Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt 1901

Transcription

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Progressivism and the
Republican Roosev~lt,
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1901-1912
Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the
well-peing of society, but only if they know whep. to
stop raking the muck.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1906
Prologue: A wave of political reform, known as the progressive movement,
washed over the United States as the new century opened. Progressivism was inspired by muckraking journalists, who exposed corruption, the adulteration of food
and drugs, and the exploitation of labor; by sociaiists, who called attention to
the growing class divisions in the industrial United States; by ministers of the gospel alarmed at the grinding poverty in which many Americans lived; and by feminists who clamored for fair treatment for families, women, and children. Theodore
Roosevelt embraced many of the tenets of progressivism when he became president
in 1901. He fought to tame the big corporations and to protect consumers from
dangerous products. Among his major achievements as a reformer was the invigoration of the campaign to conserve the nation's fast-disappearing natural resources,
especially the forests. Other progressives championed the cause of woman suffrage,
still a subject of hot controversy. When Roosevelt's handpicked successor, William
Howard Taft, appeared to betray many of the principles of progressivism, Roosevelt
determined to challenge him for the Repllblican presidential nomination in 1912.
A. The Heyday of Muckraking _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __
I. Exposing the Meqtpackers ( 1906)
In 1906 Upton Sinclair, the youthful and prolific socialist writer, published his novel
The Jungle, a damning exposure of conditions in the Chicago meatpacking plants.
Seeking to turn people to socialism, he succeeded in turning their stomachs. Tbe
1
Congressional Record, 59th Cong., 1st sess. (June 4, 1906), p . 7801.
191
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Chapter 28
Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901-1912
uproar that followed publication of his novel caused President Roosevelt to initiate
an official investigation, and the following sober report was hardly less shocking
than The Jungle. It confirmed the essential truth of Sinclair's expose, except for such
lurid scenes as men falling into vats and emerging as lard. Which aspects of this official investigation revealed conditions most detrimental to the public health?
... Meat scraps were also found being shoveled into receptacles from dirty
floors, where they were left to lie until again shoveled into barrels or into machines
for chopping. These floors, it must be noted, were in most cases damp and soggy, in
dark, ill-ventilated rooms, and the employees in utter ignorance of cleanliness or
danger to health expectorated at will upon them. In a word, we saw meat shoveled
from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to
room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering
dirt, splinters, floor filth, and the expectoration of tuberculous and other diseased
workers.
Where comment was made to floor superintendents about these matters, it was
always the reply that this meat would afterwards be cooked, and that this sterilization would prevent any danger from its use. Even this, it may be pointed out in passing, is not wholly true. A very considerable portion of the meat so handled is sent
out as smoked products and in the form of sausages, which are prepared to be
eaten without being cooked ....
As an extreme example of the entire disregard on the part of employees of any
notion of cleanliness in handling dressed meat, we saw a hog that had just been
killed, cleaned, washed, and started on its way to the cooling room fall from the sliding rail to a dirty wooden floor and slide part way into a filthy men's privy. It was
picked up by two employees, placed upon a truck, carried into the cooling room
and hung up with other carcasses, no effort being made to clean it. ...
In one well-known establishment we came upon fresh meat being shoveled
into barrels, and a regular proportion being added of stale scraps that had lain on a
dirty floor in the corner of a room for some days previous. In another establishment,
equally well known, a long table was noted covered with several hundred pounds
of cooked scraps of beef and other meats. Some of these meat scraps were dry,
leathery, and unfit to be eaten; and in the heap were found pieces of pigskin, and
even some bits of rope strands and other rubbish. Inquiry evoked the frank admission from the man in charge that this was to be ground up and used in making
"potted ham."
All of these canned products bear labels, of which the following is a sample :
ABATIOIR
No.-
THE CONTENTS OF THIS PACKAGE HAVE BEEN
INSPECTED ACCORDING TO THE ACT OF
CONGRESS OF MARCH
3, 1891.
[The agitation and investigation inspired by Sinclair's The Jungle had much to
do with bringing about the passage by Congress of the Meat Inspection Act and the
Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.}
A. The Heyday of Muckraking
193
2. Theodore Roosevelt Roasts Muckrakers ( 1906)
President Roosevelt, though recognizing some unpalatable truths in Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle, was critical. He wrote the author bluntly that Sinclair had said things
that should not have been written unless backed up "with testimony that would satisfy an honest man of reasonable intelligence. " Privately he declared that Sinclair
had reflected unfairly on both honest and dishonest capitalism in Chicago. Finally,
nauseated by excessive sensationalism, Roosevelt made the following famous attack
(which gave rise to the term muckraker) in a Washington speech. What are the
strengths and weaknesses of his argument that hysterical and indiscriminate muckraking was doing more harm than good?
In Bunyan's Pilgrim 's Progress you may recall the description of the Man with
the Muck-rake [manure rake], the man who could look no way but downward, with
the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but
who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to
rake himself the filth of the floor.
In Pilgrim 's Progress the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of
him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes
his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing.
Now it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and
debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake:
and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never
thinks or speaks or writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes,
not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces
for evil.
There are-in the body politic, economic, and social-many and grave evils,
and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless expos~re of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or businessman; every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail
as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book,
magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely
truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form
of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a
bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does
no good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever
an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.
Now, it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just said .... Some persons are
sincerely incapable of understanding that to denounce mudslinging does not mean
2Theodore Roosevelt, "The Man with the Muck-Rake," Putnam 's Monthly and the Critic 1 (October 1906):
42-43.
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the endorsement of whitewashing, and both the interested individuals who need
whitewashing and those others who practice mudslinging like to encourage such
confusion of ideas. One of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate
assault upon men in business or men in public life is that they invite a reaction which
is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who really ought to
be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible, to be put in the penitentiary. If Aristides is praised overmuch as just, people get tired of hearing it;* and
overcensure of the unjust finally and from similar reasons results in their favor.
Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reaction,
instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the excess, is very apt to
take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and
even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial or political profit out of the
destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound
deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price.
[Roosevelt thus threw muck at the muckrakers. They resented his attack, claiming
that even if they exaggerated, they were exposing evil conditions and promoting desirable legislation. (At the same time, they made money selling their magazine articles
and books.) But Roosevelt was unconvinced. In 1911 he went so far as to write privately: '1 think the muckrakers stand on a level of infamy with the corruptionists in
politics. After all, there is no great difference between violation of the eighth [no stealing} and the ninth [no lying} commandments; and to sell one's vote for money is
morally, I believe, hardly as reprehensible as to practice slanderous mendacity for
hire" (Roosevelt Letters, vol. 7, p. 447). The truth is that he continued with intemperate
muckraking himself, attacking "malefactors ofgreat wealth, " "nature fakers, "and others. "You 're the chief muckraker, " Speaker joseph G. Cannon told him flatly in 1906.}
B. Corruption in the Cities ____________________
I. Lincoln Steffens Bares Philadelphia Bossism ( 1904)
A California-born journalist, (Joseph) Lincoln Steffens, after serving as a "gentleman
reporter" in New York, emerged as one of the first and most influential of the reforming muckrakers. Associated with McClure's Magazine, the leading muckraking journal, he published a sensational series of articles on municipal graft, later collected in
book form as The Shame of the Cities (1904). After the muckraking craze ended,
Steffens became disillusioned, visited Russia, interviewed Lenin, and developed a
warm admiration for the Soviet Union. In his famous expose about conditions in
Philadelphia, what is most ironic? What is most shocking? Who was responsible for
the existence and continuation of these irregularities?
*An allusion to Plutarch's story of the Athenian who voted for the banishment of Aristides (called "the
Just") because he was tired of hearing everyone call him just.
1
Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904), pp. 193-201 , passim.
B . Corruption in the Cities
195
Other American cities, no matter how bad their own condition may be, all point
with scorn to Philadelphia as worse-"the worst-governed city in the country." St.
Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh submit with some patience to the jibes of any other
community; the most friendly suggestion from Philadelphia is rejected with contempt. The Philadelphians are "supine," "asleep"; hopelessly ring-ruled, they are
"complacent. " "Politically benighted, " Philadelphia is supposed to have no light to
throw upon a state of things that is almost universal.
This is not fair. Philadelphia is, indeed, corrupt; but it is not without significance.
Every city and town in the country can learn something from the typical political
experience of this great representative city. New York is excused for many of its ills
because it is the metropolis; Chicago, because of its forced development; Philadelphia is our "third largest" city and its growth has been gradual and natural.
Immigration has been blamed for our municipal conditions. Philadelphia, with
47 percent of its population native-born of native-born parents, is the most American of our greater cities.
It is "good," too, and intelligent. I don't know just how to measure the intelligence of a community, but a Pennsylvania college professor who declared to me his
belief in education for the masses as a way out of political corruption, himself justified the "rake-off" of preferred contractors on public works on the ground of a "fair
business profit. "
Another plea we [Americans] have made is that we are too busy to attend to
public business, and we have promised, when we come to wealth and leisure, to do
better. Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity. It is
the city of homes. There is a dwelling house for every five persons-men, women,
and children-of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure
and repose than any community I ever dwelt in. Some Philadelphians account for
their political state on the ground of their ease and comfort ....
Then we hear that we are a young people and that when we are older and
"have traditions," like some of the old countries, we also will be honest. Philadelphia is one of the oldest of our cities and treasures for us scenes and relics of some
of the noblest traditions of "our fair land. " Yet I was told once, "for a joke," a party
of boodlers [grafters] counted out the "divvy" [division] of their graft in unison with
the ancient chime of Independence Hall. ...
Philadelphia is proud; good people there defend corruption and boast of their
machine. My college professor, with his philosophic view of "rake-offs," is one
Philadelphia type. Another is the man who, driven to bay with his local pride, says:
"At least you must admit that our machine is the best you have ever seen." ...
Disgraceful? Other cities say so. But I say that if Philadelphia is a disgrace, it is a
disgrace not to itself alone, nor to Pennsylvania, but to the United States and to
American character. For this great city, so highly representative in other respects, is
not behind in political experience, but ahead, with New York.
Philadelphia is a city that has had its reforms .... The present condition of
Philadelphia, therefore, is not that which precedes, but that which follows reform,
and in this distinction lies its startling general significance. What has happened ...
in Philadelphia may happen in any American city "after the reform is over."
For reform with us is usually revolt, not government, and is soon over. Our
people do not seek, they avoid self-rule, and "reforms" are spasmodic efforts to
196
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punish bad rulers and get somebody that will give us good government or something that will make it. A self-acting form of government is an ancient superstition. We are an inventive people, and we all think that we shall devise some day a
legal machine that will turn out good government automatically. The Philadelphians
have treasured this belief longer than the rest of us and have tried it more often ....
The Philadelphia machine isn't the best. It isn't sound, and I doubt if it would
stand in New York or Chicago. The enduring strength of the typical American political machine is that it is a natural growth-a sucker, but deep-rooted in the people.
The New Yorkers vote for Tammany Hall. The Philadelphians do not vote; they are
disfranchised, and their disfranchisement is one anchor of the foundation of the
Philadelphia organization.
This is no figure of speech. The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more
rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this
basic privilege. You can arouse their Republican ire by talking about the black Republican votes lost in the Southern states by white Democratic intimidation, but if
you remind the average Philadelphian that he is in the same position, he will look
startled, then say, "That's so, that's literally true, only I never thought of it in just that
way." And it is literally true.
The machine controls the whole process of voting, and practices fraud at every
stage. The [tax] assessor's list is the voting list, and the assessor is the machine's
man .... The assessor pads the list with the names of dead dogs, children, and nonexistent persons. One newspaper printed the picture of a dog, another that of a little four-year-old Negro boy, down on such a list. A "ring" orator, in a speech
resenting sneers at his ward as "low down," reminded his hearers that that was the
ward of Independence Hall, and, naming over the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he closed his highest flight of eloquence with the statement that "these
men, the fathers of American liberty, voted down here once. And," he added with a
catching grin, "they vote here yet."
Rudolph Blankenburg, a persistent fighter for the right and the use of the right
to vote (and, by the way, an immigrant), sent out just before one election a registered letter to each voter on the rolls of a certain selected division. Sixty-three percent were returned marked "not at," "removed," "deceased," etc. ...
The repeating [voting more than once] is done boldly, for the machine controls
the election officers, often choosing them from among the fraudulent names; and
when no one appears to serve, assigning the heeler [political hanger-on] ready for
the expected vacancy. The police are forbidden by law to stand within thirty feet of
the polls, but they are at the [ballot] box and they are there to see that the machine's
orders are obeyed and that repeaters whom they help to furnish are permitted to
vote without "intimidation" on the names they, the police, have supplied ....
The business proceeds with very few hitches; there is more jesting than fighting.
Violence in the past has had its effect; and is not often necessary nowadays, but if it
is needed the police are there to apply it. Several citizens told me that they had seen
the police help to beat citizens or election officers who were trying to do their duty,
then arrest the victim ....
B . Corruption in the Cities
197
2. George Washington Plunkitt Defends
"Honest Graft" ( 1905)
Tammany Hall was the powerful and corrupt Democratic political machine that
dominated New York City politics for many years. One of its cleverest officials, who
became a millionaire through "honest graft, " was George Washington (!) Plunkitt.
According to his account, as here recorded by a newspaper reporter, he was above
such dirty work as "shaking down " houses ofprostitution ("disorderly houses'') . Is his
distinction between two kinds ofgraft legitimate? How did Tammany Hall sustain its
power? Did it provide any valuable service?
~
Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but
nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft.
There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have
grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and
I'm gettin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft-blackmailin'
gamblers, saloon-keepers, disorderly people, etc.-and neither has any of the men
who have made big fortunes in politics.
There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up
the whole thing by sayin': "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."
Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to
undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're goin'
to lay out a new park at a certain place.
I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I
can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and
there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before.
Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that's honest graft.
Or, supposin' it's a new bridge they're goin' to build. I get tipped off and I buy
as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own
price later on and drop some more money in the bank.
Wouldn't you? It's just like lookin' ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton
market. It's honest graft, and I'm lookin' for it every day in the year. I will tell you
frankly that I've got a good lot of it, too.
I'll tell you of one case. They were goin' to fix up a big park, no matter where.
I got on to it, and went lookin' about for land in that neighborhood.
I could get nothin' at a bargain but a big piece of swamp, but I took it fast
enough and held on to it. What turned out was just what I counted on. They
couldn't make the park complete without Plunkitt's swamp, and they had to pay a
good price for it. Anything dishonest in that?
Up in the watershed I made some money, too. I bought up several bits of land
there some years ago and made a pretty good guess that they would be bought up
for water purposes later by the city.
Somehow, I always guessed about right, and shouldn't I enjoy the profit of my
foresight? It was rather amusin' when the condemnation commissioners came along
2William
L. Riordan, Plunkitt q{Tammany Hall (1948), pp. 3-8.
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and found piece after piece of the land in the name of George Plunkitt of the Fifteenth Assembly District, New York City. They wondered how I knew just what to
buy. The answer is-I seen my opportunity and I took it. I haven't confined myself
to land; anything that pays is in my line ....
I've told you how I got rich by honest graft. Now, let me tell you that most
politicians who are accused of robbin' the city get rich the same way.
They didn't steal a dollar from the city treasury. They just seen their opportunities and took them. That is why, when a reform administration comes in and spends
a half million dollars in tryin' to find the public robberies they talked about in the
campaign, they don't find them.
The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show is that the Tammany heads of departments
looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they
could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you that's never goin' to hurt Tammany
with the people. Ever good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn't
isn't likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it
to a friend. Why shouldn't I do the same in public life? .. .
Tammany was beat in 1901 because the people were deceived into believin'
that it worked dishonest graft. They didn't draw a distinction between dishonest and
honest graft, but they saw that some Tammany men grew rich, and supposed they
had been robbin' the city treasury or levyin' blackmail on disorderly houses, or
workin' in with the gamblers and lawbreakers.
As a matter of policy, if nothing else, why should the Tammany leaders go into
such dirty business when there is so much honest graft lyin' around when they are
in power? Did you ever consider that?
Now, in conclusion, I want to say that I don't own a dishonest dollar. If my
worst enemy was given the job of writin' my epitaph when I'm gone, he couldn't do
more than write
"George W. Plunkitt.
He Seen His Opportunities and He Took 'Em. "
C. The Plight
of Labor _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
I. From the Depths (I 906)
Many obseroers in the progressive era saw poverty as proof of the moral weakness of
the poor. For others, poverty and the glaring inequalities of wealth in America were
evidence of the immorality of a society based on capitalism. What perspective does
this famous image, by William Balfour Ker, entitled From the Depths, convey? Why
are the poor positioned under the floor and in the dark? Are their hands supporting
the scene above or seeking to disrupt it?
1
From the Depths, by William Balfour Ker, 1906, courtesy of The Harvard College Library.
66l
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2. George Boer's Divine Right
of Plutocrats ( 1902)
Tbe anthracite coal miners of Pennsylvania, who were frightfully exploited and
accident-cursed, struck for higher wages in 1902. About 140,000 men were idled, and
the chilled East was threatened with paralysis. George F Baer, the multimillionaire
spokesman for the owners, refused to permit interoention, arbitration, or even negotiation. He believed that mining was a "business, " not a "religious, sentimental, or academic proposition." In response to a complaining letter from a Mr. W F Clark, he
sent the following reply. What is the social philosophy of big business as here revealed?
17th July 1902
My dear Mr. Clark:I have your letter of the 16th instant.
I do not know who you are. I see that you are a religious man; but you are evidently biased in favor of the right of the working man to control a business in
which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does.
I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the laboring man
w ill be protected and cared for-not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men
to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests
of the country, and upon the successful management of which so much depends.
Do not be discouraged. Pray earnestly that right may triumph, always remembering that the Lord God Omnipotent still reigns, and that His reign is one of law
and order, and not of violence and crime.
Yours truly,
Geo. F Baer
President
[When the Baer letter was published, the press assailed its "arrant hypocrisy, "
"egregious vanity, "and "ghastly blasphemy. "President Roosevelt nevertheless finally
brought the disputants together late in 1902. Although he admittedly lost his temper
and did not behave "like a gentleman, " he had a large hand in working out the resulting compromise wage increase.1
3. Child Labor in the Coal Mines ( 1906)
Tbe arrogant attitude of the coal operators seems even less excusable in the light of
j ohn Spargo's book The Bitter Cry of the Children-another significant contribution
to the muckraking movement. An English-born socialist, Spargo had come to America in 1901 at the age of twenty-five. He was especially stirred by the rickety children
of the New York tenement districts. Tbeir mothers had no time to prepare proper
meals; needlework labor in the sweatshops ran from twelve to twenty hours a day, at
a wage ranging from ten cents to a cent and a half an hour. In Spargo 's description
of work in the coal mines, what were the various kinds of hazards involved?
2
Literary Digest 25 (August 30, 1902): 258. A photostatic copy of the letter is in Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1912), vol. 2, p. 190.
3john Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (New York: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 163-165.
C. The Plight of Labor
201
Work in the coal breakers is exceedingly hard and dangerous. Crouched over
the chutes, the boys sit hour after hour, picking out the pieces of slate and other
refuse from the coal as it rushes past to the washers. From the cramped position
they have to assume, most of them become more or less deformed and bent-backed
like old men. When a boy has been working for some time and begins to get roundshouldered, his fellows say that "He's got his boy to carry round whenever he goes. "
The coal is hard, and accidents to the hands, such as cut, broken, or crushed fingers, are common among the boys. Sometimes there is a worse accident: a terrified
shriek is heard, and a boy is mangled and torn in the machinery, or disappears in
the chute to be picked out later smothered and dead. Clouds of dust fill the breakers and are inhaled by the boys, laying the foundations for asthma and miners'
consumption.
I once stood in a breaker for half an hour and tried to do the work a twelveyear-old boy was doing day after day, for ten hours at a stretch, for sixty cents a day.
The gloom of the breaker appalled me. Outside the sun shone brightly, the air was
pellucid, and the birds sang in chorus with the trees and the rivers. Within the
breaker there was blackness, clouds of deadly dust enfolded everything, the harsh,
grinding roar of the machinery and the ceaseless rushing of coal through the chutes
filled the ears. I tried to pick out the pieces of slate from the hurrying stream of coal,
often missing them; my hands were bruised and cut in a few minutes; I was covered
from head to foot with coal dust, and for many hours afterwards I was expectorating some of the small particles of anthracite I had swallowed.
I could not do that work and live, but there were boys of ten and twelve years
of age doing it for fifty and sixty cents a day. Some of them had never been inside
of a school; few of them could read a child's primer. True, some of them attended
the night schools, but after working ten hours in the breaker the educational results
from attending school were practically nil. "We goes fer a good time, an' we keeps
de guys wot's dere hoppin' all de time," said little Owen Jones, whose work I had
been trying to do ....
As I stood in that breaker I thought of the reply of the small boy to Robert
Owen [British social reformer]. Visiting an English coal mine one day, Owen asked
a twelve-year-old lad if he knew God. The boy stared vacantly at his questioner:
"God?" he said, "God? No, I don't. He must work in some other mine. " It was hard
to realize amid the danger and din and blackness of that Pennsylvania breaker that
such a thing as belief in a great All-good God existed.
From the breakers the boys graduate to the mine depths, where they become door
tenders, switch boys, or mule drivers. Here, far below the surface, work is still more
dangerous. At fourteen or fifteen the boys assume the same risks as the men, and are
surrounded by the same perils. Nor is it in Pennsylvania only that these conditions
exist. In the bituminous mines of West Virginia, boys of nine or ten are frequently employed. I met one little fellow ten years old in Mt. Carbon, W.Va., last year, who was
employed as a "trap boy." Think of what it means to be a trap boy at ten years of age.
It means to sit alone in a dark mine passage hour after hour, with no human soul near;
to see no living creature except the mules as they pass with their loads, or a rat or two
seeking to share one's meal; to stand in water or mud that covers the ankles, chilled to
the marrow by the cold draughts that rush in when you open the trap door for the
mules to pass through; to work for fourteen hours-waiting--opening and shutting a
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door-then waiting again-for sixty cents; to reach the surface when all is wrapped in
the mantle of night, and to fall to the earth exhausted and have to be carried away to
the nearest "shack" to be revived before it is possible to walk to the farther shack
called "home."
Boys twelve years of age may be legally employed in the mines of West Virginia, by day or by night, and for as many hours as the employers care to make
them toil or their bodies will stand the strain. Where the disregard of child life is
such that this may be done openly and with legal sanction, it is easy to believe what
miners have again and again told me-that there are hundreds of little boys of nine
and ten years of age employed in the coal mines of this state.
4. Sweatshop Hours for Bakers ( 1905)
Tbe abuse of labor in dangerous or unhealthful occupations prompted an increasing number ofstate legislatures, exercising so-called police powers, to pass regulatory
laws. In 1898 the Supreme Court upheld a Utah statute prohibiting miners from
working more than eight hours a day, except in emergencies. In 1905, however, the
Court, by a five-to-four decision in the case of Lochner v. New York, overthrew a
state law forbidding bakers to work more than ten hours a day. Tbe majority held
that the right of both employers and employees to make labor contracts was protected
by the Fourteenth Amendment. How might one describe the social conscience of the
majority of the Supreme Court in the light of this memorable decision written by justice Rufus W Peckham?
The question whether this act is valid as a labor law, pure and simple, may be
dismissed in a few words. There is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of person or the right of free contract, by determining the hours of labor, in the
occupation of a baker. There is no contention that bakers as a class are not equal in
intelligence and capacity to men in other trades or manual occupations, or that they
are not able to assert their rights and care for themselves without the protecting arm
of the state interfering with their independence of judgment and of action. They are
in no sense wards of the state.
Viewed in the light of a purely labor law, with no reference whatever to the
question of health, we think that a law like the one before us involves neither the
safety, the morals, nor the welfare of the public, arid that the interest of the public is
not in the slightest degree affected by such an act. The law must be upheld, if at all,
as a law pertaining to the health of the individual engaged in the occupation of a
baker. It does not affect any other portion of the public than those who are engaged
in that occupation. Clean and wholesome bread does not depend upon whether the
baker works but ten hours per day or only sixty hours a week. The limitation of the
hours of labor does not come within the police powet on that ground ....
We think that there can be no fair doubt that the trade of a baker, in and of itself, is not an unhealthy one to that degree which would authorize the legislature to
interfere with the right to labor, and with the right of free contract on the part of the
individual, either as employer or employee.
4
198 U.S. Reports 57, 59, 61.
203
In looking through statistics regarding all trades and occupations, it may be true
that the trade of baker does not appear to be as healthy as some other trades, and is
also vastly more healthy than still others. To the common understanding the trade of
a baker has never been regarded as an unhealthy one. Very likely physicians would
not recommend the exercise of that or of any other trade as a remedy for ill health.
Some occupations are more healthy than others, but we think there are none which
might not come under the power of the legislature to supervise and control the hours
of working therein, if the mere fact that the occupation is not absolutely and perfectly
healthy is to confer that right upon the legislative department of the government. . ..
. . . We do not believe in the soundness of the views which uphold this law. On
the contrary, we think that such a law as this, although passed in the assumed exercise of the police power, and as relating to the public health, or the health of the
employees named, is not within that power, and is invalid. The act is not, within any
fair meaning of the term, a health law, but is an illegal interference with the rights of
individuals, both employers and employees, to make contracts regarding labor upon
such terms as they may think best, or which they may agree upon with the other
parties to such contracts.
Statutes of the nature of that under review, limiting the hours in which grown and
intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are mere meddlesome interferences
with the rights of the individual, and they are not saved from condemnation by the
claim that they are passed in the exercise of the police power and upon the subject of
the health of the individual whose rights are interfered with, unless there be some fair
ground, reasonable in and of itself, to say that there is material danger to the public
health, or to the health of the employees, if the hours of labor are not curtailed.
{Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great dissenter, filed a famous protest in the
bakers' case. He argued that a majority of the people of New York State evidently
wanted the law and that the Court ought not to impose its own social philosophy. "Tbe
Fourteenth Amendment, " he solemnly declared, referring to a famous work by an
archconservative British social theorist, "does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social
Statics." As for the right to work more than ten hours, the mayor ofNew York remarked,
"There were no journeymen bakers that I know of clamoring for any such liberty. " Possibly chastened by Holmes's vigorous views, the Court relented and in 1908 unanimously approved an Oregon statute prohibiting the employment of women in factories
and other establishments more than ten hours in one day. In 1917 the Court upheld
an Oregon ten-hour law for both men and women.}
5. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire
Claims 146 Lives ( 19 I I)
One of the most grisly catastrophes ever to befall American workers occurred at the
Triangle Shirtwaist Company's New York City garment factory on March 25, 1911 .
Trapped in a burning building in which many exit doors had been locked to discourage
workers from taking unauthorized breaks, 146 laborers, mostly young women, perished. Tbe resulting outrage encouraged the enactment of more stringent building
5New York World, March 26, 1911.
204
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codes and fed the growing movement for laws regulating working conditions, especially for women. (For more on women's labor laws, see the documents in Chapter 31,
section D.) In the account of the .fire that follows, what conditions seemed most responsible for the high loss of life? How might they have been remedied? How much of
the public outrage about the.fire owed to the fact that so many of the dead were young
women?
At 4:35 o'clock yesterday afternoon fire springing from a source that may never
be positively identified was discovered in the rear of the eighth floor of the ten-story
building at the northwest corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, the first of
three floors occupied as a factory of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.
At 11:30 o'clock Chief Croker made this statement:
"Everybody has been removed. The number taken out, which includes those
who jumped from windows, is 141 ... "
At 2 o'clock this morning Chief Croker estimated the total dead as one hundred
and fifty-four. He said further, "I expect something of this kind to happen in these socalled fire-proof buildings, which are without adequate protection as far as fireescapes are concerned. "
More than a third of those who lost their lives did so in jumping from windows.
The firemen who answered the first of the four alarms turned in found 30 bodies on
the pavements of Washington Place and Greene Street. Almost all of these were girls,
as were the great majority of them all. ...
Inspection by Acting Superintendent of Buildings Ludwig will be made the basis
for charges of criminal negligence on the ground that the fire-proof doors leading to
one of the inclosed tower stairways were locked .... "
It was the most appalling horror since the Slocum disaster and the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago. Every available ambulance in Manhattan was called upon to cart
the dead to the morgue-bodies charred to unrecognizable blackness or reddened to
a sickly hue-as was to be seen by shoulders or limbs protruding through flameeaten clothing. Men and women, boys and girls were of the dead that littered the
street; that is actually the condition-the streets were littered.
The fire began in the eighth story. The flames licked and shot their way up
through the other two stories. All three floors were occupied by the Triangle Waist
Company. The estimate of the number of employees at work is made by Chief Croker at about 1,000. The proprietors of the company say 700 men and girls were in
their place ....
Before smoke or flame gave signs from the windows, the loss of life was
fully under way. The first signs that persons in the street knew that these three
top stories had turned into red furnaces in which human creatures were being
caught and incinerated was when screaming men and women and boys and girls
crowded out on the many window ledges and threw themselves into the streets far
below.
They jumped with their clothing ablaze. The hair of some of the girls streamed
up aflame as they leaped. Thud after thud sounded on the pavements. It is a ghastly
fact that on both the Greene Street and Washington Place sides of the building there
grew mounds of the dead and dying.
205
And the worst horror of all was that in this heap of the dead now and then there
stirred a limb or sounded a moan.
Within the three flaming floors it was as frightful. There flames enveloped many
so that they died instantly. When Fire Chief Croker could make his way into these
three floors, he found sights that utterly staggered him, that sent him, a man used to
viewing horrors, back and down into the street with quivering lips.
The floors were black with smoke. And then he saw as the smoke drifted away
bodies burned to bare bones. There were skeletons bending over sewing machines.
The elevator boys saved hundreds. They each made twenty trips from the time of
the alarm until twenty minutes later when they could do no more. Fire was streaming
into the shaft, flames biting at the cables. They fled for their own lives.
Some, about seventy, chose a successful avenue of escape. They clambered up a
ladder to the roof. A few remembered the fire escape. Many may have thought of it
but only as they uttered cries of dismay.
Wretchedly inadequate was this fire escape-a lone ladder running down to a
rear narrow court, which was smoke filled as the fire raged, one narrow door giving
access to the ladder. By the score they fought and struggled and breathed fire and
died trying to make that needle-eye road to self-preservation ....
Shivering at the chasm below them, scorched by the fire behind, there were
some that still held positions on the window sills when the first squad of firemen
arrived.
The nets were spread below with all promptness. Citizens were commandeered
into service, as the firemen necessarily gave their attention to the one engine and
hose of the force that first arrived.
The catapult force that the bodies gathered in the long plunges made the nets utterly without avail. Screaming girls and men, as they fell , tore the nets from the grasp
of the holders, and the bodies struck the sidewalks and lay just as they fell. Some of
the bodies ripped big holes through the life-nets ....
Concentrated, the fire burned within. The flames caught all the flimsy lace stuff
and linens that go into the making of spring and summer shirtwaists and fed eagerly
upon the rolls of silk.
The cutting room was laden with the stuff on long tables. The employees were
toiling over such material at the rows and rows of machines. Sinisterly the spring day
gave aid to the fire. Many of the window panes facing south and east were drawn
down. Draughts had full play.
The experts say that the three floors must each have become a whirlpool of fire.
Whichever way the entrapped creatures fled they met a curving sweep of flame. Many
swooned and died. Others fought their way to the windows or the elevator or fell
fighting for a chance at the fire escape, the single fire escape leading into the blind
court that was to be reached from the upper floors by clambering over a window sill!
On all of the three floors , at a narrow window, a crowd met death trying to get
out to that one slender fire escape ladder.
It was a fireproof building in which this enormous tragedy occurred. Save for the
three stories of blackened windows at the top, you would scarcely have been able to
tell where the fire had happened. The walls stood firmly. A thin tongue of flame now
and then licked around a window sash ... .
206
n
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TheComer~tionCrusade ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I. Roosevelt Defends the Forests ( 1903)
Greedy or shortsighted Americans had long plundered the nation 's forests with
heedless rapacity. President Roosevelt, a onetime Dakota cattle rancher and an accomplished naturalist, provided the lagging conservation movement with dynamic
leadership. Using the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, he set aside some 150 million acres
ofgovernment-owned timberland as national forest reserves-more than three times
as much as his three immediate predecessors had preserved. Tbe large timber companies complained bitterly, though in fact the worst predators on the forests were the
small-fry lumbermen who had neither the incentive nor the resources to adopt longterm, sustained-yield logging practices. In this speech at Stanford University, Roosevelt explained the basis of his forest policy. His argument clearly demonstrates that
he was not a preservationist, pure and simple. What are the implications of the distinction he draws between "beauty" and "use "? What does he mean when he says
that "the whole object offorest protection " is "the making and maintaining ofprosperous homes"?
I want today, here in California, to make a special appeal to all of you, and to
California as a whole, for work along a certain line-the line of preserving your
great natural advantages alike from the standpoint of use and from the standpoint of
beauty. If the students of this institution have not by the mere fact of their surroundings learned to appreciate beauty, then the fault is in you and not in the surroundings. Here in California you have some of the great wonders of the world. You
have a singularly beautiful landscape, singularly beautiful and singularly majestic
scenery, and it should certainly be your aim to try to preserve for those who are to
come after you that beauty, to try to keep unmarred that majesty.
Closely entwined with keeping unmarred the beauty of your scenery, your great
natural attractions, is the question of making use of, not for the moment merely, but
for future time, of your great natural products. Yesterday I saw for the first time a
grove of your great trees, a grove which it has taken the ages several thousands of
years to build up; and I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles
a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of
the Euphrates, which it has taken so many thousands of years to build up, and
which can be put to better use.
That, you may say, is not looking at the matter from the practical standpoint.
There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the
preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind. But, furthermore, I appeal to you from the standpoint of use. A few big trees, of unusual
size and beauty, should be preserved for their own sake; but the forests as a whole
should be used for business purposes, only they should be used in a way that will
preserve them as permanent sources of national wealth. In many parts of California
1
From Theodore Roosevelt at Leland Stanford Junior University, Palo Alto, California, May 12, 1903, in
Theodore Roosevelt, Presidential Addresses and State Papers of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol . 1, New York: P. F.
Collier, 1905, pp. 383- 390.
D. Tbe Conservation Crusade
207
the whole future welfare of the state depends upon the way in which you are able
to use your water supply; and the preservation of the forests and the preservation of
the use of the water are inseparably connected.
I believe we are past the stage of national existence when we could look on
complacently at the individual who skinned the land and was content, for the sake
of three years' profit for himself, to leave a desert for the children of those who were
to inherit the soil. I think we have passed that stage. We should handle, and I think
we now do handle, all problems such as those of forestry and of the preservation
and use of our waters from the standpoint of the permanent interests of the home
maker in any region-the man who comes in not to take what he can out of the soil
and leave, having exploited the country, but who comes to dwell therein, to bring
up his children, and to leave them a heritage in the country not merely unimpaired,
but if possible even improved. That is the sensible view of civic obligation 1 and the
policy of the state and of the nation should be shaped in that direction. It should be
shaped in the interest of the home maker, the actual tesident, the man who is not
oniy to be benefited himself, but whose children and children's children are to be
benefited by what he has done.
California has for years, I am happy to say, taken a more sensible, a more intelligent interest in forest preservation than any other state. It early appointed a forest
commission; later on some of the functions of that commission were replaced by the
Sierra Club, a club which has done much on the Pacific coast to perpetuate the spirit
of the explorer and the pioneer. Then I am happy to say a great business interest
showed an intelligent and farsighted spirit whith is of happy augury, for the Redwood Manufacturers of San Francisco were first amortg lumbermen's associations to
give assistance to the cause of practical forestry. The study of the redwood which
the action of this association made possible was the pioneer study in the cooperative work which is now being carried out between lumbermen all over the United
States and the Federal Bureau of Forestry.
All of this kind of work is peculiarly the kind of work in which we have a right
to expect not merely hearty cooperation from, but leadership in college men trained
in the universities of this Pacific coast state; for the forests of this state stand alone
in the world. There are none others like them anywhere. There are no other trees
anywhere like the giant sequoias; nowhere else is there a more beautiful forest than
that which clothes the western slope of the Sierra. Very early your forests attracted
lumbermen from other states, and by the course of timber hind investments some of
the best of the big tree groves were threatehed with destruction. Destruction came
upon sotne of them, but the women of California rose to the emergency through
the California Club, and later the Sempervirens Club took vigorous action. But the
Calaveras grove is not yet safe, and there should be no rest until that safety is secured, by the action of private individuals, by the action of the state, by the action of
the nation. The intetest of California in forest protection was shown even more effectively by the purchase of the Big Basin Redwood Park, a superb forest property
the possession of which should be a source of just pride to all citizens jealous of
California's good name.
I appeal to you, as I say, to protect these mighty trees, these wonderful monuments of beauty. I appeal to you to protect them for the sake of their beauty, but I
also make the appeal just as strongly on economic grounds; as I am well aware that
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in dealing with such questions a farsighted economic policy must be that to which
alone in the long run one can safely appeal. The interests of California in forests depend directly of course upon the handling of her wood and water supplies and the
supply of material from the lumber woods and the production of agricultural products on irrigated farms. The great valleys which stretch through the state between
the Sierra Nevada and coast ranges must owe their future development as they owe
their present prosperity to irrigation. Whatever tends to destroy the water supply of
the Sacramento, the San Gabriel, and the other valleys strikes vitally at the welfare of
California. The welfare of California depends in no small measure upon the preservation of water for the purposes of irrigation in those beautiful and fertile valleys
which cannot grow crops by rainfall alone. The forest cover upon the drainage
basins of streams used for irrigation purposes is of prime importance to the interests
of the entire state.
Now keep in mind that the whole object of forest protection is, as I have said
again and again, the making and maintaining of prosperous homes. I am not advocating forest protection from the aesthetic standpoint only. I do advocate the keeping of big trees, the great monarchs of the woods, for the sake of their beauty, but I
advocate the preservation and wise use of the forests because I feel it essential to
the interests of the actual settlers. I am asking that the forests be used wisely for the
sake of the successors of the pioneers, for the sake of the settlers who dwell on the
land and by doing so extend the borders of our civilization. I ask it for the sake of
the man who makes his farm in the woods or lower down along the sides of the
streams which have their rise in the mountains ....
Citizenship is the prime test in the welfare of the nation; but we need good
laws; and above all we need good land laws throughout the West. We want to see
the free farmer own his home. The best of the public lands are already in private
hands, and yet the rate of their disposal is steadily increasing. More than six million
acres were patented during the first three months of the present year. It is time for
us to see that our remaining public lands are saved for the home maker to the utmost limit of his possible use. I say this to you of this university because we have a
right to expect that the best-trained, the best-educated men on the Pacific Slope, the
Rocky Mountains and Great Plains states will take the lead in the preservation and
right use of the forests, in securing the right use of the waters, and in seeing to it that
our land policy is not twisted from its original purpose, but is perpetuated by
amendment, by change when such change is necessary in the line of that purpose,
the purpose being to turn the public domain into farms each to be the property of
the man who actually tills it and makes his home on it.
2. The West Protests Conservation ( 1907)
The new forest-reserve policies often worked a hardship on honest western settlers,
who sometimes had to get permission from a federal official before they could lawfully cut a stick of firewood. The government, they charged, was more concerned
with preserving trees than people. The governor of Colorado, disturbed by the large2
San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 1907.
D. The Conservation Crusade
209
scale withdrawals of western timber and coal lands by Washington, summoned a
Public Lands Convention to meet in Denver in 1907. The deliberations of this body
inspired the following editorial in a San Francisco newspaper. Did the West really
oppose conservation? Was the East unfair in its demands?
The convention which has just adjourned at Denver is the first body of importance that has dealt with the subject of the disposal of the public lands of the United
States. Considering the fact that the country has been in the real estate business for
more than a century, and that during that period it has, by hook and crook, chiefly
by crook, disposed of the major part of its holdings, it seems like a case of locking
the stable door after nearly all of the horses have been stolen. The only question left
to determine is whether the people who have permitted the theft of the horses, and
who lent a hand in the stealing, shall be allowed to enjoy the most of the benefits
which may accrue from taking good care of the steeds which still remain in
the stalls.
The Far West, in which all the lands-coal-bearing, forest, pasture, and agricultural-still remaining in the possession of the government are to be found, has formally gone on record in this matter, and demands that the new states be treated
with the same consideration as those commonwealths which have already divided
their patrimony among their individual citizens. The Denver Convention in its resolutions recognizes the wisdom of treating the lands of the nation as a public trust,
but it insisted that this trust should be administered for the benefit of the states
wherein the lands still remaining are situated and not for the benefit of the people
of the older states of the Union, who have no lands, forests, mines, or pastures that
are not in the possession of private individuals.
Congress will be unable to resist the justice of this contention. As a rule, that
body is not overswift to recognize the rights of those sections of the Union with a
small representation in the Lower House, but the American people, when they understand the matter thoroughly, may be depended upon to prevent an injustice. Just
now the popular impression at the East is that the Far West is opposed to the conservation of its forests, and that it supports the efforts of unscrupulous grabbers to
steal the public domain. But the campaign of education inaugurated by the Public
Lands Convention will soon convince it that all that is asked for is even justice for
the new states, and that demands that the profits arising from the eleventh-hour reform shall not be absorbed by the states that have eaten their cake and now wish to
share with those who have scarcely had a chance to nibble theirs.
3. Gifford Pinchot Advocates Damming
the Hetch Hetchy Valley (I 913)
The city of San Francisco 's proposal to dam the Tuolumne River, creating a reservoir
in the Hetch Hetchy Valley within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park, stirred
passionate debate in the early twentieth century. The controversy vividly demonstrated the division of "conservationists " into utilitarians and preservationists. The
3U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on the Public Lands, Hearings, Retch Hetchy Dam
Site, 63d Cong., 1st sess. (June 25-28, July 7, 1913), pp. 25ff.
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Chapter 28
issue came to a dramatic climax in 1913, when Congress passed the Raker Act, authorizing construction of the dam. In his testimony before the House Committee on
the Public Lands, famed conservationist Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), chiefforester
of the United States in the Theodore Roosevelt administrations, offered the following
rationale for the construction of the Retch Hetchy dam. What is Pinchot's chiefjusti.fication for building the dam? In what ways does he deserve his title as one of the
founding fathers of the modern conservation movement?
Mr. Pinchot. . .. So we come now face to face with the perfectly clean question of
what is the best use to which this water that flows out of the Sierras can be put.
As we all know, there is no use of water that is higher than the domestic use.
Then, if there is, as the engineers tell us, no other source of supply that is anything like so reasonably available as this one; if this is the best, and, within reasonable limits of cost, the only meqps of supplying San Francisco with water, we
come straight to the question of wpether the advaptage of leaving this valley in
a state of pature is greater than the advantage of using ~t for the benefit of the
city of San Francisco.
Now, t~e fundamental principle of the whole conservation policy is that of
use, to take every part of the land and its resqurces and put it to that use in
which it will best serve the most people, and I think there can be no question
at all but that in this case we h~ve an instance in which all weighty considerations demand the passage of the bill. ...
. . . I believe if we had pothing else to consider than the delight of the few
men and women who would yearly go into the Hetch Hetchy Valley, then it
should be left in its natural condition. But the considerations on the other side
of the question to my mind are simply overwhelming, and so much so that I
have never been able to see that there was any reasonable argument against the
use of this water supply by the city of San Francisco ....
Mr. Raker.* Taking the scenic beauty of the park as it now stands, and the fact that
the valley is sometimes swatnped along in June and July, is it not a fact that if a
beautiful dam is put there, as is contemplated, and as the picture is given by the
engineers, with the roads contemplated around the reservoir and with other
trails, it will be more beautiful than it is now, and give more opportunity for the
use of the parJ<?
Mr. Pinchot. Whether it will be more beautifuL I doubt, but the use of the park will
be enormously increased. I think there ~s no doubt about that.
Mr. Raker. In other words, to put it a differenr way, there will be more beauty accessible than there is now?
Mr. Pinchot. Much more beauty will be accessiple than now.
Mr. Raker. And by putting in roads and trails the Government, as well as the citizens
of the Government, will get more pleasure out of it than at the present time?
Mr. Pinchot. You might say from the standpoint of enjoyment of beauty and the
greatest good to the greatest nurnper, they will be conserved by the passage of
this bill, and there will be a great qe<ll more use of the beauty of the park than
there is now.
*John E. Raker, representative from California.
211
Mr. Raker. Have you seen Mr. John Muir's* criticism of the bill? You know him?
Mr. Pinchot. Yes, sir; I know him very well. He is an old and a very good friend of
mine. I have never been able to agree with him in his attitude toward the Sierras for the reason that my point of view has never appealed to him at all. When
I became Forester and denied the right to exclude sheep and cows from the
Sierras, Mr. Muir thought I had made a great mistake, because I allowed the use
by an acquired right of a large number of people to interfere with what would
have been the utmost beauty of the forest. In this case I think he has unduly
given away to beauty as against use.
4. John Muir Damns the Hetch Hetchy Dam ( 1912)
john Muir (1838-1914), born in Scotland and raised in Wisconsin, arrived in California in 1868 and established himself as an eminent naturalist and passionate
crusader for wilderness preservation. On what grounds does he disagree with Gifford Pinchot's position on the Retch Hetchy dam? In what ways do their two arguments continue to resonate in debates today about the environment?
Yosemite is so wonderful that we are apt to regard it as an exceptional creation,
the only valley of its kind in the world; but Nature is not so poor as to have only
one of anything. Several other yosemites have been discovered in the Sierra that occupy the same relative positions on the range and were formed by the same forces
in the same kind of granite. One of these, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, is in the
Yosemite National Park about twenty miles from Yosemite ....
. . . [As] the Merced River flows through Yosemite, so does the Tuolumne
through Hetch Hetchy. The walls of both are of gray granite, rise abruptly from
the floor, are sculptured in the same style and in both every rock is a glacier
monument. ...
. . . Hetch Hetchy Valley, far from being a plain, common, rock-bound meadow,
as many who have not seen it seem to suppose, is a grand landscape garden, one of
Nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples. As in Yosemite, the sublime
rocks of its walls seem to glow with life, whether leaning back in repose or standing erect in thoughtful attitudes, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, their
brows in the sky, their feet set in the groves and gay flowery meadows, while birds,
bees, and butterflies help the river and waterfalls to stir all the air into music-things
frail and fleeting and types of permanence meeting here and blending, just as they
do in Yosemite, to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her.
Sad to say, this most precious and sublime feature of the Yosemite National
Park, one of the greatest of all our natural resources for the uplifting joy and peace
and health of the people, is in danger of being dammed and made into a reservoir
to help supply San Francisco with water and light, thus flooding it from wall to wall
*John Muir (1838--1914), a Scottish-born American naturalist, was a leading critic of the Hetch Hetchy
dam proposal. See the next selection.
<~_John Muir, The Yosemite (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1962; originally published 1912), pp.
192-202.
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and burying its gardens and groves one or two hundred feet deep. This grossly destructive commercial scheme has long been planned and urged (though water as
pure and abundant can be got from sources outside of the people's park, in a dozen
different places), because of the comparative cheapness of the dam and of the territory which it is sought to divert from the great uses to which it was dedicated in the
Act of 1890 establishing the Yosemite National Park.
The making of gardens and parks goes on with civilization all over the world,
and they increase both in size and number as their value is recognized. Everybody
needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal
and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty-hunger is
made manifest in the little window-sill gardens of the poor, though perhaps only a
geranium slip in a broken cup, as well as in the carefully tended rose and lily gardens of the rich, the thousands of spacious city parks and botanical gardens, and in
our magnificent National Parks-the Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, etc.-Nature's
sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world. Nevertheless, like anything else worth while, from the very beginning, however well guarded, they have
always been subject to attack by despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of
every degree from Satan to Senators, eagerly trying to make everything immediately
and selfishly commercial, with schemes disguised in smug-smiling philanthropy,
industriously, sham-piously crying, "Conservation, conservation, panutilization,"
that man and beast may be fed and the dear Nation made great. Thus long ago a
few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer, changing money, buying and selling cattle and sheep
and doves ....
That anyone would try to destroy such a place seems incredible; but sad experience shows that there are people good enough and bad enough for anything. The
proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that
the only righteous thing to do with the people's parks is to destroy them bit by bit
as they are able. Their arguments are curiously like those of the devil, devised
for the destruction of the first garden-so much of the very best Eden fruit going
to waste; so much of the best Tuolumne water and Tuolumne scenery going
to waste ....
These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a
perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the
mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and
churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
5. uBeauty as Against Use" ( 1920s)
When Gifford Pinchot used the phrase "beauty as against use" in his testimony before the House Committee on Public Lands in 1913, he succinctly summarized the
terms of the debate about natural resources in the opening years of the century (see
page 209). Conservationists like Pinchot, who advocated that national resources be
utilized efficiently, faced two enemies: on the one hand, commercial interests that
5Herbert
Johnson, courtesy of The National Park Service Archives.
213
exploited natural resources, and on the other hand, preservationists like john Muir
who celebrated the beauty of nature and wanted to preserve it unspoiled for all time.
The following images by Herbert johnson, entitled National Park as the People Inherited It and The Logical Finish if We Let Down the Bars, illustrate the starkly
contrasting ways in which conservation issues were often posed. W'hy did conservationists and preservationists alike .find it so difficult to combine beauty and use? If
the artist had drawn a third, middle panel in this scene, what would it have looked
like? If forced to choose, which of these images would Theodore Roosevelt have endorsed? W'hy?
214
Chapter 28
E. The Crusade for Woman Suffrage _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
I. Senator Robert Owen Supports Women ( 191 0)
Wedded to the tried and true, President William Howard Taft was no enthusiast for
woman suffrage. He believed the issue was one that should be handled by the individual states. As late as 1912 he wrote privately, '1 cannot change my view . .. just to
suit the exigencies of the campaign, and if it is going to hurt me, I think it will have
to hurt me. " But the embattled women now had an increasingly strong argument.
Rapid industrialization after the Civil War had lured millions of women from the
home into the office and the factory, where they were competing with men. By 1910
four states- Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho--had granted unrestricted suffrage to women, and the progressive upheaval of the era added great impetus to the
reform. Senator Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma, who had earlier demanded citizenship for Native Americans, here makes a speech to a learned society favoring woman
suffrage. What ideas about the nature of womanhood underlie his argument? What
changes in society does he think woman suffrage will entail?
Women compose one-half of the human race. In the last forty years, women in
gradually increasing numbers have been compelled to leave the home and enter the
factory and workshop . Over seven million women are so employed, and the remainder of the sex are employed largely in domestic services. A full half of the work
of the world is done by women. A careful study of the matter has demonstrated the
vital fact that these working women receive a smaller wage for equal work than
men do, and that the smaller wage and harder conditions imposed on the woman
worker are due to the lack of the ballot.
Many women have a very hard time, and if the ballot would help them, even a
little, I should like to see them have it. ... Equal pay for equal work is the first great
reason justifying this change of governmental policy.
There are other reasons which are persuasive: First, women, take it all in all,
are the equals of men in intelligence, and no man has the hardihood to assert the
contrary....
The man is usually better informed with regard to state government, but women
are better informed about house government, and she can learn state government with as much facility as he can learn how to instruct children, properly feed
and clothe the household, care for the sick, play on the piano, or make a house
beautiful. . ..
The woman ballot will not revolutionize the world. Its results in Colorado, for
example, might have been anticipated. First, it did give women better wages for
equal work; second, it led immediately to a number of laws the women wanted, and
the first laws they demanded were laws for the protection of the children of the
state, making it a misdemeanor to contribute to the delinquency of a child; laws for
the improved care of defective children; also, the Juvenile Court for the conservation of wayward boys and girls; the better care of the insane, the deaf, the dumb, the
1
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 35, Supplement (May 1910): 6-9, passim.
E. The Crnsade for Woman Suffrage
215
blind; the curfew bell to keep children off the streets at night; raising the age of consent for girls; improving the reformatories and prisons of the state; improving the
hospital services of the state; improving the sanitary laws affecting the health of the
homes of the state. Their [women's] interest in the public health is a matter of great
importance. Above all, there resulted laws for improving the school system.
Seyeral important results followed. Both political parties were induced to put up
cleaner, better men, for the women would not stand a notoriously corrupt or unclean candidate. The headquarters of political parties became more decent, and the
polling places became respectable. The bad women, enslaved by mercenary vice,
do not vote, apd good women do vote in q.s great proportion as men. Every evil
prophecy against granting the suffrage has failed. The public men of Colorado,
Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho give it a cordial support.
The testimony is universal:
First, it has not made women mannish; they still love their homes and children
just the same as ever, and are better able to protect themselves and their children
because of the ballot.
Seconq, fhey have not become office-seekers, nor pothouse politicians. They
have not become swaggerers and insolent on the streets. They still teach gooq manners to JUen, as they always have done. It [suffrage] has made women broader and
greatly increased the understanding of the community at large of the problems of
good government; of proper sanitation, of pure food, or clean water, and all such
matters in which intelligent women would naturally take an interest.
It has nqt apsolutely regenerated society, but it has improved it. It has raised the
educational qualification of tre suffrage, and has elevated the moral standard of the
suffr<lge, because there are more criminal men than criminal women . .. .
The great doctrine of the American Republic that "all governments derive their
just powers from the consent of the governed" justifies the plea of one-half of t~e
people, the women, to exercise the s-qffrage. The doctrine of the American Revolutionary War that taxation without representation is unendurable justifies women in
exercising the suffrage.
2. A Woman Assails Woman Suffrage ( 191 0)
As late as 1910 many women plainly did not want to shoulder the heavy civic responsibilities that would come with the ballot. One argument was that each sex was
superior in its own sphere-women in the home) men in the outside world-and
that a sepytration was best for all concerned. Agitators for woman suffrage feared
that if their cause were submitted to a vote by all women) it would be defeated. Tbe
suffragists argued that the women who wanted the vote ought to have it. Mrs . Gilbert
E. jones) an opponent of votes for women) here pleads her case before a scholarly
group. How do her views differ from those of Senator Owen) just given? Which of
them esteemed women more highly? How do]ones )s views compare with those ofjane
Addams (seep. 126)?
2Annals
passim.
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 35, Supplement (May 1910): 16-21,
216
Chapter 28
The anti-suffragists are not organizing or rushing into committees, societies, or
associations, and their doings are not being cried out from the house-tops. Yet they
show by undeniable facts, easily verified, that woman suffrage bills and proposals
have been defeated and turned down at the rate of once in every twenty-seven days
in the state legislatures for the last twelve years ....
A great rpany states have granted to women school suffrage, but only a partisan
or sectarian issue will bring out the woman's vote. In Massachusetts women
have voted on school boards, and after thirty years' training, only 2 or 3 percent of
the women register to vote. This hardly can be pronounced "success," or worth
while ....
Taxation without representation is tyranny, but we must be very careful to
define what we mean by the phrase. If we adopt the suffrage attitude, "I pay
taxes, therefore I should vote," the natural conclusion is that everybody who pays
taxes should vote, or we have a tyrannical form of government. Remember that this
argument is used in an unqualified way. We have a "tyranny" here, we are told, because some women pay taxes, yet do not vote. If this is true without any qualification, it must be true not only of women, but of everybody. Accordingly, this
government is tyrannical if corporations pay taxes, but do not vote; if aliens pay
taxes, but do not vote; if minors pay taxes, but do not vote; if anybody pays taxes,
but does not vote. The only correct conclusion is, not that women should vote because some of them pay taxes, but that every taxpayer should be given the privilege
of the ballot. ...
A very conscientious investigation by this League* cannot find that the ballot
will help the wage-earning woman. Women must resort to organization, association, and trade unions, and then they can command and maintain a standard wage.
Supply and demand will do the rest. Women are not well trained and often very deficient and unskilled in most of their occupations. They are generally only supplementary workers and drop their work when they marry. When married, and home
and children are to be cared for, they are handicapped way beyond their strength.
Married women should be kept out of industry, rather than urged into it, as scientists, physicians, and sociologists all state that as women enter into competitive industrial life with men, just so does the death rate of little children increase and the
birth rate decrease.
Anti-suffragists deplore the fact that women are found in unsuitable occupations. But the suffragists glory in the fact that there are women blacksmiths, baggage
masters, brakemen, undertakers, and women political "bosses" in Colorado.
The suffragists call this progress, independence, and emancipation of women.
"Anti's" ask for more discrimination and better selection of industrial occupations
for wage-earning women. Knowing that the average woman has half of the physical strength of the average man, and the price she must pay when in competition
with him is too great for her ultimate health and her hope of motherhood, the
"Anti's" ask for caution and extreme consideration before new activities are entered
upon ....
The suffrage leaders say that a woman without the vote has no self-respect. We
must then look to the suffrage states to find the fulfillment of the woman's true po*The National League for the Civic Education of Women, an anti-suffrage group.
E. The Crusade for Woman Suffrage
217
sition, complete-worthy, exalted, and respected. But what do we find when we
look at Utah! Women have voted there for forty years. Mormonism and woman suffrage were coincident. By the very nature of its teachings, as indicated by Brigham
Young, the basis of the Mormon Church is woman-and the Mormon Church is the
greatest political machine in the four suffrage States ....
The question of woman suffrage should be summed up in this way: Has granting the ballot to women in the two suffrage states where they have had it for forty
years brought about any great reforms or great results? No--Wyoming has many
more men than women, so the results cannot be measured. The Mormon women f
Utah are not free American citizens. They are under the Elder's supreme power, and
vote accordingly, and polygamy has been maintained by the woman's vote, and is
still to be found, although forbidden, because women have political power.
Have the saloons been abolished in any of the suffrage states? No.
Do men still drink and gamble? Yes, without a doubt.
Have the slums been done away with? Indeed no.
Are the streets better cleaned in the states where women vote? No, they are
quite as bad as in New York City and elsewhere.
Have the red-light districts been cleared away? Decidedly not, and they can be
reckoned upon as a political factor, when they are really needed.
Have women purified politics? No, not in the least.
Have women voted voluntarily? Some do; but thousands are carried to the polls
in autos and carriages; otherwise they would not vote.
Has pure food and pure milk been established by the woman's vote? Not at all.
Have women's wages been increased because women vote? No, indeed.
Have women equal pay for equal work? Not any more than in New York City.
Are there laws on the statute books that would give women equal pay for equal
work? No, and never will be.
Are women treated with more respect in the four suffrage states than elsewhere? Not at all-certainly not in Utah ....
[The "anti's" also argued that women were adequately represented by their menfolk; that women already exercised a strong influence indirectly ( "harem government"); that suffrage would end chivalry; that women were already overburdened
in the home; that family quarrels over partisan issues would increase the divorce
rate; that females were too emotional; and that women, if allowed to vote, would
soon be serving on juries and forced to hear "indecent testimony." Despite such objections, some of them frivolous, nationwide woman suffrage finally triumphed with
the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.}
218
Chapter 28
3. Images
of the Suffrage Campaign ( 1900-1915)
Opponents of woman suffrage long argued that a woman 's place was in the home, not
in the public world ofpolitics. But in the first years of the twentieth century, suffragists
like Carrie Chapman Catt and jane Addams began to turn that argument on its head.
Tbey stressed the roles that women already played outside the home, and argued further that modern women needed the vote precisely in order to fulfill their traditional
duties as homemakers and mothers. What views of women 's nature and social role are
expressed in the following pro-suffrage cartoons? What arguments for woman suffrage
do these images represent? Which do you think proved most persuasive?
.IU
r 1,
II
rr fl
I. OU
ROCfRS
But when the hounds of Starvation Wages, Broken Laws, Intolerable Hours, Cold, Hunger
and Discouragement pursue her, where is her place and what is her protection? 1912
3p. 218, Lou Rogers, New York Call, May 1912, courtesy of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin;
p . 219, Jessie Banks, Woman Voter, October 1915, courtesy of The Periodicals Division, Library of Congress;
p. 220, Rose O 'Neill, Stock Montage, Chicago.
219
E. The Crusade for Woman Suffrage
Woman's Place Is at Home.
51,010
TeaeiH~Y:S
1915
7.2,;l b 1
11.,s r 1
Sa.it,women
Tya.\ned
CLao;fcs
Nu-r~es
1b ) 000
Wa. d ..,.e S3CS
.2.:2-,:Joq
C l..othi"'~
3 ), 000
T-r&.de-s
Book ku pet-1
Wo vke.,.s
Woman's Place Is in the Home. We're Going Home.
1915
100,0QO
S ~w' n.q Ma~hi~
Wot Ke-r -s
220
Chapter 28
GIYE MOTHER THE YOTE
WE NEED IT
OUR FOOD OUR HElLTH OUR PLAY
OUR HOMES OUR SCHOOLS OUR WORK
ARE RULED BY MEN'S VOTES
Isn't it a funny thing
That Father cannot see
Why Mother ought to have a vote
On how these things should be 7
THINK IT OVER
E. 1be Crusade for Woman Suffrage
221
Thought Provokers
1. In what ways did the muckrakers represent both the best and the worst features of a free
press in the United States?
2. Was corruption a "natural" by-product of the adaptation of U.S. institutions to the new
urban environment? Did it serve any useful civic purpose?
3. Was government protection necessary to improve the lot of the laborer in the industrializing United States? How justifiable were special laws to guard women and youthful
workers?
4. What motives inspired Roosevelt's crusade for conservation? How different or similar is
the attitude of the West today toward efforts at government control of the environment?
5. Were women powerless without the ballot? How has the suffrage changed the position of
women? How has the nation's political agenda changed as a result of woman suffrage?

Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt 1901

Transcription

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