of things as quietly and seems as much at home in the modern world as a tree in a landscape. City Club. A third organization typical of the times and expressive of the unfolding of a higher civic life is the "City Club." Its birth was an evil omen to the gang and to all who fattened at the public crib, for it has set itself resolutely to study the problems and overthrow the evils of municipal government. It was started in 1906 and its organization is of so informal a character that any one interested in the sort of work it does, finds hearty welcome. At noon, on Saturdays, it assembles for lunch at one of the hotels and by essays, addresses and debates goes thoroughly into all the problems whose solution is of such tremendous importance. More than one reform has had its origin in this club and many will yet be traced to its activities, for its members are in the main the rising young men of the city. It is their youth, their enthusiasm, their conscientiousness that impresses the student of these modern movements and augurs so much for the future. Society of Municipal Research. Another of those institutions which have sprung almost magically into existence during these fruitful years, is the Society of Municipal Research, the purpose of which is to investigate every phase of the machinery of city government. It goes upon the assumption that no department is safe from the temptations to extravagance and to dishonesty. A corps of trained experts supported by the contributions of public-spirited citizens, give all their time to turning the searchlight upon employees ; upon contracts ; upon methods. Over and over again they have demonstrated the necessity of this new wheel in our democratic system. In every organization, institution and movement there are inherent tendencies to deterioration. The best society, the best institution, the best people need watching and there is not any single determination of American citizens more hopeful than that of which this society is an expression—to scru- CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 283 nize the machinery and the officials of government, national and municipal, with never sleeping eye. Improvement Societies. Another hopeful symptom of the resurgent tide of civic betterment has been the organization of civic improvement societies. Within the past few years they have sprung up spontaneously in every part of the city, until at last as many as thirty or forty have organized a representative body in which their delegates can exchange the ideas and impart the enthusiasms generated in local societies. To attend a meeting of these delegates from associations representing every suburb and natural division of the city from Westwood to Madisonville and from the river to Wyoming is to be made profoundly certain that a civic consciousness of some kind is actually being born ; that the soul of the city is awakening to a new and nobler life. Such an awakening is unprecedented in our history. There have been individual men who have loved the city as well perhaps, as any who are living now. There have been great efforts put forth to develop and improve it. But they were individual and sporadic. They did not spring out of a widely diffused and increasingly serious and intelligent comprehension of the obligation of all the citizens to do something to make their town a better place to live in. Today that comprehension is penetrating the minds of men, women, children and institutions in an amazing manner. To suppose for a moment that the societies which have been named as especially, growing out of or embodying this movement were the only ones concerned, would be to possess a falge and unworthy conception. There is scarcely a single important organization that is not inoculated with this spirit. Churches—Clubs. The churches have taken up the crusade for civic betterment. Such clubs as the Queen City, the Optimist, the Literary, the Commercial and scores of others, have their committees and departments which contemplate the discharge of their duty toward the greater organization in which they begin to feel themselves but single, little wheels in a vast machine. Public Library. The public library has sent out lecturers with lantern slides to inculcate the ideas of a nobler municipal life. Individual Men. Individual men like A. O. Kraemer, for example, the illustrator of this book, have gone out upon their own hook, as missionaries and apostles to exhibit the beauties of our city pictorially and to awaken a deeper consciousness of obligation of citizenship. Public Schools. But the most important and the most hopeful of all the manifestations of the new consciousness of personal obligation to the municipality is that in our , Vol I-19 284 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY public schools. For several years there have been rapidly multiplying signs that the teachers have seen a new light. There has come to their minds a clarified consciousness of the fact that their principal business is to produce good citizens! It is not enough simply to educate boys and girls into a cultivated manhood and womanhood ! They must be turned into lovers of the town they live in ! How strange it is that this conception has not always been the dominant one, in public school education. What do we pay the educational tax for ? Simply to produce educated individuals? By no means ! But—to produce good citizens! For no other reason can it be right to impose this tax upon us than that by its use men and women can be trained to love the city and to labor for its welfare. There can be no ethical obligation in your being compelled to pay money to train another man's child into a good man; but there can in your being compelled to pay money to turn him into an intelligent and unselfish voter! The teachers are beginning to see this and to feel it. Our great and successful superintendent, F. B. Dyer, sees and feels it. And it is because he does that he has encouraged Prof. F. H. Goodwin to formulate a systematic course of training in civics, founded upon an actual familiarity with the history of our city. These far sighted educators know that all appreciation and interest and devotion grow out of knowledge and that until children know about the city they live in, they cannot love it intelligently and will not serve it devotedly. But what effort has ever been made (until recently) to familiarize our embryonic citizens with the great characters, the great events, the great crimes and the great virtues of our city ? They have been drilled in the history of Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Paris and London ; but have been permitted to grow up in ignorance about Cincinnati—the town they live in ; the town about which it is more important that they should know than about all the others combined ! Is it strange, then, that so few people really love the towns they live in, when so few know anything much about them? Scarcely one person in a hundred could outline the story of our city's foundation and development, even in the baldest way. As few could name the illustrious men and describe their characters and mission. The masses know but little even of its topography ; its government; its industries ; its parks ; its advantages and disadvantages for trade and so forth. The most of us fall into a rut which we travel until the day of our death, from our homes to our places of business and to the homes of a few of our neighbors and friends. We settle down in a narrow circle and revolve about it like a straw in an eddy. All that we know is that which lies in this narrow environment, and what a little fragment of the great city it really is ! What we have lacked is enlarged observation, enlarged horizons ; enlarged visions of the immense and complicated and fascinating phenomena that are the component elements of a great city. It is a fact well worthy of attention that the recent increase of interest in our city's welfare is coincident with the development of the bicycle and the automobile. Now, if our philosophical principle is true (that such interest is proportioned to a true knowledge of the object contemplated), it is easy to see the relation between the two. Thousands of people who never knew anything about Cincinnati outside of their narrow beaten pathways have recently ransacked it from center to circumference and discovered its almost matchless charms. They know CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 285 it now and therefore love it ! But they only know its topography ! Suppose that they knew its history as well ! Suppose that they had become familiar with the lives and characters of its great men and women ; with its great successes and failures, virtues and vices ! Would not their interest and devotion be increased a thousand times ? If this is a true conception of the importance of knowledge to good citizenship it follows that we can scarcely make too much of the study of our city in ur public schools. We must come to see that it is as important that our children should know their city as their country, even ; that they should be as familiar with the lives of its great men as those of the nation. The early settlers in the Miami Valley made paths to school houses by harnessing a horse to a log and dragging it through the underbrush. It is a far cry from those days and the old log school house to Hughes and Woodward buildings and e electric cars by which the children are carried to their doors fifteen or sixteen miles in almost as few minutes ! We have improved the equipments of our schools and the methods of their instruction, enormously ; but we have still to learn that these schools exist, primarily, to make better citizens ! This is a long digression and it may have kept us from enumerating other organizations and institutions which have conspired together to make this period notable for attempts at civic betterment. But it would have been necessary to raw the line somewhere and perhaps these few typical examples will serve as well as many. It is necessary, now that we have seen what forces are effecting these great improvements, to enumerate some of the changes which they have wrought and point out the lines along which they still are moving. Parks. One of the first efforts made by the people who were earliest aroused to this ew sense of civic obligation, back in the nineties, was in the direction of improvg our parks. At that time Cincinnati was almost at the bottom of the list of cities in park acreage and attractiveness ; but the young enthusiasts in the Busiest Men's club took hold of the project for park improvements with a will. ommittees were appointed to investigate ; essays were read ; public meetings eld; bills drafted ; delegates sent to Columbus and a vast amount of preliminary ork done. But there was a terrible lethargy in the city and the years rolled on ith but little progress. In 1906 a commission was appointed and $15,00o.00 propriated by council and George E. Kessler of Kansas City employed to map t a plan for a great system of parks and boulevards adequate for the city, no tter how large it might become, even in a very distant future. This scheme, en visible on the maps, astonished and delighted the people to such a degree t a general movement in favor of its materialization began. A vigorous empt was made to secure the money necessary, by bonding the city ; but it was covered that there was still a majority of people who were unwilling to be ed for this purpose. The promoters of the project were not discouraged by s short sightedness, however, and prepared for another campaign. This one as far more comprehensive and determined than the other even, and, at the ection in 1910 the victory was won. 286 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY The people, enlightened at last, agreed to bond themselves for a million dollars. A park commission consisting of Lee A. Ault, Julius Fleischman and William Gilbert was appointed and Mr. Fleischman was succeeded after a few month's service by George Puchta. The demand for playgrounds was considered of most importance and to it was given the first attention of the commissioners. In all parts of the city, plots were secured and fitted up for the recreation of the children. Then, the small parks were increased in number and now the opening of the first great Boulevard, through Bloody Run, is under way. In about one year's time the commission has almost trebled the park acreage by expending not much more than three-fourths of the money. But the best result of this new interest has been the sudden development of generosity on the part of some of our wealthy citizens. Within a few short months Charles E. Perkins has donated "Owl's Nest, Joseph and Alice Noyes, Woodwark park ; Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Taft, Sinton park ; Mr. Lucien Wulsin, a beautiful corner at the junction of Madison and Observatory roads ; and L. A. Ault, a magnificent tract of 15o acres with more (we are sure) to follow. There is a particular feature of this general movement for park improvement which deserves especial attention, as an illustration of our new determination to secure greater beauty, convenience and health. In the Kessler plan, the Miami canal (within the city limits) had been treated as a boulevard and its possibilities set forth in such glowing terms as to awaken an irrepressible desire to see the useless ditch abandoned and a magnificent thoroughfare for business and pleasure developed in its place. This desire intensified into a purpose, at last, and an organization with George M. Balch as its president undertook to see that the state's consent to the change should be secured. Immense obstacles had to be overcome ; but one after another they vanished before the enthusiasm of one of the most aggressive organizations eve formed in Cincinnati. The bill was once defeated but afterwards passed, and it is a practical certainty now that this old eye sore (once an asset of inestimabie value) will give .way to a Boulevard that will rival the greatest thoroughfares of the world beauty and convenience both. It is impossible in an essay which aims at calling attention to the deeper significance of events to pass over the change in the old canal without a word of reminiscence and reflection. Perhaps no other incident in the city's history illustrates in a more startling manner the progress of civilization. At the time when this now contemptible ditch was dug, it possessed a value to the city second to nothing but the river. Today it is antiquated and useless. Its channel is choked with mud and its banks are lined with the hulks of rotting boats. Sis. transit glorkz mundi! The world is going at a frightful pace when public works t cost the city millions of dollars can be thus thrown upon the dump ! The Water Works. The new water works system (which is now our almost chiefest glory not, of course, the direct product of this new spirit of civic betterment w CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 287 development we are now chronicling. So terrible a state of affairs as existed before its inauguration could not possibly have been permanent. Even in the most sluggish state of public feeling something would have had to be done to improve the situation. But it would not have been done so well unless inspired and promoted by this new and growing sentiment for a greater and grander city. Much of the story of the development of the city's water works has, here and there, been told. That story seems to us a poem, a romance. We have watched the people dipping water from springs, carrying it from the river, pumping it from wells, and finally draining it from tanks and little reservoirs, on through various stages of evolution, as the thirst of the vast organism increased. At last the people, conscious now of their ability to. satisfy their needs, determined to create a system that should be adequate and worthy. By an act of the legislature of April 24, 1896, the governor of the state appointed a commission for this. purpose consisting of Maurice J. Freiberg, Charles M. Holloway, Leopold Markbreit, Dr. Thomas W. Graydon and August Herrmann. In December following Dr. Graydon resigned and William B. Melish was appointed in his place. Their place was not an easy one for the plan was complicated and the expense enormous. Years passed before its completion but when it was finished in 1908 the city possessed one of the most perfect systems in the world and the day when the pure white water first flowed out of the thousands of faucets, was certainly one of the most memorable in the history of the city. There are sturdy little boys and girls playing in our streets today who can no more realize what a bath tub full of the mud we used to bathe in looks like, than we can realize how hard it was for the pioneers to walk a half dozen blocks to Landlord Yeatman's pump, to draw a bucket of water for supper. But those of us who remember the turbid fluid which we drew out of our faucets, and by an almost sacrilegious euphemism, denominated "water," will more frequently measure the progress of civilization by its contrast with our present supply than in any other single way. Smoke Nuisance. One of the most ardent of all these recent aspirations has been for pure air (as well as water) and the efforts put forth to achieve it have been determined and sincere. But the problem of eliminating the smoke from the atmosphere is not an easy one. Cincinnati has become a great manufacturing city and soft coal is its natural fuel. To consume the smoke of its combustion is declared by experts to be a possibility although the difficulties which it offers are immense. But the enthusiasm of the reformers was adequate to a thorough trial. An organization was formed, and under the leadership of Dr. Charles A. L. Read, considerable progress has been made. Much remains to be accomplished but those who are deepest in the work are not dismayed. They earnestly believe that the city can be taught to "burn its own smoke" and have made this faith their motto. That something has been accomplished is generally agreed and if the hopes of these-sanguine reformers are even half achieved, they will have done so much to increase the beauty of the city and to add to the comfort of life as to be beyond the reach of any adequate reward. 288 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY The School Board and School Houses. Among the opportunities for improvement in civic conditions there was one, in our educational system, which early attracted the attention of the reformers. The public schools had come under the domination of the politicians and for obvious reasons the school board was made to contain as many members as it possibly could hold. Its size, at last, became a public menace, both because so many incompetent men were put upon it and because its responsibilities were too minutely subdivided. Among its members there were some who clearly saw these evils and their remedy. That remedy was a small board instead of a large one and they determined to secure it. For this purpose an agitation was begun which aroused the entire city 'and resulted in a complete reorganization of the board together with innumerable reforms and improvements. Under the leadership of Dr. John M. Withrow, supported by confreres, as able and earnest as himself, enlarged appropriations were secured ; better salaries were paid ; better methods were adopted ; and above all, some of the most magnificent school houses in the world were erected. Preeminent among them were Woodward and Hughes high school buildings. Had it been possible to retain this small board, other improvements upon a still greater scale would probably have followed ; but the politicians, embittered over their loss of prestige and patronage, never rested until the old order was once more restored. The "Nine Foot Stage." Preeminent among the achievements of this period of progress is the successful effort to improve the navigation of the Ohio river. As long ago as 1859, that devoted Cincinnatian, Thomas P. Morrison, began to agitate the idea of a "nine foot stage," secured by a dam at Fern Bank, and succeeded in arousing the enthusiastic cooperation of a few of our most progressive citizens. The story of their patience, their wisdom and their incessant labors is replete with inspiration. In the long struggle some have died, others have grown old and still others moved away ; but the ranks have been constantly recruited and there are those, like the heroic leader of the movement, Albert Bettinger, who have been in the game from the beginning and have lived to see it won. It was only yesterday (September the 5th, 1911) that the end of their toil was reached and the passage of the first boat through the dam successfully achieved, So vast are the interests, so complex the life, so impossible of general comprehension are the phenomena in the life of a great city that there were only a few scores of people there to witness an event which is not unlikely to mark a new era in our history. But there were enough of those who did appreciate the significance of this event to keep it from passing by entirely unproclaimed and th determined to celebrate it in a worthy manner. For this purpose an associati was formed to arrange a week of festivities in its honor and the enthusia with which the project was received assures a success which will fittingly hon one of the most brilliant achievements in our history. Now that the work of developing the river has reached a stage where can be comprehended by the common people, they are more ready to belie CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 289 (what seemed at one time preposterous claims of the "nine foot stage" enthutesiasts) that this undertaking is second only in commercial significance to the Panama canal and to attach a serious importance to these eloquent words of John L. Vance, perennial president of the association, spoken at the "Ohio Valley Improvement" convention at Cairo in 1905. "A great statesman from across the Mississippi river, Thomas H. Benton, of Missouri, once foretold that there would be a statue on the banks of the Mississippi looking westward, upon which would be the inscription, 'There is the East; there is India.' My fellow-citizens, but a few years will go by until upon the point at Cairo, where, the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers mingle on their way to the gulf, I predict that a statue will be erected with three fronts. Upon one of these, facing the Upper Mississippi river, will be inscribed : 'There are the granaries of the world. There in one city you will find 80,000 barrels of flour manufactured in a day, enough to feed 20,000,000 people.' On another face, looking up the Ohio, la belle riviere, the stream we love so dearly, will be inscribed : 'This road leads you to the workshops of the world.' And on the face that looks down the Father of Waters will be inscribed : 'There lies the Orient. There lie the markets of the world ; and Cairo will give you free passage to all of them.' " It looks to the uninitiated as if the great task was destined to be accomplished in another decade ; but J. F. Ellison, so long the able secretary (and so soon, to the regret of every one, to go and do for the Amazon what he has done for the Ohio) warns us that "we have only just begun the fight for government appropriations and must not even sleep upon our arms." University. The rising tide of interest in the higher life of the city has, among the innumerable other things which it has elevated, lifted our university to a more honorable position of usefulness. For a number of years after it started upon its new career in '69, its progress was slow. There being no president, many important matters were neglected and, unconsciously to the faculty, no doubt, the machine began to travel in a rut. Something had to be done and the trustees felt themselves compelled to resort to heroic measures. For the purpose of bringing about a general housecleaning Prof. Howard Ayers was brought here from the university of Missouri and installed as president. With a firm and, as some thought, a remorseless hand, he made an almost clean sweep of the faculty,—Professors Porter, Benedict and Myers alone being left in their places. As a protest against this treatment Professor P. V. N. Myers handed in his resignation and left the university impoverished by an irreparable loss. So radical a reform, however necessary it might have been, was certain to bring about a reaction and in a few short years President Ayers was removed almost as summarily and Charles W. Dabney of Knoxville, Tennessee, installed in his place. Under his efficient management the university has made amazing progress until in some respects, at least, it stands among the best educational institutions in the world. A single feature, the happy inspiration of one of its faculty, Herman Schneider, has gained it an international reputation. At his suggestion, the students in technical courses are enabled to work in their class 290 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY room one week and in the shops of the great manufacturers the next,—an alternation of theoretical and practical study which has proven of the greatest value and created an epoch in education. Hospital. The ever widening wave of reform swept over another domain, also, the hospital service of the city. Old buildings erected at one time or another had served the needs of a primitive state of affairs until 1867, when they were displaced by the present structure, at a cost of $800,000. To the people of that day it seemed impossible that these buildings could ever become antiquated; but they did, in four short decades, and some of our most distinguished physicians under the leadership of Dr. C. R. Holmes, determined that our city should not stand disgraced among her sisters by this inadequate structure. With resolute purpose they began to demand an appropriation for a truly modern plant. Their path has been long and steep and rugged ; but they are rapidly approaching the goal and already the first buildings of a group that will scarcely be second to anything in the world are standing upon a matchless location on Burnet avenue, Avondale. The Union Station. The topography of our city has made the problem of a great, central station for all railroads very difficult of solution ; but for years the need of it has been profoundly felt, and one attempt after another has been made at solution, but lamentably failed. Within a year or two, however, another and far more promising effort has been made. Slowly, quietly and patiently some of our most energetic citizens have been at work upon elaborate and comprehensive plans for a colossal structure which will be located in the very heart of the city and furnish accommodations to the traveling public, second to none in any other American city. At the present moment, all signs point to the ultimate success of this great and noble undertaking. Benefactions. The movements for civic betterment which we have thus briefly and most inadequately recorded (together with many others which it is utterly impossible to mention) belong to the class that are accomplished by common endeavors, but there have been others which have issued from individual hearts, alone. All cities have been indebted to private benefactions for many of their greatest and best institutions, buildings and assets of various kinds, and among them. Cincinnati has not been the least. From that first benefaction of Captain. John Kidd (whose gift for education was gotten away from the city by disgruntled heirs) a long list has stood to the credit of our generous men and women ; but it was in the '70s that these gifts began to be colossal. This flow of benefactions has been rather intermittent, like a geyser, than constant, like a river ; but its spurts have become hopefully frequent of late. "A great number of Cincinnati's citizens have builded monuments to themselves more lasting and more beautiful than mere marble, by founding educational and charitable institutions ; building orphan asylums and hospitals, and CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 291 erecting temples of art and music. The love and loyalty of such persons for their fellowmen and to their city can not be doubted. "For the University we are indebted to Charles McMicken, Henry Hanna, Joseph Longworth, John Kilgour, Julius Dexter, Rev. Samuel J. Browne, and Matthew Thorns ; for the Art'Museum and Academy, to Charles W. West, Joseph Longworth, David Sinton, James A. Frazer, and others ; for the College of Music and Music Hall, to R. R. Springer, John Shillito, David Sinton, and others; for the Fountain, to Henry Probasco ; for the Good Samaritan Hospital, to Lewis Worthington and Joseph C. Butler ; for the 'Young Men's Christian Association and the Union Bethel, to David Sinton ; for the Bodmann Widows' Home, Mrs. L. B. Gibson ; for the Widows' and Old Men's Home, to A. M. Taylor, and others ; for the Deaconesses' Home, to Jas. N. Gamble ; for the Children's Hospital, Mt. Auburn, the Colored Orphan Asylum, and the Fresh Air Fund for Children, to the Emerys ; for Laura Memorial Medical College, to Alexander McDonald ; the Children's Home has received the aid of Murray Shipley and Robert Burnet ; the Ohio Mechanics Institute, that of Timothy C. Day; to Thomas Hughes and William Woodward for our High Schools. The Public Library has been aided by Timothy Kirby and Mrs. Sarah Lewis. F. D. Lincoln did not forget the Young Men's Mercantile Library ; for free music in our parks we are indebted to the Groesbecks and Schmidlaps ; to L. C. Hopkins for Hopkins Park ; and Mr. John L. Stettinius has been a universal giver to all charities." There are many others who should appear upon this list, of course, and many of these gifts deserve especial mention, but there are two which demand it. One of them is that of Mrs. Thomas Emery to the "Ohio Mechanics' Institute" ,by means of which that remarkable technical school founded in 1828 and incorporated in 1829, is now housed in a building and equipped with appliances which put it in the list of the world's greatest institutions of the kind. Another of them is the "Schmidlap fund" (established by J. G. Schmidlap and administered by Miss Edith Campbell) for the purpose of assisting young women of exceptional promise, to develop those natural gifts which an unfavorable environment might permanently repress. It is impossible to read over this list of benefactions without being stirred again by the eternal wonder "why is it that more of our wealthy men and women do not follow these illustrious examples ?" We have scores of them who have never lifted their hands to improve the city. Sometime, public opinion will make every town on earth "too hot" to hold the man or woman who can take everything out of and put nothing back into it ! Our cities are starving for the lack of two classes of men. In the first place. those who give money, and in the second place, those who give time to the public service. Perhaps it is the latter which is needed most. Now and then, in Cincinnati, men like William. Christie Herron, James N. Gamble and George H. Stearns have stopped when they "had enough" and devoted all their time to the management of charitable organizations and the promotion of reforms and, in one instance, (that of Elliott H. Pendleton) one has consecrated himself to the publication of a moral-purpose paper "The Citizen's Bulletin." 292 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY That there is a perfectly limitless sphere for such activities in a great city everybody knows. Nor is it only the rich men who are called to fill them. We have, in our annals, the sacred story of a poor man, almost the poorest of the poor, whose life was a sublime sacrifice for "the people." If ever in the history of the world there was an ideal philopolist it was Joseph Heberle, whose career is eloquently and truthfully summed up in this memorial inscribed on the title page of a remarkable pamphlet about the Bible and the working man, written by Edward L. Hitchins, a type setter on the Times Star. "JOSEPH HEBERLE-IN MEMORIAM. This man came to America a friendless lad, and took up his abode in Cincinnati. He loved animals, so he became a teamster ; a good one. He studied horses, their ways, and how to care for them humanely. He saw his fellow teamsters, that they were unorganized, and to get them their rights he organized them. He had little or no education, but he had seen glimpses of beautiful things in the world, and his soul loved justice. He saw the children, many of them like himself poor in knowledge ; though education was free, poverty hindered many of them from getting the benefit of it. So he started a campaign for free textbooks in the public schools. He saw the little ones, clouds of them, pouring out of the factories at nightfall, and that they might have their rights he organized a crusade against child labor. It took years for all this. Public opinion had to be created. He created public opinion. He did it all by personal appeal to bodies of organized labor, to teachers, clergymen, philanthropists, physicians, everything and everybody that could help. He spoke English poorly; to understand him was sometimes a matter of time and patience ; but no one misunderstood his persistent zeal and tireless energy. "He cared not for himself ; food, raiment, shelter—these were trifling things., At an age when men should be in the prime of life he died, literally of exhaustion. Friends and comrades buried him, for he had not even provided for himself in death. He lies in beautiful Spring Grove, in a spot that he would himself have chosen, close by the roadside, within easy sight of his 'boys' who drive thereon. "The children of the schools have now free textbooks. The babes of the factories toil there no more. And many there are who labor for decent pay and under fair conditions who would not be doing so but for him. He did more with what was given him than perhaps any other man of his time. May his name endure with his works." It is right and it is essential to found great businesses and to increase the material wealth of the city; but one such man as Joseph Heberle is a greater honor and a greater blessing to Cincinnati, or any other city in the world, than all its buildings and all its dollars. We have just said that it is right to increase the wealth of a city and now we affirm that it is a duty. In a city as in a tree, growth is the sign of life. If it does not go forward it will go backward and, therefore, it is as necessary to promote its commercial as its spiritual, ethical and aesthetical progress. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 293 There has come to the business men of Cincinnati a new vision of commercial possibilities. The so long cherished idea that she was predestined to business inferiority has grown to seem what it is, in fact, a delusion and a snare- From this delusion our great commercialists are awakening as from a night-mare. Already the suspicion that our pre-eminence was lost through the incompetency or, at best, the apathy of our predecessors has agitated our leading men profoundly, and they have determined that they will not, themselves, rest under such a stigma. If what has been lost can be regained, they have started out to get it back. If not, they do not propose to loosen their hold on what remains. Upon subjecting the whole situation to a more careful analysis than had ever been given it, such bodies as the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Men's club, the Commercial club, the Advertisers' club and scores of others began to cast about for ways and means to accomplish a new era of expansion. Systematic efforts to promote immigration began to be made. Greater publicity was given, through ingenious forms of advertisement, to the striking advantages of our situation for business of every kind and particularly for manufacture. Inducements were offered to companies seeking new locations. Such attractions as the fall festivals were devised. The holding of conventions was encouraged and more was done than had ever been dreamed of to turn back the refluent tide of business to our shops and stores and mills. But it remained for the revelations of the census of 1910 to communicate the final shock that wakened us from our slumber. In the statistics of that most recent tabulation of the growth of great cities, it was discovered that our own was down almost at the bottom of the list. To a degree that our stolidity did not permit us to suspect our rivals have outstripped us in the race, Kansas City, St. Louis and Cleveland had left us so far behind that we could not see them for the dust. It was a painful but wholesome shock which the census gave us and has probably produced a reaction which will bring us a new era of business prosperity. There certainly are many encouraging symptoms of such a recovery and among them one which has excited the astonishment and hope of many who had settled into an apathy or despair about the future. In the spring of 1911 a number of young and hustling men, most of them comparatively "unknown," formed an organization called the "Commercial Association" and set to work to secure a large fund of money to suitably advertise the claims of Cincinnati upon the attention of individuals and corporations who were seeking locations for the establishment of new commercial enterprises. They proposed to find one thousand and five hundred men who would give twenty-five dollars a year for three years, to bring such enterprises to Cincinnati and to boom the town in any other legitimate way. So pretentious an undertaking excited the amazement and incredulity of the conservative; but the enthusiasts, under the inspirational leadership of men like E. R. Blaine, George F. Dieterle, W. L. Finch and L. D. Sampson, plunged ahead. They were young, enthusiastic and determined men. They were imbued with the new spirit of achievement. They loved the town they lived in and were ready to work for its prosperity, and so while the wiseacres and skeptics were shaking their heads, they succeeded ! 294 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY The direct effect of their campaign will certainly be immense ; but nothing to that which will come by indirection. It will excite a new sense of the possibilities that lie before us. It will create a new faith in the response that awaits an earnest appeal. It will help to demonstrate the fundamental law that the human mind, the human heart and the human will, (after all is said and done) are the supreme builders of a city. What obstacle can successfully oppose such men ? "No power exists which can conquer the determined will of a peasant !" or of a philanthropist or of a philopolist. This single movement is instanced only that it may stand as a type and illustration of countless others in our business world. On every hand, organizations like the Business club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Advertisers' club, etc., etc., are waking up to the fact that municipal growth is a matter of intelligent calculation and indomitable purpose. In all these movements there is, no doubt, no inconsiderable amount of froth. There is also a melancholy oversight of the fact that the moral tone of a city is its greatest asset and that the surest way to attract population and capital both is to make the city a safe and delightful place to live in. It has been a thousand times regarded as an evidence of the lack of a full realization of the actual laws of town building that the motto "For the honor and glory of Cincinnati" should not have added—virtue, also. "For the honor, glory and virtue of Cincinnati" surely completes the conception. We must clean up this city politically ; must get a more truly free and representative government ; must repress grafting, gambling, intemperance and lust ; must set up higher ideals of personal and commercial honor ; or all our hurrahing and jollifying and advertising will be in vain. It was with a distinct and avowed purpose to try and reveal the beauty and mystery in the life of a great city for ethical purposes that its author undertook this history. The most saddening and discouraging fact about life in any great city is that so few people realize their duty to improve it. By some almost incurable obliquity of vision a city seems to an individual only an opportunity, when it is in reality an obligation. It appears to ninety-nine out of a hundred only a feeding trough out of which to eat ; a ship to be scuttled ; a treasury to be plundered. It is what it can do for us and not what we for it that gives it value in our eyes. It is necessary, therefore, to awaken the sense of civic responsibility ; to arouse the municipal conscience. The city must be pervaded by a common sense of what is needed to be done. A universal consciousness of its mission must be felt. But, who knows what the mission of Cincinnati is ? What is its destiny? For what does it exist? By what right does it hold its place on the map? Does it stand for anything? Is some great end to be marked out by its people? In what does it differ from a hundred other cities ? In something great ? Or, is it one of innumerable ant hills ; or bee hives where human beings breed and die? Does it mean nothing? Has it no significance of its own ? Can it ever become anything "worth while" if its citizens do not possess some common conception of what it can and ought to be? CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 295 Undoubtedly many cities never attain self-consciousness ; but that such self-consciousness is possible to cities, Athens, Rome and Paris prove. And so, for that matter, do Boston, New York and Chicago. The people of Paris are as clear and united in their idea that their city is meant to be the metropolis of art and fashion as the proprietors of a department store are clear and united in their consciousness of what the nature of their business is. And it is this clarity of consciousness which gives to those great metropolises their conscious power ! "Know thyself" is perhaps as primary an obligation of a city and a country as of an individual. Who, then, knows what is the central principle ; the vital purpose ; the essential law ; the supreme end of our existence as a city ? Not infrequently, this self-consciousness is best revealed in a nick name. Boston was called the "Hub" because her people believed her to be the center of the universe. A little oil town in Pennsylvania was known as "Hell on Wheels !" At the time when men like Drake and Mansfield were leaders of thought and when literature was cultivated as a vocation Cincinnati was called "the Athens of the West." At another time, when material interests had risen to preeminence and great fortunes were being made in "hogs" it was known as "Porkopolis." At still another (when, in almost all the spheres of life she could claim some excellence), she was christened "The Queen of the West." "This greeting of mine The winds and the waves shall deliver To the Queen of the West In her garlands dressed On the banks of the beautiful river." —Longfellow. In its period of cocksureness when liberty had become license it flaunted in the face of the world its presumptuous title "The freest city on the earth!" If it is not commercial supremacy, then, what should be the dominant motive of our life? Shall it be to become in reality "the freest city on the earth ?" If this title described that true freedom of thought and action which was once so rare a thing on earth, no ambition could be nobler. If it means, however, a sort of license to ignore the ideals of the average American city ; to get as far away as possible from the restraints that were put upon the passions by our Puritan forefathers, the sooner we repudiate it, the better. For many years, relaxation of old fashioned restraints was not unpleasing to the majority of Cincinnatians. They took a natural pride in that sort of unrestrained life which excited the wonder and even the praise of travelers. But the day has past when a reputation of this kind gives satisfaction to the best element of a genuinely American city. It may tickle the present fancy of a half baked metropolis like San Francisco to be known as the "Paris of America ;" but when, like the prodigal, she "comes to herself," she will blush at the name. We have seen how liberty of that kind becomes looseness and then license. The political evils of our two last decades can be traced Only too easily to the lax system of ethics -which greW out of the false conception of city life. Its effects 296 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY upon commerce, society and religion, are alike becoming only too recognizable The extensive manufacture and use of intoxicants have produced their logics results in loose Sabbath customs ; in open gambling; in winked-at prostitutions in indifference to the worship of God until, at last, we have come to resemble a European city almost as much as an American. Sooner or later we must decide whether that is gain or loss ; and whether it is desirable to abandon those ideals which differentiated the New World from the Old. For years, we have dodged these questions. There has been a tacit recognition of the fact that it would create antagonisms and divisions to discuss the fundamental problem as to whether Cincinnati was to follow the ideals of New England or of the continent ; but any one who knows life at all knows well enough that sooner or later we must face the issue and lay out our course, unless we finally decide to drift! It is true that cities live and grow without deciding this momentous question. They neither know nor care for what they exist. Their inhabitants permit the exigencies of each new situation to decide in what direction the life of the town shall grow. But does any one need to be told that this is not the principle by which the greatest cities of the earth have attained supremacy? They did so by seriously choosing their line of development in the great crises of their being. 'A certain method of life was deliberately accepted. Fixed principles were adopted. It is by this method that Washington, for example, is being developed into the most beautiful city on the globe. If it is necessary, then, that Cincinnati should thus attain to self consciousness, what career shall she choose? The logical one, we cannot doubt, is revealed in the name that clings to her so tenaciously through all her ups and downs. She ought to be "the Queen city of the West." The ambition which her citizens ought to cherish is to see her develop commercially, in order that she may develop aesthetically, intellectually, ethically and religiously ; develop until she is a Queen indeed in all the higher realms of life. For this career her situation fits her and to it her entire history points. It is a platitude to affirm what has been a thousand times repeated that the topography Df this town site is as perfect for the building of a beautiful city as any in the inland world. And so it is to affirm that the arts and the sciences have found a congenial soil in which to flourish, here. It is as well known that the social life of the city has possessed peculiar charm. Composed as it has been of a mixture of the northern, eastern and southern elements of our countrymen, together with a favorable mixture of the peoples of Europe, we have developed a type of character which is capable of receiving and maintaining the highest culture. We need only, then, a fixed purpose to succeed in building here upon the high banks of the Ohio, a city of genuine culture, a regal, queenly city; a city embodying the highest ideals of municipal existence. Somewhere or other we have seen a new translation of an old Bible verse that offers a tempting theme upon which to hang the conclusion of this essay. "Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem ; Jerusalem that art builded as a city that is compact together, whither the tribes go up, even the :ribes of the Lord, for a testimony unto Israel to give thanks unto the name of CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 297 the Lord," said the old translation ; but the new declares—"thou art builded as city that is at unity with itself !" "A city that is at unity with itself !" There lies the fundamental prerequisite of municipal greatness, or else we have not comprehended the phenomena we have been investigating. Unity in diversity! Of how many problems is this the only real solution. What is the trouble with most American cities ? A lack of unity, of course! Our populations are too heterogeneous to enable us to come to any agreement upon the problems which confront us. Consider the racial diversities with which we have to contend in Cincinnati. Right in our midst we have the representatives of every great nation in Europe, Asia and Africa with their incompatible physical and mental and moral characteristics. Upon how few fundamental questions can we expect to unite the Negroes, the Chinamen, the English, the Scotch, the Irish, the German, the Italians, the Polanders, the Hungarians and the original American stock ? And besides the racial diversities we have to consider the religious. What right have we to hope that Jews and Gentiles ; Roman Catholics and Protestants are to find a common ground to stand upon? Our points of view are far apart, indeed. One single motive appears to be common to them all—the love of money ; but upon every other subject they disagree. It sometimes seems that,. if ever we make a progressive movement it will be like that of a parallelogram brute forces pulling in different directions but compelled by the nature of things to go somewhere. A common purpose, a great, solid, compact, united, intelligent determination to achieve a definite end, is all but inconceivable yet! But, in the progress of the years, this needed homogeneity is bound to come. We shall see eye to eye, sometime. The true conception of what a typical American city ought to be is becoming all the time more clear and more general. And each American city is coming to perceive more and more clearly what its own, individual mission is. We are nearer to this today than we were twenty years ago, by an almost immeasurable distance. The ideal is far more definite. The vision of "the city that is to be," "the city at unity with itself" is seen by an ever increasing multitude. It will be a wonderful day when a general agreetement about the kind of city that Cincinnati ought to be is reached ; when great classes no longer oppose their selfish interests, to the general welfare ; when all determine to put aside their little narrow plans and unite in all great movements to promote the happiness and the prosperity of the greatest number. The world has never yet seen "a city at actual unity with itself" but it is a good deal more likely to do so in the future than in the past because of the greatest idea that has ever been evolved in connection with city building. This idea is, of course, the drafting of a definite plan of development by municipal architects. Cities have grown up haphazard. Thousands of individuals have worked out their own conceptions, undeterred and unguided. The result has been a hodge-podge ; a veritable pottepourri. But today, the conception that cities ought to build along preconceived lines and after a scheme evolved by experts has taken a firm possession of the minds of people everywhere. There is scarcely a great city in America that has not already secured at least a prelimitenary sketch of its ideal self. What the effect of that vision which is thus pre- 298 - CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY sented to the minds of the citizens is to be, nobody can even guess, as yet. But that it will be something tremendous, nobody will for a moment deny. Suppose that in every schoolhouse in Cincinnati a large and beautiful plat of the park system as designed by Mr. Kessler was exposed, year after year to the impressionable minds of the children. Can it be doubted that the rapidity of its materialization would be tremendously hastened ? And now suppose that a great artist should evolve a model of Cincinnati as it ought to be; a city constructed according to the highest conception of convenience, healthfulness and beauty and that it were placed in every school; that the teachers should explain it to the pupils and that countless little eyes should feast upon the vision ! Vision ! That is the word we are groping after ! What every city needs is a vision of its nobler self ! We want four hundred thousand people to see, not the Cincinnati of today ; but tomorrow ! We want them to cherish a brilliant, beautiful dream of a metropolis of inconceivable grandeur, where the smoky, grimy city stands today. When our young men and maidens go round the town, imposing the vision of the ideal city upon the real one, something is bound to happen ! For one, I do not see the canal when I cross its bridges ; but the boulevard that is to be. I do not behold their ragged, ugly hill sides ; but the gardens of shrubs and flowers, the beautiful roads and paths that are to replace them. I have builded a city "in my mind's eye" and it is this I see in the place of the real and actual one which lies around me. We must needs have our young men see the visions and our old men dream the dreams. It is an old but never wearisome or meaningless tale that the Grecian mothers used to fill their rooms with the statues and paintings of Gods and Goddesses in order that their unborn children might be molded into the image of those great ideals. Why should not "ideal" cities be exposed to the view of the citizens in order that the ones they are actually building should conform to those glorious types? Something of this kind must be done to create in the minds of that class (particularly) which Professor Goodnow of Columbia College describes so accurately in his great book on "Municipal Government." "Most emigrants (into cities) are young people, so that about 80% of adult population is of outside birth. Two-thirds of the emigrants have lived in 'the great city' less than fifteen years. In urban populations we have a population who for the most part, have no important historical traditions and no local associations which take their root in childhood." "No local associations which take their root in childhood !" This lack is tremendous ! Is there any other power like that of local associations rooted in childhood ? How easy to love a town in which you were born ; whose buildings were the first objects to greet your eyes when you toddled to the nursery window and looked out of doors ; whose streets were the first pathways in which your childish feet began their wanderings ; whose citizens were the first human beings whom you ever knew ; whose churches were the temples in which you learned to worship God ; whose schools were the educational institutions in which you acquired the rudiments of knowledge ! It was your natural habitat ; your original environment ; your native heath ! Every stone in its streets is dear to your heart. CINCINNATI—THE QUEEN CITY - 299 But how hard to love the town into which you came, a stranger from a strange land, ignorant of its traditions, its customs, its people, its history ! If we wish to inspire these strangers with a love for Cincinnati, in order that they may help to make it a grander place to live in, we must put it before them in an idealized form. Of one fact we never ought to be unmindful—the fact that great cities are the most formative forces or factors in the progress of civilization. What other influence has ever affected the souls of men and the destinies of races like great cities? We expatiate upon the influence of great rivers, great mountains, great deserts, great forests, great lakes and great oceans in the formation of character, individual and national. But it is a question whether all of them together can equal the influence of a great city. Stop for a moment to think of the immeasurteable influence of Babylon, Nineveh, Thebes, Athens, Jerusalem and Rome upon the generations of men, living and dead ! Reflect upon the influence of Paris, London and New York today ! There is no possible way to estimate it. Not a year passes in which thousands and thousands of lives are not wrecked in them with a suddenness and thoroughness that fills the spirit with horror. And, on the other hand, the greatest and most ennobling influences of existence are generated in their midst and by them men and women are elevated to the highest point of culture and of power. As go the cities, so go the nations and the world. "By sheer force of numbers cities are assuming natural leadership. As centers of trade, culture and intelligence their influence far surpasses what would be expected of them by reason of their population. They are predestined to assume 'leadership and to dominate life. Modern progress in its fundamental and enduring aspects must depend upon the civic ideals and civic power of Paris, Glasgow, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other communities of a distinctive character, than upon any but the most notable individuals. It is possible that Bismarck, Tolstoi, Henry George, Roosevelt and a few others may through their accumulated world wide influence count more in the sum of progress than some of the great cities ; but after all, there is something ephemeral about the works and influence of the individual man that make them seem cheap and transient compared with the enduring force of a great city." What we must all of us do is to strive with all our might to purify these cities; to make them the centers of an influence that shall uplift and not debase ; ennoble and not degrade. We must keep them from going the way of those great cities of antiquity which have justified the writing of "The Vampire City," by Reginald Wright Kauffman. "Come with me into Babylon ! Here to my woodland seat, Over the miles she lures and smiles—the smile of the bittersweet. I hear the distant cadence, the siren song she sings ; I smell the incense burning where the great red censer swings. Vol. I-20