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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. so 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

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.

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 medieval 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 ceased; 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 1880, 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 demanding money for their votes upon the measures proposed for adoption, while the

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. Collegebred 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

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