I •• • c c « 
 
 %^i£n/^,^aMun/ 
 
Martin B. Madden 
 
 Public Servant 
 
 A SKETCH 
 
 Edgar Weston Brent 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 1901 
 
V- r & 
 
 1 ll 
 
 Copyright, 1901 
 
 BY 
 
 EDGAR WESTON BRENT 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 DURING the height of the excursion season, eighteen 
 months ago, there were assembled, one evening, in 
 the lounging room of San Francisco's principal hotel, a 
 score of travelers, each from a different distant part of the 
 world. They were all engaged in the same conversation. 
 This had centered on the topic of the Pacific coast's great 
 opportunities in Oriental trade. The traveler whose 
 authority seemed most acceptable to all the others, in 
 reply to a question, said: "President Lincoln selected 
 the site on this coast where the greatest city should be 
 built. He caused it to be surveyed and laid out. The 
 place is opposite Victoria, British Columbia, on the 
 southern side of the great strait leading from the ocean 
 to Puget sound. It is called Port Angeles. It has every 
 advantage needed for the making of a metropolis. The 
 harbor is the nearest in the United States to Asia, is 
 immense in capacity and the most accessible on this coast 
 to transcontinental railways. It is extraordinary that a 
 man from Illinois should have been able to foresee the 
 value of that location. No less marvelous is it that the 
 same state possesses to-day the best city-building talent 
 anywhere assembled in the world. The greatest muni- 
 cipal accomplishment of modern times is the construction 
 of the city of Chicago within about one generation. The 
 next was by the same men who did that and was the 
 
 5 
 
 M205200 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 creation of the White City at the Columbian Fair. New 
 York grew. Chicago was builded. I could name twenty 
 men now doing business in that city who could, if they 
 would undertake to do it, make Angeles the greatest port 
 in the world and one of the greatest cities. They would 
 do the work in a few years, too. These Chicagoans are 
 constructors, city builders, by nature. There are no 
 other men in their class." 
 
 Asked for their names, the traveler gave them, accom- 
 panying each with a brief oral sketch, and then contin- 
 ued: "The city made by these builders has already the 
 best press in America, the greatest book-buying com- 
 munity, the most advanced school system, and the most 
 democratic population. Its business men are at the same 
 time the most enterprising and the most conservative ; 
 its labor the most intelligent and the most reasonable; 
 its bankers the most liberal and the most careful. If the 
 biographies of the men who have made Chicago should 
 be properly written, the literature would do more than 
 all other essays to allay the growing discontent of the 
 poor. These lives would perfectly exhibit the fact that 
 in a country like this poverty is often the result of the 
 lack of managerial talent and seldom caused by the suc- 
 cess of the rich. 
 
 "They would clearly display this other truth — that the 
 prosperous American, as a rule, in his business creates 
 new wealth and adds it to the stock already in existence, 
 taking from it only a fair share for his labor of produc- 
 tion, letting the rest go into general distribution. It 
 would be valuable beyond calculation to have the unpros- 
 perous convinced that the prosperous have not thrived at 
 the expense of the poor; that wealth is generally obtained 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 by creative hard work of a kind few can do, and that the 
 doing of this work, instead of resulting in appropriation, 
 really increases distribution. Write w T ell the story of 
 Chicago's money-makers and you will help the poor." 
 
 When one of the twelve was asked for the facts in his 
 history, he replied: "My history? There it is, in that 
 row of records. They contain everything recorded about 
 me. Take them. You will find the whole truth, but 
 much more condemnation than commendation." 
 Chicago, July, igoi. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I. An Illinois Pioneer's Boy — The Patriotic Cousins — 
 Going to School — The American Temptation to 
 
 Work 11 
 
 II. The Water Carrier of Lemont — At Night School — 
 
 Studies Stone and Law — Chooses Stone 17 
 
 III. Climbing the Ladder — Arrival at the Top — Profi- 
 
 ciency and Integrity the Means 27 
 
 IV. Labor Saving Inventions — Madden's Method of 
 
 Introducing Them — Labor's Friend 35 
 
 , V. Contractor Careless — The Mistake of Tolerating 
 
 Dishonesty — Accepting Punishment 41 
 
 VI. The Justice of Friendship — The Demands of Law — 
 
 Friendship Saves 52 
 
 VII. Enters Public Life — The Novice Among Aldermen 
 
 — A Lucky Mistake 59 
 
 VIII. Public Service Begins— The Chicago Problem — The 
 
 Solution Undertaken 64 
 
 IX. The Cry of "Boodle"— The Cause of It— Who Use 
 
 It.... 75 
 
 X. Street Railway Franchises — The Best Solution — 
 
 Some Examples 83 
 
 XI. A Great Financier — The Way Chicago was Financed 
 
 —The Way it is Now 93 
 
 XII. Entertaining World's Fair Guests — A Battle for 
 
 Morality — A Great Speech 105 
 
 XIII. Refuses Mayoralty Three Times — Nominates Rival 
 
 — Sacrifice for Pure Ballot 115 
 
 XIV. Meets Unparalleled Abuse for Public Service — 
 
 Eloquent Parliamentary Speech 129 
 
 XV. Starts Civil Service Reform Movement — Furnishes 
 
 it Arguments — Many New Ideas 146 
 
 9 
 
10 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 XVI. Passes Civil Service Reform Bill — Ignores Ingrati- 
 tude — Rescues Law from Destruction 168 
 
 XVII. Assures Chicago's Supremacy in Manufacture — 
 
 Saves Lake Front — Creates Park There 175 
 
 XVIII. Secures Government Help for Chicago Trade — A 
 
 Convincing Argument 186 
 
 XIX. First Republican Manager to Declare for Gold — 
 
 Undertakes to Get Word in Platform 192 
 
 XX. Illinois Forces "Gold'' into St. Louis Platform — 
 
 The Argument that Won 201 
 
 XXI. Cook County Republicans Misrepresented — Mad- 
 den's Sacrifice In Their Behalf — Marvelous Per- 
 sonal Victory 210 
 
 XXII. Uses Blaine's Reciprocity Argument — Makes Novel 
 
 Application — Effect on Silver Men 220 
 
 XXIII. Bryan's Nomination a Surprise — Forces Change in 
 
 Republican Plan— The Effect 225 
 
 XXIV. On the Stump — Many New Arguments — Their His- 
 
 torical Value 2.'U 
 
 XXV. Urged to Accept Senatorship from Illinois — Rea- 
 sons Therefor — Necessary Votes Secured 243 
 
 XXVI. Goes to Philadelphia Convention — Represents Illi- 
 nois on Platform Committee 249 
 
 XXVII. Writing the Republican Platform for 1900— Inserts 
 the Word Isthmian — Secures Fair Play for 
 
 France 255 
 
 XXVIII. Saves the Republican Party from Committing a 
 
 Blunder— A Witty Speech 265 
 
 XXIX. Plans the Republican Campaign for 1900— New Sil- 
 ver and Expansion Argument 272 
 
 XXX. Makes the Best Public Statement on Trusts — Pro- 
 poses the Best Solution 282 
 
 XXXI. Proposes an Effective Method of Accomplishing 
 
 Annexation of Canada 294 
 
 XXXII. Opposes Free Chinese Immigration — Some New and 
 
 Convincing Arguments 299 
 
 XXXIII. Study of a Perfect Public Servant— Essential Qual- 
 ities He Must Possess 308 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 AN ILLINOIS PIONEER S BOY— THE PATRIOTIC COUSINS— GOING TO 
 SCHOOL — THE AMERICAN TEMPTATION TO WORK. 
 
 ill ARTIN BARNABY MADDEN was born in Dar- 
 / T 1 lington, England, on the 20th day of March, A. D., 
 1855. His father, John Madden, was a plain man, of the 
 agricultural class. His mother was Eliza O'Neil, of the 
 ancient ruling family. Her father was a classical scholar 
 of renown. He had been professor of Latin and Greek 
 at a Dublin university, and afterwards in one of the 
 schools in Paris, France. Mrs. O'Neil Madden was a 
 woman of uncommon mental gifts and strength of char- 
 acter. She was domestic in taste and disposition and 
 fond of learning. 
 
 Some time before the birth of Martin, his uncle, Peter 
 Warden, the husband of Mrs. Madden's sister, and a man 
 of considerable importance, had moved into the northern 
 part of Illinois, then the most attractive part of the 
 United States for immigrants. Mr. Warden was a native 
 of Pennsylvania and of Dutch-Huguenot ancestry. He 
 was a well-educated man and had for a time taught 
 school before moving west. He at first settled in the 
 territory now Chicago, afterwards locating in Lemont, at 
 present a metropolitan suburb. The Wardens prospered 
 from the first. 
 
 In Mrs. Warden's correspondence with her sister she 
 
 11 
 
12 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 convinced her and her husband that the West, as Illinois 
 was then known, was the best place in the world for the 
 rearing of children possessing qualities for the creation 
 of careers. • 
 
 The Maddens landed in Boston in i860, when Martin 
 was four years old, and at once went to Lemont, where 
 they took up a farm. Help was scarce in the West, then, 
 - and few farmers could successfully manage agricultural 
 land there unless they had boys of their own able to work. 
 His children being small, John Madden did not become 
 affluent at farming. As both boys and girls of working 
 age were more valuable as farm help than they could be 
 at any other occupation among the Illinois pioneers, it 
 was almost impossible to secure attendance at any but the 
 primary schools. The public educational system was 
 beginning to extend over the West, and when the little 
 red school-house made its advent in 'Lemont its good 
 offices, for a long time, were confined to the younger chil- 
 dren. 
 
 The Wardens, with more and larger boys, fared bet- 
 ter than did the Maddens. Peter Warden became a 
 citizen of influence and means, and widely known. He 
 was soon a leader. He was one of the men who estab- 
 lished the first Baptist church organized in Chicago. Of 
 this he was elected the first clerk, the most important 
 and influential position a man could have in the commu- 
 nity, next to that occupied by the preacher. One of his 
 sons was the fourth white male child born in the city. 
 
 Mrs. Madden and Mrs. Warden, as well as their hus- 
 bands, were of patriotic texture, and became intensely 
 interested in the country. The Wardens had become 
 absorbed in the slavery agitation, as it had been carried 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 13 
 
 on by Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, and 
 the Maddens had not long been residents of Illinois when 
 they were as thoroughly American as their elder rela- 
 tives who had induced them to become citizens. When 
 the War of the Rebellion began, in 1861, Mrs. Warden had 
 seven sons grown up. She sent six of them as soldiers 
 on the Union side. To spare one son was a serious sac- 
 rifice, in a country where every man was so valuable ; to 
 send six out of seven was heroic. These people loved 
 their country. They would have given to Lincoln's 
 work everything they had, without the least hesitation. 
 These six sons served all through the war. John War- 
 den, one of them, was one of the 200 soldiers who volun- 
 teered to lead the called-for charge over the ramparts of 
 Vicksburg, during the Federal siege of that city. Every 
 man of these 200 was wounded in that terrible task, and 
 but nine returned from it alive. John was one of the 
 nine. He was shot through both knees. So extraor- 
 dinary was the heroism put forth by these intrepid men, 
 that Congress declared a national vote of thanks to them 
 and ordered a special medal to be struck, and presented 
 for each. When John Warden finally, in 1893, received 
 the Government's notice that his medal was awaiting him, 
 the information was sent by President Cleveland. Warden 
 refused to take the decoration from his hands because, 
 as a soldier, he thought the President's conduct in the 
 treatment of deserving pensioners was unfair and unjust. 
 It was with difficulty that the soldier's cousin, then Alder- 
 man, prevailed upon him to accept the nation's gift and 
 treasure it for what it meant. 
 
 At six years of age, Martin was sent to the public 
 school. He attended it until he was ten. At that time 
 
14 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 the great value of the stone, now everywhere celebrated 
 as the Athens limestone, underlying all the Lemont 
 region, was beginning to attract general attention for 
 building, paving and curbing purposes. Capital was 
 hurried into the country for quarry development, the 
 new town of Chicago's growth furnishing the demand 
 and market. Labor was scarce and at a premium. 
 Inducements were held out to boys to go to work in the 
 quarries that were being opened up all over the neigh- 
 borhood. It made Martin restive to see other lads easily 
 acquiring by light work the cash that made them inde- 
 pendent and important or useful in the region where 
 trade had been nearly all barter, and where money had 
 for a long time been so scarce that only big men could 
 occasionally get any. The world was changing in his 
 young eyes, and the desire to get his hand in became 
 irresistible. He begged his parents to permit him to 
 take advantage of the many opportunities lying all about. 
 He was tall, healthy, and strong. He was, however, 
 such a bright and promising scholar that both his parents 
 had mapped out for him a career of learning, and he met 
 with a stout resistance. The management of the chil- 
 dren was in the mother's province, and the boy pointed 
 out to her that the recently opened night school was 
 better equipped with teachers than the one conducted 
 during the day; that he could' learn more at it; that what 
 he would have to do if he went to work would be like 
 playing for pay to a boy of his strength and activity, and 
 that for this recreation he could bring into the family 
 exchequer every week almost as much good hard money 
 as his father would get by the barter of farming; "and 
 then, mother, don't you see, I'll be earning more and 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 15 
 
 father needn't work so much." The lad attacked his 
 mother on her vulnerable side. She yielded, thinking a 
 boy of his age would soon change his mind, and the 
 experiment would do him no harm. In fact, it might 
 cure him of the craze that was afflicting all his comrades, 
 and steady him in the pursuit of knowledge. The boy 
 knew, what his mother did not suspect he perceived, that 
 his help was really needed and would greatly aid his 
 father in the support of the family. He was permitted 
 to seek work, but was to submit whatever proposition he 
 got, before accepting it, to his mother for her approval. 
 She knew he was perfectly truthful and reliable. So 
 when he soon afterward reported that the Superintendent 
 of the Lemont Stone Company had offered him the job 
 of carrying water to the men engaged in its quarry 
 work, the mother could not at first comprehend the situ- 
 ation. There was no boy so young as her son hired in 
 any of the stone works; and at the Lemont there were 
 many scores of men employed. How could a lad like 
 Martin supply them with water? 
 
 "It was like this," said the Superintendent. "He 
 made us a proposition." 
 
 " A proposition ! Absurd. How could a boy like that 
 make you a business proposition? Why, he is hardly ten 
 years old. ' ' 
 
 "All the same, he did. He's more than ten up here" 
 (tapping his forehead). "Says he, 'Can you give me 
 something to do in the quarry?' 'And what can a little 
 boy like you do in a stone quarry?' says I. And says he, 
 'Anything. * And then says he, 'What do you pay the 
 men?' Tickled at that, I says, 'Two dollars a day 
 each.' And he says, 'They have to go a long way to 
 
16 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 drink. And they all go. I've patched them. I could 
 carry the water to them for less Man two dollars a day.' 
 Labor is scarce and we've gov to pay high for it. It 
 didn't take me long to figure out that what was in the 
 lad's head was right. The time lostby the men going 
 to and from the pumps makes up more in wages than 
 the boy would save it for. So we've made a new job for 
 the boy. We're going to make him water-carrier. 
 There's money in it for both of us. " 
 
 The three dollars a week offered Martin was less than 
 his work would save the company in a day, and when his 
 mother twitted him with not getting a larger part of the 
 saving for accomplishing all of it, he said he didn't think 
 the company would hire him unless they made by it, 
 and, besides, any other boy could do the same thing. 
 'Yes," laughed his mother; "if he would think of it." 
 "But the company would think of it," replied 
 Martin. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE WATER CARRIER OF LEMONT — AT NIGHT SCHOOL — STUDIES 
 STONE AND LAW— CHOOSES STONE. 
 
 THE maternal consent could not now be withheld, 
 and Martin Barnaby Madden began his career. 
 His judgment about the night school and the nature 
 of the work he was employed to do were both correct. 
 The night school had better teachers than those working 
 among the day attendants, because the pupils were older 
 and more capable. Among these young Madden made 
 better progress in his studies than he possibly could have 
 achieved in the more juvenile classes. The water-carry- 
 ing for a long time was as easy as playing ball. The 
 quarries grew, however, and then the business got to be 
 a little more serious. Martin regarded his occupation 
 always as important. The more .he became acquainted 
 with the quarrymen and the nature of the hard labor they 
 performed for their wages, the more thought and care 
 he bestowed upon his task. He never had to be called; 
 he was always at his post. He never thought of saving 
 himself steps by dealing out tepid drink to the hard- 
 working men. He busied himself keeping cold, fresh 
 water ready at all times. When the number of quarry- 
 men grew to the point of taxation upon his energy, he 
 established convenient stations and kept the receptacles 
 at all of them full of newly-brought fresh cold beverage. 
 He was for years after he had passed on from this work 
 2 17 
 
18 MARTiN ii. MADDEN 
 
 referred to as the best water-carrier ever known in 
 Lemont. 
 
 A boy who did his work in that way was bound to 
 attract the attention not only of the men, but of his 
 employers as well. In addition to anticipating and being 
 ever ready to cater to the thirst of the former, the ves- 
 sels he used were not permitted to be unduly exposed, 
 but were kept clean, bright and under shelter, and every 
 evening carefully housed. He found time to move vari- 
 ous tools, within his ability to handle, about to save the 
 tired employes running after them. He made himself 
 so useful in this respect, and often grouped implements 
 so advantageously for emergencies, that the Superin- 
 tendent one day created another new office for him, at 
 increased wages — that of tool custodian. 
 
 This was quite a rise for a boy of his age, and stimu- 
 lated his pride and love for order. In his new position 
 he began to display executive talent. As water-carrier 
 he had become familiar with the different localities in the 
 quarries. Now, he began to observe the differences in 
 the trend of the stratifications and to note the variations 
 in the quality of the stone. The workmen all liked him 
 and answered his queries with geological information 
 chat never fell on barren ground. In time it was found 
 that not only were the tools well kept and well disposed, 
 but they were often located with considerable scientific 
 insight into the nature of the anticipated work. It was 
 manifest that the lad was getting interested in the work- 
 ing of stone. His providence in the distribution of the 
 implements, his foresight in the conduct of his task, 
 became proverbial as one of the striking economies of the 
 quarry. Every man engaged by the company grew 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 19 
 
 interested in the boy. The workmen saw that the higher 
 he rose in the company's employ, the better their welfare 
 was provided for. The overseers realized that the more 
 responsible the lad was made the better the condition of 
 the property and the more satisfactory the results. It 
 came about, therefore, that although young Madden 
 never asked a favor of anybody, but attended strictly to 
 what he had to do on his own volition always, every one 
 in the business was interested in pushing him up. 
 
 He became a sort of institution in the quarry, which 
 was now fast growing into a great Chicago industry. 
 Fondness for the work was developing in him. He loved 
 to watch the skillful extraction of the stone from the 
 layers formed by nature ; to see it fashioned afterwards 
 for the builders, and then follow it into the final place in 
 structures.. He studied nature's process and man's real- 
 izations from it, and grew to regard the stone-handler's 
 work as one of the noblest employments of men. From 
 the dust, or the gravel, or the animal deposits, to the 
 finished occupied building was, to his young mind, a 
 providential arrangement all planned ages ago and now 
 carried out as originally conceived. He was witnessing 
 the final process of the evolution and having a small 
 hand in it. It exhilarated him, made him love the work, 
 and was fast attracting his whole life into it. He was 
 interested during the day; when he went home explained 
 it all to his listening mother and father; he thought of it 
 while at his evening school; and next morning was in a 
 hurry to be first at the works, solicitous not to miss any- 
 thing that might transpire. As he kept at the head of 
 his class his parents as yet saw no occasion to fear for his 
 education. His father was proud of him, and crowded 
 
20 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 all the information he could pack into the inquisitive con- 
 ferences the lad brought on at all the family meetings. 
 
 At fourteen years of age, Martin was appointed time- 
 keeper at the quarries. That was a phenomenal appoint- 
 ment for one so young. It made him the talk of the 
 whole district. To be trusted by the company to look 
 after its interests in seeing that it got the receipt of all 
 the time it paid for from several hundred employes, was 
 a distinction no boy of that age had ever before attained 
 anywhere, so far as known, in Illinois. It made the Mad- 
 den lad a public character. Boys who still fished and 
 hunted birds pointed to him with pride as an acquaint- 
 ance, and youngsters who did not dare to claim fellow- 
 ship looked upon him with awe. His employers were 
 certain he would not permit them to be cheated and the 
 men knew he would be fair to them. Both sides would 
 take his decision any time. 
 
 He was now earning more money in cash than his 
 father's farming realized, and the question of educa- 
 tion had to be settled. The parents admitted that Mar- 
 tin's evening studies and his constant questionings had 
 enabled him to acquire more knowledge of real value 
 than they, or anyone within their acquaintance, had had 
 at fourteen years of age. Of course, the son could not 
 speak or write either Greek or Latin as his grandfather 
 could; but he was proficient in English and in mathe- 
 matics and several other branches. Then most of the 
 knowledge concealed in the Greek and Roman languages 
 Martin had drawn out of the scholars in the locality 
 without having had to learn the scripts, and the lad said : 
 4 * Father, they have given it to me in better shape than 
 I could have quarried it out of the original myself. " 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 21 
 
 The mother's good, hard, practical sense, inherited 
 from sturdy ancestors and cultivated in the severe task 
 of maternal management, cropped out in the youth. He 
 contended that his work was not wearying and that he 
 would continue to attend night schools of higher grades, 
 and depend upon his parents to keep him right in his 
 reading and to help him prevent waste in pursuing his 
 studies. The policy, once outlined, was carefully adhered 
 to. The time-keeper added book-keeping, mechanical 
 drawing, the higher mathematics and history to his 
 studies, with special instructors. He rapidly became 
 proficient and soon was promoted to the mechanical 
 drafting corps of the company. In this body his econom- 
 ical devices were so many and valuable that he rose to the 
 head of the staff, and at eighteen years he was the official 
 chief. He was now attending the evening sessions of 
 the principal commercial college in Chicago. He grad- 
 uated at the head of his class, and was made Chief Gen- 
 eral Accountant and then Paymaster for the company, 
 which now was employing about 900 men. 
 
 While attending the Lemont night schools Madden' s 
 memory attracted general attention and became an object 
 of wonder. At one time when he was in the higher 
 classes he was able upon demand to give the boundaries 
 of every country, state and territory in the world; to 
 name the capital of every state and nation ; and to locate 
 every known navigable stream, its source and mouth, 
 state its length, and describe it direction. He could 
 remember all things equally well and never forgot any- 
 thing he noticed. He never ' ' memorized, " and seemed 
 absolved from all necessity of doing it. Whatever reached 
 his mind in any way was retained there and ever after 
 
22 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 was instantly available. This prodigious faculty of 
 absorbing, retaining and reproducing explains his remark- 
 able progress in acquiring as well as his skill in using 
 knowledge. He was very fond of debating and public 
 speaking, and in both was so decidedly the superior of 
 any other youth in or about Lemont as to be without 
 rivalry. It was noticed that in the declaiming feats, then 
 the fashion among schoolboys in northern Illinois, other 
 lads were always more or less constrained in their efforts 
 because of the apparent labor of their memories, while 
 Madden's speech seemed spontaneous and from abun- 
 dance. In after life, when he was old enough to explain, 
 mental operations, he attributed this difference to the 
 fact that they, having committed to memory the amount 
 of speech they were to deliver, when upon their feet 
 were visibly engaged in the effort of adhering to their 
 limits; while he, having more to say than he had time to 
 utter, was really engaged in the work of extemporaneous 
 selection. This difference in the mental work gave his 
 orations more natural action and appearance than could 
 accompany mere feats of remembrance. 
 
 During this period it was decided by the local author- 
 ities to provide increased school room for the rapidly 
 enlarging classes. Plans for a new building were under 
 consideration when young Madden suggested to the 
 Directors that an addition to the one in use could be 
 devised that would answer requirements for several years 
 to come. The officials were amazed at what they thought 
 was audacity on the part of the youth, and in a pleasant 
 taunter replied that they would like to see a plan of such 
 an addition. The boy sat down at once and in their 
 presence drew what was asked, with specifications com- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 23 
 
 plete. It was a revelation to the officials and answered 
 all purposes so completely that it was at once accepted. 
 The addition was constructed in strict accordance with 
 the boy's draughting, and the school building so enlarged 
 met the needs of that locality for a long time. The 
 Directors, after accepting the plans, laughingly asked 
 their author to send in a bill for "professional services." 
 He put his figure at $50. "Why, it didn't take you more 
 than half an hour to make your drawings," said one of 
 the Board. "But it took me many months to learn 
 how," was the response. The fee was cheerfully paid 
 and the incident became one of the legends of Lemont. 
 The building was afterwards called "Madden's School 
 House," and was pointed out to visitors as one of the 
 features of the district. 
 
 At twenty-one years of age, Madden's proficiency was 
 so great that he was placed in full charge of the stone 
 work on the new county building in the city of Chicago, 
 all of which was furnished by the company he was work- 
 ing for. The building is one of the most elaborate, 
 massive and highly ornamental stone structures in the 
 world, everywhere among architects regarded as a 
 model. Unfortunately, it has never been completed 
 according to the original design, and the ground upon 
 which it is piled has proven uneven in supporting power. 
 Every stone in the building was quarried under the per- 
 sonal supervision of young Madden. He drafted the 
 design for every one as it was to appear in the building, 
 marked it for the place it was to occupy, personally 
 supervised its cutting, its trial, its transportation, and its 
 final setting in place, besides keeping time on the pro- 
 duction of each piece, its moving and its placing. He 
 
24 MARTIN B. MADDEN * 
 
 remained with this work until it was completed and 
 labored on an average from 6 a. m. until 9 p. m. every 
 day. That was in 1876, and he had but passed his youth. 
 
 Between his eighteenth and his twenty-second years, 
 among his other studies he pursued that of law. He 
 graduated from the law school and passed his examina- 
 tion for admission to the bar early in the year after 
 attaining his majority, being one of the twelve that got 
 through the ordeal that year. He had for a long time 
 been ambitious to be a lawyer. Now that he had the 
 right to practice, many brilliant offers were made to him. 
 He took the matter under contemplation. He now had 
 many people depending upon him. His salary was $200 
 per month. If he remained in the stone business he was 
 assured of $3,000 a year immediately, with a prospect of 
 soon getting $6,000. The best offer he could depend 
 upon in the practice of law would not at once yield him 
 a certainty of more than $1,500 per annum, with the 
 future problematical. He decided to remain .in the 
 business he had been working at for twelve years and 
 retain the large and valuable clientage he was certain of 
 therein. 
 
 The company for which he was now working was 
 known as the Enterprise Stone Company. It had been 
 evolved from several smaller concerns engaged in quarry- 
 ing the Athens stone at Joliet and Lemont and employed 
 over 1,000 men. The Paymaster was soon promoted to 
 the office of Superintendent. In that position he got out 
 of the quarries all his employers paid for and placed it in 
 the market with such expedition that there was the least 
 possible loss on the way. He remained Superintendent 
 until 1881. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 25 
 
 On the 16th of May, 1878, two months after passing 
 the twenty-third anniversary of his birth, Martin B. 
 Madden took the most important step of a good man's 
 life : he married. The union was one of perfect natural 
 selection, the result of a long acquaintance. The bride 
 was Miss Josephine Smart, of Downer's Grove, Du Page 
 county, Illinois. Her grandparents on both sides had 
 emigrated from England to New York when her father, 
 Elijah Smart, was six years of age and her mother, Eliza 
 Fell, six months. When Elijah Smart married he and 
 his young wife started west. They journeyed in a 
 wagon all the way from Cattaraugus county, N. Y., 
 where they were reared, to Illinois and located at Down- 
 er's Grove. Here their daughter Josephine was born. 
 At an early age she exhibited literary^and musical talent 
 of a high order, and her parents had her carefully edu- 
 cated. She attended Wheaton College and then pursued 
 and finished her studies at Northwestern University. At 
 the time of her marriage Miss Smart, because of her 
 accomplishments and graces of person, was one of the 
 greatest social favorites in northern Illinois. She had 
 no superior among her sex in the entire West in either 
 musical skill or developed talent in literary composition, 
 prose and poetical. She might easily have reached any 
 place before the public within a woman's ambition. 
 Love of home, however, predominated in her disposition. 
 After marriage she devoted her all talents to the woman's 
 side of family and domestic life, and so became abso- 
 lutely the partner of her husband. Heaven has entrusted 
 these two with a daughter, now in her fifteenth year. 
 
 A short time after Mr. Madden 's marriage some 
 neighbors were discussing with his mother the departure 
 
26 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 of her son from home and the probabilities of his career. 
 His history was recounted and compared with that of 
 many men then prominent in affairs, and the conviction 
 was expressed that he would be "heard from." It was 
 this conversation that drew from Mrs. Madden the remark- 
 able statement so often quoted: 
 
 t4 I have raised a son who will not lie, nor take any- 
 thing that does not belong to him, nor own anything that 
 he has not paid for in full. He will not say anything 
 against his neighbor, even if that neighbor be his enemy. 
 He will not go into debt for himself. He will live on 
 less than he earns and ever have money on hand to help 
 himself and his friends along. He will all his days do 
 for his employers more than he may be paid to do. He 
 has a fine mind, a good tongue and a clean soul, and he 
 will keep them that way as long as he lives, I know. He 
 cannot easily be deceived, can take care of himself, and 
 will never deserve any shame. He will rise from the 
 time he left home and will not fall until he dies, and he 
 will always stand up tall and straight among his fellow 
 men. I am satisfied altogether with him and proud of 
 what I have done in rearing him. The greatest states- 
 man can do no more for the country than I have done in 
 giving Martin to it — God bless them both. " 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 CLIMBING THE LADDER — ARRIVAL AT THE TOP— PROFICIENCY AND 
 INTEGRITY THE MEANS. 
 
 IN 1881 all the companies quarrying the Athens stone 
 formed a central organization known as the Chicago 
 Building Stone Company. Of this Mr. Madden was made 
 the Financial Manager. This association did the market- 
 ing and collecting for all the companies producing the 
 stone. The Manager handled the sales and collections 
 with consummate skill and great profit for one year. 
 The hard indoor work he did not like and he resigned at 
 the end of a year, for the purpose of going back to out- 
 door life. 
 
 He had bought an interest in the Joliet Stone Com- 
 pany and in the Crescent Stone Company of Joliet, and 
 was made Vice-President and General Manager of both. 
 He reorganized the concerns, making the Joliet the 
 handler and the Crescent the producer. In the first year 
 of his management he netted the stockholders $60,000 
 in profits. He conducted the business of both companies 
 from that time until 1891 each year paying large divi- 
 dends. 
 
 So thorough was now his knowledge of the quarry- 
 ing, handling, transportation and marketing of building, 
 paving and curbing stone, and so comprehensive his 
 acquaintance with the building trade in all parts of the 
 
 27 
 
28 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 country, that he was everywhere sought for his mana- 
 gerial ability and talent for making money in the stone 
 and construction business. 
 
 The Quarry Owners' Association, owning stone lands 
 between New York and Denver, elected him President 
 for two successive terms of two years each. He was the 
 youngest man who had ever held that responsible office, 
 and the only one ever elected twice to it. He declined 
 the third election offered to him because he could no 
 longer spare the time to properly attend to the business 
 of the office. 
 
 He was for two years Vice-President of the Builders' 
 and Traders' Exchange of Chicago, and was on its direc- 
 tory during that time as Chairman of the Finance Com- 
 mittee. 
 
 He represented the builders of Illinois as delegate to 
 the National Convention of Builders at St. Paul in 1890; 
 New York in 1891; Cleveland in 1892, and St. Louis in 
 1893. 
 
 In 1 89 1 the Western Stone Company, a powerful and 
 rich corporation, composed of a number of the wealthiest 
 business men in Chicago, which had absorbed all the 
 companies quarrying and handling the Athens limestone, 
 except the Joliet and Crescent, offered Mr. Madden the 
 general management of the corporation at any salary he 
 might choose to ask. He refused the offer, on the 
 ground that he was responsible for the financial manage- 
 ment of the two independent companies, and that his 
 partners were not practical stone men. He was pressed 
 to accept the offer, but positively refused, as he said, to 
 leave his inexperienced stockholders in the lurch. Then 
 the Western Stone Company offered to buy out his 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 29 
 
 interest in the two concerns, if he would accept the man- 
 agement offered. He declined to sell. After that it 
 offered to buy all the stock of both the Joliet and Cres- 
 cent. To this Mr. Madden replied he would say nothing 
 until he had consulted his partners. He placed the prop- 
 osition before them, They were a good deal surprised at 
 the loyalty of their Manager. The acceptance of the 
 corporation's offer would have placed him at the very 
 head of the stone business in the United States, with 
 unlimited capital for operation. That was a most envia- 
 ble position for any man, especially for one scarce thirty- 
 five years of age. They asked him for a frank statement 
 of his desire in the affair as well as of the advice he 
 thought best. He did not hesitate to admit that the 
 proposal was agreeable to him and in the line of his com- 
 mercial ambition; nor did he conceal his conviction that 
 the salary proffered was much greater than the business 
 of his partners would enable them to pay him. He 
 thought the best solution would lie in a sale of the Joliet 
 and Crescent, if that could be effected on satisfactory 
 terms. Then, he said, their investment would remain in 
 his management under more advantageous conditions. 
 If they took cash for their stock, At might be difficult to 
 invest it as well as it was already placed, but if they 
 managed to have it merged in the larger company it 
 might yield still greater dividends. However, if his 
 partners concluded to hold on to their independent busi- 
 ness, he would stay with them. 
 
 They quickly agreed to sell, proposing an attempt to 
 merge. They put the price of all the stock in both their 
 companies at the high figure of $350,000, but empowered 
 Madden to make the best disposition of "it he could. He 
 
30 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 at once saw the powers of the Western Stone Company, 
 and within half an hour sold to them the stock of the 
 Joliet and Crescent for $300,000 in the shares of the 
 corporation, a far better deal than for $350,000 cash. 
 The contract of sale included his employment as Vice- 
 President and Manager of the Western Stone Company. 
 
 This concern now had the sole quarrying and sale of 
 all the Athens limestone known to be available in the 
 neighborhood of Chicago. As Vice-President and Man- 
 ager, Madden at once set about the task of increasing the 
 business of his employers. He introduced labor-saving 
 devices to improve the efficiency of the company's labor. 
 This was for the purpose of decreasing the cost of pro- 
 duction and increasing the sales by broadening the 
 market for all forms of the stone. 
 
 It was not long before the President of the company 
 became aware that much new business was being secured 
 and transacted that he had no hand in. He misunder- 
 stood the duties of his office and supposed that he was to 
 be consulted about every detail. He soon adopted the 
 policy of interference, and carried it so far as to prohibit 
 the initiation of any new method in the management of 
 the corporation's varied operations until he had been 
 consulted. As he was a very rich man, engaged in many 
 other enterprises and seldom about the premises of the 
 Western Stone Company, his attitude, if acquiesced in, 
 would leave the Manager idle a great part of the time. 
 The result would be a loss of orders and a diversion of 
 much trade the company might secure. To a man of 
 Madden's energy and practical knowledge this was fool- 
 ish as well as exasperating. He at once hunted up his 
 superior to bring matters to an issue. The Manager 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 31 
 
 claimed that it was his province to run the business, 
 make sales, attend to the collections, and earn the divi- 
 dends, under whatever policy the Board of Directors 
 should adopt, and that the President's duty was confined 
 to seeing that the policy was adhered to. As long as the 
 Manager, who was always present, correctly adhered to 
 the outlined policy, the matter of details was altogether 
 one of management, he alone being responsible for 
 results and employed to accomplish them. The situation 
 was delicate. The President was Chairman of the Board 
 of Directors at the time, and felt that he was called upon 
 to manage as well as direct. The directors were all 
 rich, prominent and powerful men, and, without looking 
 closely into the merits of the question, seemed to indorse 
 the President's view. The latter was really unable to 
 give sufficient time to become well acquainted with all 
 the circumstances necessary to keep in view for the 
 proper carrying on of such an immense business. His 
 attitude was one of obstruction, dangerous to the stock- 
 holders' interests, and likely to produce successful com- 
 petition. One day he carried much indignation into the 
 office of the Manager and criticised him severely for 
 arousing the animosity of outside competitors. "Why," 
 said the President, "with your mechanical appliances you 
 are reducing the price of stone to such a point that your 
 undersales are provoking criticism. The men in the 
 trade all over the country are sending in complaints to 
 the board all the time. This thing must be stopped, or 
 the company will not have a friend left in the trade." 
 
 It seemed useless to argue with a powerful man labor- 
 ing under such a trade misconception. The Manager, 
 however, felt sure of his ground, and pointed out the 
 
32 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 danger of allowing competitors to regulate the policy of 
 the company. He maintained that the only way to carry 
 on the business was to increase the sales as much as pos- 
 sible in every legitimate way. The best way of all was 
 to reduce the prices of stone to the lowest point attaina- 
 ble, by every scheme available, to attract, enlarge and 
 retain trade, letting competitors look out for themselves. 
 To protect them by refusing to adopt economical devices 
 and methods was to share with them business that prop- 
 erly belonged to the corporation's own stockholders. 
 The President w T as obdurate. He even went so far as to 
 appoint a sort of superintendent to take his own place 
 during necessary absence and to- assist the Manager in 
 retarding the business. 
 
 Mr. Madden declined to permit the new appointee to 
 have anything to do with the management of the busi- 
 ness, even to draw a salary. His own pay was a matter 
 of contract, as was his position. He then assembled the 
 many stockholders who had invested their money in the 
 company's shares on the strength of his management, 
 explained the situation to them, and asked to be relieved 
 of responsibility for the care of their investments. He 
 urged the abolition of his office because its duties were 
 so usurped by the President that there was no field for 
 vice-presidential work. There was a general demurrer to 
 this and a clearing of the atmosphere. He was asked 
 to take the presidency. This he positively refused to do. 
 He preferred the management if. it could be freed from 
 unnecessary interference so that he would be able to 
 develop trade and earn dividends. The consultation 
 resulted in his retention of his office and a modified inter- 
 ference. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 33 
 
 The effects of the panic of 1893 were becoming more 
 widespread and a general stoppage of building and public 
 improvements was going on. The division of power and 
 maladjustment of duties in the management tended still 
 to impede the seeking of trade and the earning of income, 
 and in 1894 the corporation's business reached the point 
 of serious loss. That brought the stockholders and direc- 
 tors to the whole truth. They lost no time in reorganiz- 
 ing the entire management. They made the presidency 
 the managerial office of the concern and elected Mr. 
 Madden to the place. He accepted and was installed on 
 the 16th of January, 1895. 
 
 The water-carrier of Lemont, after footing every 
 round of the ladder, was now at the very top. The new 
 President had gone through every experience in the 
 stone trade. He was the most thoroughly experienced 
 and enlightened man in the business in the entire coun- 
 try, and had the wjdest knowledge of the building 
 industry. It had taken him thirty long years of hard toil 
 to gain his mental equipment. He was asked to take the 
 supreme control of the largest and most completely 
 organized concern for the quarrying, handling and 
 marketing of building stone in the world; to earn divi- 
 dends on the immense property and to do it in the period 
 of the greatest depression ever known to the trade. He 
 took hold of his task with as much confidence as he dis- 
 played when he carried his first bucket of water. He 
 had a capital of $2,500,000. The stockholders were all 
 rich and able, as well as willing, to put up all the assess- 
 ments that might be needed. There were 50 boats and 
 500 teams of horses at the yards; 2,700 men were at 
 work. There was a deficit in the past year's accounts of 
 8 
 
34 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 $90,000 and a debt of $158,000. He at once increased 
 the expenditures $108,000 to improve the equipment. 
 He cut off 400 useless salaries. He reduced the cost of 
 quarrying, cutting and transporting the output 33 1-3 per 
 cent. He put down prices and enlarged the demand. 
 He sold 12,000 carloads of cut stone in outside markets 
 that year, besides hundreds of boat-loads in Chicago. 
 From the very first day of his term he increased the 
 receipts so that he was enabled to make money by 
 advancing cash on outstanding current debts and in this 
 way discounted every bill against the house during the 
 year. When he gave account at the end of twelve 
 months to his employers, he turned over clear receipts 
 for the debts, 4 per cent, net on every dollar of the stock, 
 and a business larger and more profitable than the 
 investors had ever before had for their money. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LABOR SAVING INVENTIONS — MADDEN S METHOD OF INTRODUCING 
 THEM — LABOR'S FRIEND. 
 
 THE principal difficulty experienced in the manage- 
 ment of the large number of skilled laborers it was 
 necessary to keep employed in the development of the 
 Lemont and Joliet stone quarries was in the introduction 
 of machinery. The men were getting high wages, labor 
 was scarce, the workers realized the value of the monopoly 
 they had, and they were jealous and watchful of their 
 own interests. Much of the time the demand for stone 
 kept ahead of the supply. A strike at any period was 
 calamitous for the companies. To attempt to increase 
 the output by the introduction of machinery was gener- 
 ally perilous. It could under few circumstances be 
 brought in without the consent of the men. They had 
 been taught by their leaders that labor-saving machines 
 were rivals to human hands, and their attitude was 
 usually one of opposition. The task of meeting the diffi- 
 culty was always imposed on Madden. In him the men 
 had confidence. They had seen him labor like them- 
 selves. He had always been their friend. His sym- 
 pathies were, as a rule, with them in their differences 
 with the employers. He had risen in their sight by pure 
 merit. Every accession of power that had come to him 
 had been earned; not one had been sought, schemed for, 
 
 35 
 
36 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 or secured by any kind of outside aid. The more powerful 
 he grew the better their interests were cared for. What- 
 ever he had to say was listened to. 
 
 Madden himself devised most of the mechanical con- 
 trivances put into the quarries. From the time he fin- 
 ished his studies in mechanical drawing and civil engin- 
 eering it had been his idea that the business of handling 
 stone should be gradually transformed until it became 
 like that of handling lumber. Instead of blasting out 
 unshaped masses and putting them on the market as they 
 came from the quarries, they should be shorn of waste, 
 he thought, and put into form where taken out. That 
 would at the beginning lessen prices by cutting off trans- 
 portation charges on useless material. The decrease in 
 price thus obtained would enlarge the demand and 
 increase the quarrying. 
 
 The men easily saw that, and there was not much 
 trouble in bringing about a combination of cutting and 
 blasting at the works. They rather liked the increase of 
 the laboring population brought about by the combina- 
 tion. It raised the value of lots and the circulation of 
 money in the neighborhood, and made business thrive. 
 
 Then the number of forms was increased. This went 
 on until Madden, had succeeded in getting into stock 
 shapes all sizes of steps, balustrades, newel posts, door 
 and window sills and tops, door and window side uprights, 
 hearth-stones and chimney cappings, in addition to the 
 old stock forms of flagging, paving and curbing blocks. 
 Each new form added to the old jobbing stock was the 
 result of much investigation of the possibilities of the 
 building market, as it had to be put into competition 
 with lumber stocks. But Madden thought that stone 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 37 
 
 might with advantage be worked into the market as a 
 competitor of the inflammable and perishable material. 
 When he had succeeded in finding sale for all the shapes 
 in which stone might take the place of wood in the staple 
 parts of building material, the problem became one of 
 holding and enlarging the market. That brought it 
 down to the question of cost of production solely. The 
 cutters saw this. The quarrymen were, of course, with 
 Madden in his efforts to increase the sales of the finished 
 stone. So w r ere the cutters, if it augmented their earn- 
 ings or added to their number without cutting down 
 wages. But it was not easy to get more masons. The 
 subject of new machinery had, therefore, to be met. 
 
 Madden devised a number of machines for drilling, 
 sawing, planing, squaring, roughing and otherwise 
 masoning the stone. He proposed their introduction one 
 by one, demonstrating in each case that the appliance, 
 having to be operated by a skilled mason, lessened his 
 work by throwing most of the hard part of it on the 
 machine. It, therefore, increased the man's efficiency 
 and lightened his toil. In the next place, it enabled 
 each man to greatly increase his day's output. If the 
 market did riot increase, this, of course, would enable 
 the company to supply it with less masons. On the 
 other hand, the vastly enlarged manufacture at practi- 
 cally no increased cost, because the machines would 
 become part of the plant, would enable the company to 
 reduce prices so as to sell all the present number of 
 masons employed could turn out. If the lessened prices 
 could be got down to the point where stone would be 
 preferable to wood, then the demand for stone would be 
 so enlarged that it would require more masons to supply 
 
38 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 it. In that case the machines would not only make the 
 work of the masons easier, but would enlarge the num- 
 ber employed, and might even result in higher wages for 
 less actual hard work. No reasonable cutter would strike 
 against an experiment with such an end in view. 
 
 By such consideration of the feelings of the men, and 
 through demonstrations all looking to their interest, 
 Madden succeeded in gradually introducing every one of 
 his many inventions. In every case, without an excep- 
 tion, his theories, as he placed them before the men, 
 worked out better than he had ever intimated they 
 would. He had always made it a rule in his dealings 
 with his men to tell them the truth; to never dissimulate 
 or equivocate at all; and to always theorize or promise 
 moderately and as far as possible within the mark. The 
 quarrymen and masons were accustomed to seeing his 
 word result better than his pledge. As one after another 
 of .his labor-saving devices came into use, the company's 
 business grew until the total historical result was that 
 the quarries quintupled the number of their employes 
 and wages all around were exactly trebled. The 
 machines had enabled the management to reduce the 
 wholesale prices of the principal staple forms of stone 
 from 52 to 16 cents a piece; from 87 to 35 cents a piece; 
 from $1.50 to 50 cents a piece; and of all other shapes 
 proportionately. The market as a result was enormously 
 and permanently enlarged and the stockholders profited 
 as well as the men. 
 
 It is a fact that to-day (July, 1900) the men employed 
 by the companies under Mr. Madden's management are 
 the best paid stone workers in America, and their work 
 is lightened by most efficient mechanical appliances. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 39 
 
 The lowest form of labor engaged in any of his quarries 
 receives 25 cents a day more than the same class of work 
 gets anywhere else in the world. He has always been 
 the workingman's friend. His sympathies are naturally 
 with the poor. He understands poverty and realizes how 
 much of it is due altogether to fortune. As a business 
 man he knows that the best labor is the happiest; the 
 happiest the best'paid. His studies in political economy 
 have shown him that the two interests in this world that 
 need wages — that cannot subsist without them — capital 
 and labor, are necessarily partners in the firm of Produc- 
 tion; that labor will best enable capital to get its wages, 
 interest, when capital best helps labor to get its pay, 
 wages. Where he lives, in the community where his 
 entire laborious, useful life has been spent, since his youth 
 in public, responsible capacities, he is recognized by all 
 as the fairest man to the interests of both capital and 
 labor. The recognition of his position in this respect is 
 so general and so undisputed that in most cases of dis- 
 pute he is solicited by both sides to act as arbiter. And 
 such is the confidence in his intelligence and uprightness 
 that when controversies are placed with him for decision, 
 in all cases wherein he can incline to neither side, both 
 retreat from their contention and leave the adjustment to 
 his individual creation. 
 
 While conducting the large and complicated business 
 of the Western Stone Company, Mr. Madden also acted 
 as Treasurer of the Legnard-Madden Brick Company, 
 Treasurer of the Cable Building and Loan Association, 
 Director of the Garden City Banking & Trust Company, 
 Director of the Commercial and Loan Company, and 
 Trustee of the State Reformatories. 
 
40 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 He was selected by Governor Altgeld for the latter 
 office because of the financial talent needed in the man- 
 agement of the new building at Pontiac, which was to 
 cost $500,000 and be capable of properly housing 1,500 
 inmates. 
 
 As bank and building and loan association director, 
 Mr. Madden solved the problem of eliminating the evil 
 of. one-man power from the institutions with which he 
 was connected — the evil that invariably results in the 
 financial destruction of every fiscal enterprise in which it 
 is permitted to hold sway. In the banking business he 
 insisted on having the President confined in his work to 
 carrying out the instructions of the directors and on hav- 
 ing them consider, decide and order every action involv- 
 ing the responsible use of the funds. To prevent abuse 
 of power on the one hand and neglect on the other in the 
 management of association business, necessarily left 
 largely in the hands of the one official under salary and 
 always on duty, Mr. Madden conceived and had put into 
 practice the plan of limiting the expenses to such a per- 
 centage on the money authorized by the directory to be 
 loaned as would make it to the interest of the Manager 
 to keep that sum out and at the same time prevent finan- 
 cial abuses. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONTRACTOR CARELESS — THE MISTAKE OF TOLERATING DISHON- 
 ESTY — ACCEPTING PUNISHMENT. 
 
 IN any large business wherein the policy is formed and 
 controlled by a board of directors and carried out by 
 the executive head of the concern, while he necessarily 
 has a large discretion it must often happen that his 
 actions will be hampered or assisted by the unofficial con- 
 duct of the members. It is difficult indeed to obtain a 
 perfect business manager. He must be a man who 
 thoroughly understands the business he is trusted to 
 conduct, who can be depended upon to get out of it all 
 the results his stockholders are entitled to obtain, and 
 who at the same time possesses, and will exercise, the 
 tact to inspire all his employers to let him have his own 
 way entirely. Mr. Madden's experience and his knowl- 
 edge of himself made him self-reliant. He was willing 
 to be advised and always invited counsel, but early in his 
 business career he had discovered that he was far more 
 apt than most of his commercial associates to go to the 
 bottom of things before taking action. He, therefore, 
 depended not only on his own judgment but upon his 
 impressions of men, particularly those formed of a man 
 acting off guard. 
 
 A well-known and large dealing contractor called one 
 day at the offices of the Western Stone Companv to enquire 
 
 41 
 
42 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 about the prices of many sizes of building stone. He 
 presented good references and established sufficient 
 credit for the transaction on hand, and after more or less 
 bargaining placed a large order for material. Mr. Mad- 
 den, in issuing instructions for its delivery, cautioned 
 the executive clerks to conduct the details of all dealings 
 with this man with especial care. The contractor had 
 made so good an impression by his personal appearance, 
 manner, and general way of carrying on his part of the 
 negotiation, that the caution attracted much attention. 
 One of the officers of the company asked why this cus- 
 tomer had been singled out for special remark. 4l Be- 
 cause," replied Madden, "he is handling other people's 
 money and is not careful enough to get full value for all 
 he pays out. " 
 
 4 'Why, he is one of the easiest men to deal with that 
 ever came here for material," was rejoined; "he didn't 
 haggle at all. We got through with him in no time/' 
 
 "That's just it. Whenever a man who is spending 
 funds entrusted to him is not particular enough to haggle 
 for all he can get for the money, he is Hot as honest as a 
 man should be. This man did not push matters here at 
 all; if he had been diligent he might have made a much 
 better bargain. Why should we not watch him when 
 he himself places right before us evidence of his unreli- 
 ability?" 
 
 The contractor continued his patronage and it was 
 valuable. He always paid his bills promptly and became 
 such a favorite in the office that he received especial con- 
 sideration each time he came. In most of his dealings, 
 however, there was some little looseness. He would fail 
 sometimes to insist on getting certain pieces of stone 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 43 
 
 due, or carelessly approve accounts superficial examina- 
 tion would have shown to be incorrectly tallied against 
 him. The office was continually finding out and correct- 
 ing these errors on its own initiative. The head clerks 
 used these incidents as arguments in favor of the cus- 
 tomer. "You see," they would say, "he has absolute 
 confidence in the company; he knows it will not see 
 him cheated; it all shows what a good reputation we 
 have." 
 
 "On the contrary," the General Manager would reply, 
 "it shows that the company is constantly making gifts 
 to the man to save his backers from the losses his own 
 infidelity to their trust would otherwise cause them. We, 
 of course, do not want and would not keep anything he 
 pays for; but no man is altogether square who does not 
 get all that others trust him to buy after he pays their 
 money for it. Such a man is either intentionally or 
 unintentionally not quite honest. He should be watched, 
 for often such lapses as this man is continually making 
 here are intentional. When they are, he will record them 
 all in his memory as an investment against this house, 
 and in his own good time he will attempt to realize upon 
 them by some assumption or demand which he will cal- 
 culate we cannot then very well refuse. It is my order 
 that his account be scrupulously kept and that extra care 
 be taken that no debit shall arise against us through any 
 lapse of his." 
 
 Some of the executive clerks attributed this to preju- 
 dice, but Mr. Madden was sure he entertained no preju- 
 dice except what the customer's methods would naturally 
 arouse in any conscientious business man. The con- 
 tractor's personality was so engaging that it would be dif- 
 
44 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ficult not to like him. His way of doing business was 
 alone objectionable. 
 
 Matters went along in this way for about five years, 
 during which the business relations between the company 
 and the contractor continued as above described. The 
 General Manager had about concluded to allow the senti- 
 ment of the office to control his judgment in its dealings 
 with Mr. Careless, and to keep the prejudice he could 
 not stifle all to himself. 
 
 About this time the city was hurrying up the work 
 of track elevation within the corporate limits. An 
 important section of work, which would cost $1,000,000 
 to accomplish, was about to be let, and Mr. Careless was 
 anxious to secure it. On one of his business visits to 
 the offices of the Western Stone Company, he disclosed 
 his desire to Mr. Madden and asked him for a personal 
 letter of introduction to the President of the company 
 that would let the $1,000,000 job. This gentleman and 
 Mr. Madden were close friends, but Careless gave no 
 indication that he was aware of that. The request was 
 a fair one under all the circumstances — it was for a mere 
 letter of introduction from one business man to another 
 for a customer who had largely patronized the one and 
 wished to make a proposal to the other. As President 
 of the stone company, Mr. Madden wrote the letter. 
 In it he simply affirmed that he had known the bearer 
 in a business way for about five years; that he was a con- 
 tractor who understood his business; that he had pur- 
 chased a great deal of material from the Western Stone 
 Company during the period mentioned, and had always 
 paid the bills for it promptly. 
 
 A few days after giving this letter Mr. Madden was 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 45 
 
 called to the long distance telephone by some one 600 
 miles away who wished to speak to him on an important 
 matter. It was th6 President. "Madden, your friend, 
 Careless, has presented your letter of recommendation to me 
 along with a bid for that $1,000,000 contract. We want 
 to give it to him on your account, but his bid is altogether 
 too high. We have told him to reduce it, and that then 
 we'll give him the job. He needn't make his figures the 
 lowest, with the testimonials he has." 
 
 The President was acquainted with Madden's habit of 
 conservatism in business correspondence and had without 
 any study extended the meaning of the letter. There 
 was no man in the city the company would rather have 
 interested in the construction work going on than the 
 President of the Western Stone Company. 
 
 Contractor Careless, it is needless to say, obtained the 
 contract. When the award had been made he called 
 upon Mr. Madden and asked him to become bondsman 
 for fulfillment of the contract. While holding this 
 request under consideration he received over the 'phone, 
 from the letting company's office, a request that he 
 endorse the contract as bondsman, since the Western 
 Stone Company was furnishing all the cut stone used by 
 the different contractors in the work going on, the let- 
 ting companies obligating themselves to see that the 
 Western would be paid. To this message there was 
 nothing to answer except assent. 
 
 At this time Mr. Madden had completed preparations 
 for taking a holiday trip to Europe with his wife, and 
 was on the point of departure. He found that the con- 
 tractor had secured as his other bondsman an intimate 
 wealthy business friend of Mr. Madden. Hastily con- 
 
46 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ferring with him it was agreed that before endorsing 
 the contract it should be arranged that the bondsmen 
 should have the selection of a mutual friend to superin- 
 tend the work done under it, for their protection, the 
 choice to be left to Mr. Madden's colleague. 
 
 The bond required placed the signers under a $50,000 
 obligation to see that the work was done according to 
 the specifications send that all bills should be paid as they 
 fell due during the progress of the work. Just as Mr. 
 Madden was about to board his train on the way to enjoy 
 his vacation his secretary overtook him with the com- 
 pleted papers in the case and obtained his signature. 
 
 Work under .the contract was commenced at once, 
 with the superintendent chosen by the other bondsman 
 in charge as overseer. 
 
 Mr. Madden remained away altogether seven weeks. 
 When he reached the quarantine station at New York 
 on his return, he received by special delivery, a telegram 
 from Chicago, marked "Rush." "Important." It 
 stated that everything had gone wrong in the contract 
 enterprise, and asked him to wait at the Fifth Avenue 
 Hotel until his fellow-bondsman should arrive, stating 
 that he would take the first train after being apprised of 
 the acceptance of the appointment, and urged a "rush" 
 answer. The whole situation disclosed itself, and a reply 
 was telegraphed to call Madden up by telephone at the 
 Hotel at two o'clock next afternoon. It was night, the 
 ship would have to lie at quarantine until sunrise, and 
 could hardly land its passengers in time to keep appoint- 
 ments in the city much befoi*e that hour. The vessel was 
 fortunate in getting through next day earlier than had 
 been calculated and Mr. Madden lost no time in calling 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 47 
 
 up his own office in Chicago by telephone and learning 
 the whole story of the trouble. Thus equipped he met. 
 his partner at the wire at two o'clock and then got his 
 tale. It didn't differ much from the one already received, 
 but it contained the statement that the bondsman had 
 already been compelled to pay out over $70,000 in 
 cash, besides assuming unknown amounts of liability, 
 and that things would have been much worse but for the 
 diligence of the superintendent. Madden said he would 
 take the first through train home; it would pass Elkhart, 
 Ind. , at a certain hour; if the overseer would board the 
 train there with a full written statement of the accounts 
 and able to give complete explanations, a plan of action 
 might be devised by the time Chicago was reached. At 
 the Indiana town the overseer boarded the cars and 
 Madden and he were soon engaged in sifting the case. 
 It required but a short time and but little questioning 
 to convince Mr. Madden that his informant was either at 
 sea on the facts, or was in collusion with the contractor 
 and was attempting to deceive him, as he felt he had 
 probably fooled the other bondsman. His repeated 
 efforts to secure the contractor's dismissal and his boast- 
 ings of how he had worked night and day to prevent 
 matters from becoming worse then they were suggested 
 in some way dishonesty. Towards him an inquisitive 
 but non-committal policy was maintained the remainder 
 of the journey. Soon after the train left Elkhart a tele- 
 gram was received asking for a meeting at nine o'clock 
 that night in Chicago. As the train was not due until 
 that hour, it was evident that the waiting partner was in 
 an excited frame of mind and that the condition of the 
 
48 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 business was growing worse. An appointment was tele- 
 graphed for the next morning. 
 
 As soon as the city was "reached Mr. Madden saw his 
 wife home and* spent the night getting the real facts. 
 When these were in hand it was apparent that unques- 
 tionable control of the case would have to be obtained 
 and that a large amount of cash would be needed early 
 in the morning. The times were hard and money was 
 difficult to raise even under the most favorable circum- 
 stances. Nevertheless, it was got. 
 
 The partners met next morning, the one naturally 
 feverish, but the other steady and fixed for action. 
 44 We've been robbed!" exclaimed the one. "I've already 
 been obliged to put up $70,000 in cash, in these times 
 when money is the hardest thing in the world to get. 
 I've had to stand pat on the contract and assume all 
 kinds of liability. There are 1,800 men at work. I have 
 had to pay all their wages now for seven weeks, and 
 there's no way of letting them go. I'm nearly distracted 
 over the whole business. And here you are as placid as 
 if nothing at all had happened. Are you not worried 
 over this thing?" 
 
 44 No, it's too serious for worrying or being nervous. 
 We need our energies for work. That is the only thing 
 that will save us both from far more serious cause for 
 worry." 
 
 44 Well, but what are you going to do; what can you 
 do?" 
 
 44 The first thing I am going to do is to pay you back 
 the money you have lost and the money you have paid 
 out on my account. You have, I find, paid out, under 
 the demands of the contract we endorsed, $70,000 in 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 49 
 
 wages. Half of that I am responsible for; the other half 
 you are. But you would not have risked this responsi- 
 bility except for my partnership. There's $35,000 in 
 cash. It makes you whole for your half of the loss. The 
 other half, which you have voluntarily advanced for me, 
 I will make good to you. That will leave you without 
 any loss on the contract and just where you started. 
 Now we can talk business. " 
 
 The atmosphere being now cleared and calm, Mr. 
 Madden told his partner this: the overseer was worse 
 than the contractor. The contract had simply been 
 worked as a means of securing business in other direc- 
 tions. Politicians with influence in the letting of con- 
 tracts had been supplied with guarantees of votes by put- 
 ting their workers on the pay-roll with nothing to do but 
 district organizing. There were hundreds of such 
 already on the contractor's books, not one of whom had 
 lifted a shovel. It was the excess of cash expenditure on 
 this wage account over the amount of actual construction 
 done and collected for, that had been dunned out of the 
 bondsman. The conspiracy was unquestionably the 
 device mainly of the overseer. The contractor might 
 calculate on getting other jobs for this political help, but 
 the real conspirator was the superintendent. He was 
 worse than the other man and must be dismissed at 
 once. 
 
 Next the whole work of construction must be shut 
 down to end expense, and not be resumed until the 
 whole business was purged. 
 
 To the dismissal of his own appointee the bondsman 
 reluctantly consented but he jumped at the general 
 proposition. 
 
 4 
 
50 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 The two then agreed to send for a lawyer. When he 
 came, Mr. Madden explained the affair to him and said 
 that he had decided to secure the assignment of the 
 entire contract over to the bondsmen, with all monies 
 due and owing, and a bill of sale for all materials on 
 hand and arranged for, tools and everything. The law- 
 yer saw great difficulty in compelling any man to assign 
 such a valuable contract. "Tell Careless," said Mad- 
 den, "that if he refuses to assign we will go to law for 
 relief as bondsmen and allege as grounds all we know; if 
 he consents, we will retain him to carry on the work as 
 long as he does so to our satisfaction. ' ' The attorney 
 put his great skill at once to work and procured the 
 assignment, taking care to make the employment clause 
 in the consideration optional with his clients as to con- 
 tinuance. When the assignment had been secured, 
 "What are you going to do with the contract now that 
 you have it?" Mr. Madden was asked. "Sub-let it?" 
 To everybody's amazement he answered: "Operate it 
 myself. I'll take charge of the work. " 
 
 He did. He had reached Chicago on September 5th. 
 It had taken him two days to complete his investigation, 
 pay his partner, get rid of the overseer, obtain the assign- 
 ment and hire Careless. He began work on September 
 7th. He found 1,800 men on the pay roll. He was sat- 
 isfied 800 were all he needed. Selecting that number of 
 the most efficient, he dismissed the rest When Careless 
 began again, as he soon did, to pad the pay rolls, Madden 
 discharged him and put in his place an expert of his 
 own selection. It was not long before Careless began to 
 make demands under legal advice for various rights 
 claimed under the original contract or through the alleged 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 51 
 
 invalidity of the assignment. Madden treated these as 
 attempts at blackmail and to make his way clearer had 
 the letting company make a new contract with him and 
 his fellow-bondsman direct. 
 
 The work was suspended for a while in November. 
 At that time stock was taken. Madden had recouped 
 the whole $70,000 originally lost and had $8,000 net 
 profit besides. 
 
 When work was resumed, all sorts of schemes were 
 devised to beat the new invaders in the contracting field. 
 Superintendents from the concern letting the work con- 
 stantly interfered with it, demanding all sorts of changes 
 in the specifications. Every reasonable change was 
 assented to but charged up. They amounted to more 
 than $60,000 in the additional expense of carrying on the 
 construction, and the company was so struck with the 
 reasonableness of the demand for compensation for the 
 changes that it ordered the amount added to the contract 
 bill. 
 
 The work was finished in the following November, 
 and was so carried on that it was not allowed to interfere 
 in any way with Mr. Madden's care of any other of his 
 numerous business duties. When he closed the books he 
 divided $60,000 net profit with his partner bondsman, 
 in addition to the previous $70,000 that had canceled 
 their early loss. 
 
 "There," said he, "ends the punishment for not 
 adhering to a first well-founded impression.'* 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE {USTICE OF FRIENDSHIP — THE DEMANDS OF LAW — FRIEND- 
 SHIP SAVES. 
 
 THE demands of legal justice are often unjust. They 
 sometimes deprive the world of the services of 
 good men. To properly thwart the unfair claims of the 
 law calls for the action of a person who must himself be 
 beyond suspicion and good indeed. Business men are 
 sometimes called upon to face much unsound criticism 
 because a correct sense of right impels them to withstand 
 popular clamor in cases wherein the public, even with all 
 the facts, is incapable of true insight into the actual 
 merits of the happening. 
 
 For its own protection the Western Stone Company 
 adopted a plan of closing its books on the last day of 
 each month. No matter what the amount of business 
 done the arrangement required the balancing of accounts 
 by midnight on the last day of each lunar division. 
 
 At eleven o'clock on such a night one of the young 
 men in the office had not yet reported for duty after the 
 evening meal. He must be ill, it was .thought, as it was 
 the first time during the twelve long years of his faithful 
 service such an absence had occurred, and he was well 
 aware the staff was overtaxed. The books were all sat- 
 isfactorily closed by extra work without his aid. Next 
 morning he continued absent. Everybody in the estab- 
 lishment grew concerned and the books were opened 
 
 52 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 53 
 
 anew without his presence. When noon arrived without 
 him, anxiety ga\i$ way to dread, and a special messenger 
 was dispatched to his boarding house to learn the nature 
 of the malady. He was not there. He had gone away 
 the night before in as good' health as he ever had. No 
 explanation was left by him; he had simply disappeared. 
 He had been with the company over half his life and 
 had risen from one clerkship to another until he had 
 become cashier, entirely trusted with the handling of the 
 hundreds of thousands of dollars that every year found 
 their way to and from the corporation's strong box. He 
 was handsome, talented, modest, accommodating, inval- 
 uable, and only twenty-two years of age. He was moral 
 and had no bad habits. He must have met with some 
 accident or unfair play, since his accounts balanced to a 
 penny. 
 
 Some long head threw out the suggestion, " Tally the 
 bank book with the cash book." The tally was tried. 
 There was $5,150 difference. That much had come into 
 the office that had not gone into the bank. As the miss- 
 ing man received all the cash as well as made the 
 deposits, the discrepancy could be explained by him only. 
 Perhaps he did not wish to give the explanation and to 
 avoid it remained away. More research showed that on 
 one day during the past four the company's credit at the 
 bank received $1,500 less than the cash receipts; on 
 another, $1,500; on still another, $1,500, and on the last 
 of the four, $650 less. It was too plain — the young man 
 had gone wrong. 
 
 In the whole history of the company no man connected 
 with its management had ever been so upset as was the 
 President when he was made aware of this. With no 
 
54 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 abatement of * his affection for the youth, he put on his 
 hat, took all his energy with him, and se^t out on a search 
 for the truth. 
 
 It was the races. The cashier had run against the 
 races and had lost? The President learned all there was 
 in the whole story. He came back to his office sad, sorry 
 as a strong man can be. He thought awhile. Then he 
 drew out his personal bank check book, filled out an order 
 for $5,150 payable to the order of the Western Stone 
 Company, signed it, took it to the Directors' room, 
 handed it to the proper official and said: 4 'That covers 
 the whole amount of the company's loss. Take it and 
 call it square." 
 
 * 'But that would condone the offense. It would let 
 the cashier off. That'll never do. He must be arrested 
 and punished." 
 
 "No," said the President, "he must not be arrested 
 and disgraced. He is not guilty. He is not to blame. 
 I know, for I have found out. I make the company 
 whole. Let that end it and stop the fuss. I'll find the 
 young man, and don't you go on sending him to the devil. 
 Leave the boy to me." 
 
 Everybody in that office knew that what the President 
 said must be true — true, too, in just the way he said it. 
 He was the man to chase wrong clear around the world 
 and then clear off it. But right — well, right knew him 
 for a friend. 
 
 But the thing got out. There are tongues that have 
 no business but bad business. They work a thousand 
 times harder than the tongues that praise. And so the 
 police got astir. The police befriended the reporters, 
 and then the editors began to palaver justice. And all 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 55 
 
 the time the only person that knew anything about the 
 case was the President, and he was out trying to baffle 
 the whole crowd. He engaged the-smartest detectives 
 in town and said to them: "Go find that young man. 
 When you've found him take him in my name, and tell 
 him to trust me as he always did. Put him some place 
 where he can't be got at. Don't bother him -with ques- 
 tions and don't let anyone else. But make no record, 
 and, beyond all, no charge. And don't break his heart 
 by letting him think he's under arrest." 
 
 The men went. But remorse beat them. The cashier 
 had given himself up at a- police station just before the 
 detectives arrived there in their quest. They succeeded 
 in carrying out the rest of their instructions. 
 
 The President made haste to the station, re-estab- 
 lished relations with the boy, and obtained a clean breast 
 from him. They had got from him, in the first place, all 
 he had, the $2,500 it had taken him twelve years to save. 
 Then he saw how easy it would be to get that back with 
 the money he had on hand as executor of a young girl's 
 estate. The $1,800 he had in his safety deposit box 
 belonging to a fellow clerk would surely fetch both back. 
 There was so much now out that nothing but the com- 
 pany's $5,150 would ever save him and the girl and the 
 clerk. And then, the awakening; with no iiope left. 
 He wanted to go right away to the penitentiary, where he 
 would never again see any people but people like him- 
 self, so he could look in someone's face. He couldn't 
 live unless he could look human beings in the face, and 
 outside Joliet there was no hope for him. 
 
 Newspapers can create a public appetite. This appe- 
 tite then must be satisfied, and the creators of the taste 
 
56 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 must furnish the victim to be devoured. They are bound 
 to care for their own progeny. Who is eaten is another 
 question. So it came that there was a public demand 
 for the destruction of the clerk. The demand began to 
 * press upon the Directors, and they commenced exertion 
 upon the President. He told them of the whirl that took 
 the clerk off his feet. He had been firmly on his feet 
 for twenty-two years, and was now on them, and no doubt 
 would remain erect the balance of his life unless the law 
 threw him down. He had lost his footing for only a few 
 days. He was dizzy when he went down; couldn't see 
 straight. He had been whirled. There had been a 
 woman, capable of blinding the moral'sight like Eve did 
 with the apple on Adam; and men adept in the art of 
 hypnotizing. These people had succeeded in creating a 
 period of moral unconsciousness in the life of the clerk, 
 a period during which he had to do what they wanted him 
 to do, and was not responsible. The Directors all thought 
 this, too, at first; but then the press was making 
 demands and so was the public, and it wouldn't do for 
 men conducting great business affairs to ignore what 
 the public demanded. They were inclined, therefore, to 
 insist upon the President doing his duty in response to 
 public sentiment, and having an indictment duly 
 brought. 
 
 The President saw the point, the point of sensibility 
 in the directory. The clerk had been the^most popular 
 man in the company's service with all the builders and 
 contractors in the city and for miles around who were in 
 the habit of coming to the office to buy and settle for 
 building stone. Scores of them .had been in to ask about 
 his fate. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 57 
 
 "It is left. in my hands, " said the President, "with 
 instructions to prosecute. " 
 
 "And can't the order be changed?" 
 
 "Not as long as the public demand calls for justice. 
 The Directors sympathize with the boy but are influ- 
 enced entirely in their decision to turn him over to the 
 law by the public demand." 
 
 "Public demand! There's nothing in that. You 
 can't lay your finger on it. Suppose there was a public 
 demand that had people in it, men you knew and could 
 calLby name. What effect would that have upon the 
 Directors?" 
 
 "It would be hard to tell until it appeared and tried 
 to do something." 
 
 "Well, we'll see." 
 
 Then a great petition asking the President of the 
 Western Stone Company to refrain from prosecuting the 
 cashier, who had attracted and retained so many cus- 
 tomers, etc., etc., was circulated for signatures. It came 
 back with hundreds and hundreds of autographs, with 
 the name of nearly every man and every firm that had 
 ever done any building, paving, or construction work in, 
 or anywhere near, the city of Chicago for many years 
 past. When the Board got that it called in the President 
 and said: "There has been a great change in public 
 opinion. Just look at these names. It appears that the 
 public is now almost unanimous in the opinion that the 
 company should not prosecute the case against the 
 cashier. Mr. President, you need not carry the case any 
 further." 
 
 And so a carriage went round by a back way, to avoid 
 reporters, and took the clerk to the President's house, 
 
58 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 where his wife had assembled many of the young man's 
 relatives, and he was turned over free to them and went 
 home with them. 
 
 He is a rising man in the world now and fills a 
 responsible position, and every week redeems part of his 
 debt. He has a bright, sound future. And nobody tells 
 this story as often as he does, since the newspapers made 
 it public, and no one else tells it so well. He relates it 
 that the real truth may be circulated to overtake and 
 destroy the lies, as well as to induce young men to abso- 
 lutely avoid having any financial dealings whatsoever 
 with any people in this world who are engaged in callings 
 not entirely respectable as well as legitimate. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ENTEkS PUBLIC LIFE— THE NOVICE AMONG ALDERMEN— A LUCKY 
 
 MISTAKE. 
 
 IT was inevitable that a man whose career had been so 
 conspicuously valuable to all who had entrusted him 
 with the care of their interests should be called upon to 
 assume some public duty in a community like that of 
 Chicago. The city was commencing to attract the atten- 
 tion of the world as a possible metropolis. Its expansion 
 was certain and was already being determined by events. 
 Mr. Madden had lived in the locality known for a long 
 time as the Fourth Ward for about seventeen years. 
 The district was proud of him as a resident and referred 
 to him as one of its principal examples of Chicago ability 
 and enterprise. 
 
 A deserving young man one day called upon him and 
 asked him for a letter of recommendation for a political 
 clerkship at the disposal of the representative of that part 
 of the ward in the City Council. Mr. Madden knew noth- 
 ing about the methods of handling patronage, nor any- 
 thing respecting the processes of politicians. The appli- 
 cant was fully competent and the letter was given. Not 
 long afterwards the recipient called again, said the recom- 
 mendation had not been effective, and requested Mr. 
 Madden to personally say a good word to the local dis- 
 penser of offices. He went to the trouble of doing this, 
 got a promise he deemed satisfactory, and supposed the 
 
 59 
 
60 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 affair to be then settled. In a week or so the young man 
 called again and reported that he was still unemployed. 
 Surprised, Madden made another trip and obtained more 
 positive assurances. But the applicant continued idle. 
 Then Madden went to headquarters to learn why such 
 shuttling was carried on. He was amazed at the dis- 
 covery that the representative who had made him so 
 much trouble was really unable to do anything in the 
 case. He had agreed to let a political organization which 
 had assisted in his election control the appointments 
 belonging to his district, and as this organization had no 
 interest in the ward the places properly belonging to its 
 quota had been filled by people living elsewhere. The 
 unfairness and the dilatory character of the whole pro- 
 ceeding aroused Madden's sense of justice. He criticized 
 the policy in vogue in a style that caused the most indus- 
 trious quotation and comment. 
 
 This attracted political attention to him for the first 
 time. His stand was so manly, straightforward and pop- 
 ular that requests began to reach him urging him to 
 accept a nomination to the City Council as one of the 
 representatives of the ward. At last these requests were 
 combined Into a great petition signed by 3,000 voters, 
 one-half of the total number entitled to suffrage in the 
 division. He accepted the nomination, equivalent, as he 
 thought, to a demand and election, and in April, 1889, 
 went sent by a plurality of 106 votes to represent the 
 Fourth Ward in the Board of Aldermen. 
 
 So little did he then know about what is called prac- 
 tical politics, notwithstanding his broad and deep educa- 
 tion regarding public affairs and principles, that when he 
 went to take his seat in the city legislature he entered 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 61 
 
 the city hall for the first time, and when the session 
 opened he saw for the first time a political branch of the 
 government in operation. 
 
 He had always been a Republican and as such had 
 been elected. But he was looked upon as so unsophisti- 
 cated politically by the managing members of his party 
 in the Board that when the committees were formed for 
 the session's work, the new member from the Fourth was 
 assigned to that on Wharves and Public Grounds. The 
 wharves were fixtures requiring little legislative atten- 
 tion and the public grounds were then of so little impor- 
 tance that putting a member on that committee was 
 something like sending him abroad to get rid of him. 
 The new member, however, did not know this, nor did he 
 even suspect it. He took it for granted that he was made 
 a committeeman to work. He studied the duties of his 
 new position. When he knew what they were, he saw 
 that there was a great deal to be done by his committee, 
 although it had not had much to attend to for a long 
 time. Its work had been so long appropriated by other 
 committees, which by usage had obtained title to it and 
 regular reference of it, that the one on Wharves and Pub- 
 lic Grounds for many sessions had seldom been heard of, 
 except in the list when some new member in the Board 
 was banished into it. It was not long before the legisla- 
 ture was regularly treated to surprises. Every time any- 
 thing properly belonging to the work Madden's commit- 
 tee was originally created to do was on the point of being 
 referred elsewhere, he arose and corrected the proceed- 
 ing and had the task sent where it should be attended 
 to. It seemed extraordinary at first that any man in the 
 Council should actually hunt for work, as the " green" 
 
62 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 member seemed to be doing. The older sitters thought 
 he would 4t get over it ;" but he did not. He kept on 
 until his committee was before the house oftener than 
 any other, and until the whole body was fully educated as 
 to its prerogatives, and all attempt to encroach upon 
 them was abandoned. By that time the annexation 
 movement, which more than quadrupled the city's terri- 
 tory, caused the creation of new divisions, and brought 
 the addition of immense park areas, had made of the 
 ignored committee the most desirable, if not the most 
 important, in the legislature, and all the members were 
 desirous of getting into it. The "greenhorn" from the 
 Fourth was, however, as a fellow-member expressed it, 
 now "at the head of the procession." He had attained 
 his position simply by attending to the business to 
 which he had been assigned. In the work he had dis- 
 played such intelligence, business ability and capacity 
 for "getting things through" that there was not the sug- 
 gestion of an effort to either supersede him or to inter- 
 fere with him. He was recognized as a great addition 
 to the Board, and his ward commenced to gain influence 
 in municipal legislation. 
 
 At the first meeting of the Republican members of the 
 Council after the appointment of the committees Madden 
 moved the adoption of a resolution pledging the mem- 
 bers to unity of action in all matters respecting the city's 
 welfare. He showed that some such action was neces- 
 sary. The party was in a minority in the Board. If its 
 vote always appeared solid in favor of good legislation 
 and against bad, it would retard the latter and help the 
 former, and besides create a public opinion that would 
 surely increase the party representation in future Coun- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 63 
 
 cils. This motion was greeted with surprise and pleas- 
 ure. It was adopted. It drew attention to the mover 
 and made him popular at once with his party associ- 
 ates. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PUBLIC SERVICE BEGINS— THE CHICAGO PROBLEM— THE SOLUTION 
 UNDERTAKEN. 
 
 IN the June following Madden's sudden advent into the 
 public life of Chicago, the great annexation movement 
 that had been agitating the community for a long time 
 culminated in the addition to the city of all the region 
 of Hyde Park, all of the town of Lake, all of Jefferson 
 township, all of that of Lake View, and part of Calumet 
 and Cicero townships. Never before was effected a 
 municipal enlargement so stupendous in the difficulties it 
 involved. When London expanded it simply took under 
 one municipal government all the finished, contiguous 
 and long adjusted parts of one great town. When 
 Greater New York was formed the act of consolidation 
 simply abolished separate local governments in the 
 different parts of a community that had long been hom- 
 ogeneous. 
 
 It was altogether different in Chicago. The old city 
 was compact, well built, well developed, and well gov- 
 erned. It contained but thirty-seven square miles of 
 territory. The occupied streets were graded, paved, 
 watered, sewered and lighted. The transportation sys- 
 tem was sufficient. The town was rectangular, long and 
 narrow, running north and south along Lake Michigan. 
 The tramways ran from the northern boundary to the 
 southern in thoroughfares a few blocks apart and suffi- 
 ciently accommodated the people. Hardly a cross-town 
 
 64 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 65 
 
 line existed. There had not been travel enough back 
 and forth across the narrow city to call into existence 
 tramways for its accommodation. The police, fire and 
 water service were more than ample. The water revenue 
 had a surplus in the treasury of $800,000. 
 
 All at once the town's area was increased from thirty- 
 seven square miles to 186. One hundred and forty-nine 
 square miles, more than four times the size of the old 
 cit}% was added at a stroke. This new territory was 
 practically rural or farm land. Little of it was improved 
 in an urban sense. So keen was the sense of speculation 
 on the part of most of the owners of all this farm land 
 that the act of consolidation inspired them to at once 
 have it staked off into city lots. So large, white and 
 dense were these stakes, that to travelers the city looked 
 for a long time as if surrounded by old-fashioned country 
 graveyards. There were few gradings, fewer pavements, 
 hardly any sidewalks, no lights, no police, no fire system, 
 no water mains, no sewerage. Here were 149 square 
 miles thrown all at once upon a rather small, well organ- 
 ized city, to sewer, water, light, grade, police and govern. 
 The new population wanted to be metropolitanized 
 immediately. It was given full representation in the 
 city legislature and it simply raised municipal pande- 
 monium over every postponement of the miraculous. 
 
 Thousands of smart, unscrupulous men rushed into the 
 territory, picked up bargains in unimproved land, sur 
 veyed and divided it into lots, put them on the market, 
 with guaranteed improvements, at high prices, and then 
 fell upon the Council with every art influence, scheme 
 and corrupt proposition deemed necessary to loot the cor- 
 poration and assist their speculations. 
 
 6 
 
66 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Hundreds of farmers' sons became ambitious to be 
 policemen or firemen. Their parents, now city tax- 
 payers, revenged themselves upon the men in town who 
 stood in their way. 
 
 The old laws set aside for sewerage purposes two mills 
 on the total assessed valuation. Water mains were laid 
 and connected by a plan that had always met every 
 demand. When there were enough houses on a street to 
 be mained to yield an annual water tax of ten cents a. 
 lineal foot, the water was put in; where there were not 
 enough to do that it was furnished at the expense of the 
 property owners along the way, who received certificates 
 for the excess taxation. These entitled the holders to 
 rebates, as soon as the receipts along the improvement 
 yielded the money. When it came to draining farms, 
 however, the case was disastrously different. It would 
 have cost $350,000 to lay the first main sewer in the town 
 of Jefferson, to say nothing of laterals. The assessed 
 valuation of the town at the city rate would not have 
 yielded enough to lay that one drain in seventy years. 
 
 Street improvements, which included watering, 
 sewering, grading, and paving were obtained by ordi- 
 nance secured by petition. The speculators who planned 
 to have their far-out lands equipped with water would 
 obtain the ordinance for general improvement in the 
 regular way, then, when the water mains were in and 
 connected, they would secure the passage of another 
 ordinance repealing the first, in this way getting water 
 and escaping the costs of other improvements. 
 
 There were few railroad facilities in any of the 
 annexed territory. Where any existed they cost the 
 passengers extra fares. These new tax-payers demanded 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 67 
 
 extension of the car lines until they should cover both the 
 length and breadth of the city, and that the companies 
 should carry passengers for single fares with universal 
 transfers. The car companies had got their franchises 
 for twenty years in 1883, and in 1889, the period of 
 annexation, were in a rather independent position. 
 
 It was not long before it was realized that the city 
 was being rushed straight into bankruptcy. The water 
 fund had lost its $800,000 surplus, and the department 
 was $1,500,000 in debt. All the departments were over- 
 strained with work and being rapidly submerged in 
 excessive expenditures No inhabited territory in the 
 world had so many miles of steam railway in busy opera- 
 tion. Several hundred people were killed every year at 
 the crossings. These were in the city now, and the cor- 
 poration was more easily reached in the courts than the 
 companies could be. Damage suits for millions were 
 piled up and clogged the courts. 
 
 It looked as if the pawnbrokers of the world would 
 get Chicago. It was the largest city on the globe in 
 area, trying to carry on a metropolitan business on a 
 village plan. It was a metropolis twenty-five miles long 
 by fourteen miles wide attempting to parade in swell 
 dress in the yardage that clothed it when it was eight by 
 four. 
 
 Incredible as it now seems, it is a fact that few of the 
 dangers thrust upon the giant young city had been fore- 
 seen or arranged for in the terms of annexation. The 
 people appeared intoxicated with the greatness of Chi- 
 cago's opportunities and they grasped at bigness with a 
 kind of fury of strength. They were confident, of pos- 
 sessing full ability to meet and solve any problem that 
 
W MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 sudden greatness might put upon them. They made 
 no preparation for the titanic struggle, and unequipped 
 they met it without a shirk. Such a risk was never 
 before taken by any population since men began to live 
 in communities. 
 
 Looking back over the life of Chicago it must strike 
 the historian that its people are the best poised and most 
 courageous of all the assemblages of men. They are the 
 indomitables of the race, and they are capable of any- 
 thing the progress of civilization makes possible in civic r 
 life. 
 
 No other local legislature that ever existed had such 
 unparalleled difficulties to meet as were pressed upon the 
 Board of Aldermen of Chicago from the period of annex- 
 ation in June, 1889, until the formative period of the 
 city's marvelous growth was passed in 1897; and no 
 other law-making body ever acquitted itself of its task so 
 creditably, all things considered, as did this body. No 
 other had such abuse and misunderstanding to contend 
 against, and no other deserved them less. 
 
 The Alderman from the Fourth Ward had innocently 
 precipitated himself into the forefront of the struggle by 
 building up work for his obscure Committee on Wharves 
 and Public Grounds. The annexations had made the 
 committee properly the one of first importance at the 
 start. Madden being a sound lawyer by education and 
 commercial experience, soon found himself a directing 
 power in the legislature's work of assimilation. His 
 experience in handling men of all nationalities, as well 
 as his ability to meet people of financial power, enabled 
 him to avert danger by judicious compromise. His 
 insight and power of statement made it easy for him to 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 69 
 
 clear the disputes of irrelevant matters and bring the 
 essential things into the clear view of all. His character 
 rapidly won general confidence and concentrated atten- 
 tion upon whatever he espoused. The colleagues of his 
 own party rallied about him as a safe leader, and those 
 of the opposition gradually abandoned all attempts to 
 meet him on anything but the real merits of the ques- 
 tion. The presence and activity of such a man in a leg- 
 islative body always results in that kind of public econ- 
 omy which prevents wasteful discussion. Matters have 
 to come to a head, as it wer^ when he is around on 
 business intent. 
 
 The ways and means of getting revenue for the city 
 began to assume first importance in the Council's legis- 
 lative work soon after the shock of the first .raids upon 
 the treasury brought the seriousness of the gigantic 
 expansion home to the municipal powers. The Finance 
 Committee of the Council, which had always had control 
 of the methods of raising and disbursing the public funds, 
 had never been much in the public eye before annexa- 
 tion, because of the practically automatic character of 
 the city's income and outgo. But now the income was a 
 problematical matter, while the only thing that could 
 be relied on respecting the expenditures was that they 
 would constantly tend to be both incalculable and ruin- 
 ous. Financial talent became indispensable on the com- 
 mittee, and it was sought. The business career of the 
 member from the Fourth was known to every well- 
 informed citizen, and his financial skill was one of the 
 town's boasts. He was pressed by his party colleagues 
 to go on the Finance Committee; not only as a member 
 of it, but as its Chairman. There was no difference of 
 
70 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 opinion among them as to his superior qualifications for 
 the place. His political opponents conceded that he was 
 the best man in the Board for the finance chairmanship, 
 but, having a majority in the body, they made a party 
 question of it and voted against giving him the office 
 when he was proposed for it. The result was that he 
 was put on the Finance Committee to do the work every 
 one said he could do better than anyone else, but by 
 party influence he was prevented from having his own 
 way there. He became a member of the committee in 
 his second council manic year. After serving two years 
 on this committee, in 1893 he was made Chairman by 
 the unanimous vote of the whole Council, which as a body 
 always elected that officer. He was Chairman five years, 
 the longest period the office has ever been held by one 
 man in the history of the city. 
 
 It did not seem to make any difference to Madden 
 whether he was at the head of a committee or at the tail 
 of it. so long as there was any work to be done. He 
 never cared much for what is called credit for doing 
 things. If they were to be done, he simply did them. 
 He had such a capacity for accomplishing results that 
 wherever he was in a working body, especially one that 
 had financiering to do, he was practically the body, 
 whether he was called the one end or the other or the 
 middle. 
 
 One of the first things Mr. Madden set about rectify- 
 ing was the facility the old laws afforded speculators of 
 acquiring improvement of their outlying lands at public 
 expense. This was accomplished by throwing the bur- 
 den of the cost entirely on the property benefited. If 
 the land was worth improving, he contended, it should 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 71 
 
 be made to bear the cost. An ordinance was framed 
 enacting that public improvements might be obtained 
 by petition ; but that when ordered the property bene- 
 fited should be assessed the full cost of the changes, and 
 that this sum, plus an extra charge for surveying and 
 other incidental expenses, should be paid into the city 
 treasury before any of the work would be done. When 
 the city had in hand all the money that its officials should 
 assess for the contemplated improvements, it would 
 have the work done under a uniform public system of 
 its own, and when through it would rebate to the prop- 
 erty owners any surplus left. This would, by applying 
 a general system of work, cost the property owners less 
 than individual effort, and would secure uniformity in 
 the city's development. The plan gave due publicity 
 and opportunity for appeal and rectification, and con- 
 served all but dishonest interests. It was bitterly 
 opposed by open and secret attack, but it was carried 
 through. It kept down unnecessary and unhealthy, as 
 well as criminal, exploitation and gave the municipality 
 proper control of its own growth. Each man's taxes for 
 improvements were spent on his own land. The excess 
 in the assessments enabled the city to have money on 
 hand to include the square pieces of streets at intersec- 
 tions when the ordained improvements ran from one 
 block to another, as they often did. How important this 
 was may be inferred from the fact that under this ordi- 
 nance the people of Chicago afterwards built as much as 
 150 miles of streets, 150 miles of sewers, 150 miles of 
 water mains, and sixty miles of buildings in a single year. 
 The town was growing during the period of this improve- 
 ment at the rate of 10.000 inhabitants every month. 
 
72 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 The task of putting an end to railway manslaughter 
 at the grade crossings was mainly left to the Fourth's 
 representative. He from the first advocated the enforced 
 elevation of all steam railway tracks throughout the 
 entire city. Within the corporate limits there were sev- 
 eral hundred miles of these tracks, and it was thought 
 impossible to ever force the costly elevation of so much 
 busily engaged trackage. It would be cheaper for the 
 railroad companies to pay damages for deaths at any 
 figure than endure the expense of some hundreds of mil- 
 lions of dollars for raising their roadbeds. Madden 
 thought differently, and persistently agitated track eleva- 
 tion as not only politic but right in itself. Finally, early 
 in 1892, he secured the appointment of a commission to 
 investigate the subject and report to the Council the best 
 method of solving the question. He was put on this 
 committee and by it elected Chairman. The body visited 
 all the cities in the East which had brought about track 
 elevation. It studied the whole subject more thoroughly 
 than it had yet been investigated. It found that in 
 Rochester, N. Y., and in the state of New Jersey, the 
 localities containing the most mileage of elevated steam 
 roads, the companies had defrayed one-half the cost of 
 elevation and the tax-payers the other, the damages to 
 abutting property being met equally by each. The com- 
 mittee on its return concluded to report in favor of com- 
 pulsory elevation. In justice to the roads, however, the 
 members agreed to confer with their officials to avoid 
 injustice. The controversy at this stage was largely left 
 to Madden. He lost no time in impressing upon the 
 companies the determination of the Council to compel 
 elevation, and the necessity of reaching some understand- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 73 
 
 ing. It was pointed out that the city could interrupt 
 traffic at every street crossing and make it absolutely 
 impossible for the companies to transact business; and 
 that it would resort to the use of this and every one of 
 its other rights to force the raising of the roads and put 
 an end to the destruction of human life in the streets. 
 
 When the railway powers realized that further parley 
 was useless and agreed to discussion, Madden, who was 
 as good a business man as any of them, soon convinced 
 them that in the long run it would pay the roads to ele- 
 vate and do it at once, not only in the saving of litiga- 
 tion, the payment of damages, and the injuries from 
 public hostility, but also in the vastly increased business 
 that could be done on the same mileage with tracks in 
 the air, entirely free from cross traffic and all the 
 obstructions and dangers to be encountered on the sur- 
 face of a busy commercial city twenty-five miles long and 
 fourteen miles broad. The principal companies were 
 brought over by his facts and reasoning, and he prepared, 
 with their consent, and submitted to the Council and 
 induced it to pass, the most extraordinary ordinance of 
 the kind ever attempted in this country. It made the 
 raising of the tracks throughout the city mandatory upon 
 the companies; put the entire expense on them, and 
 made them subject for all damages to abutting property. 
 The latter he got the companies to agree to by pointing 
 out that juries would give verdicts that way anyhow. 
 
 Under this ordinance upwards of $50,000,000 has 
 already been spent in the work of track elevation in Chi- 
 cago, and under it there is assured the utter abolition of 
 every grade crossing in the town. 
 
 The street paving question was left entirely by the 
 
"74 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Board of Aldermen in Mr. Madden's hands. How he ever 
 obtained the time to master this problem in the way he 
 did can only be surmised by attributing it to some kind 
 of prodigious genius for work. He visited the cities in 
 America and Europe noted for the qualities of their pave- 
 ments, and carried on a correspondence with street engi- 
 neers of special experience and authority all over the 
 world. As a result of all this labor he prepared a pam- 
 phlet on street paving. It contained all the information 
 in existence upon the subject, with such profound and 
 valuable suggestions by the author that when it was 
 handed in to the Board in his report, 10,000 copies were at 
 once ordered printed for general circulation. The book 
 rapidly gained such a reputation that it is yet used as a 
 text authority in both European and American institu- 
 tions wherein civil engineering is taught. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE CRY OF "BOODLE" — THE CAUSE OF IT — WHO USE IT. 
 
 IN the new city there were 5,600 miles of streets and 
 alleys on the map. The extension of those in the old 
 town called for this great mileage of thoroughfare. The 
 transportation of the populace became at once the most 
 pressing of the work thrust upon the legislature. The 
 tramway lines in existence were nearly all served by 
 horse-power, and few of them reached into the annexed 
 territory. It was necessary to find means of inducing the 
 car companies to build their lines to the northern and 
 southern ends of the whole city, to introduce new parallel 
 routes where the existing lines were too far apart, and to 
 make cross-town connections at convenient distances. 
 The people demanded single fares and universal trans- 
 fers. Investigation showed that while the trunk lines, 
 that is, those north and south, might afford transfer fares, 
 few cross-town, or feeder, lines could. If such fares 
 were made the condition for obtaining franchises for the 
 east and west lines, therefore, it would be impossible to 
 procure their construction by independent companies. 
 Manifestly, the solution was in franchising the trunk line 
 companies to make the connections as well as the exten- 
 sions and to permit the fare question to remain in abey- 
 ance. That method was adopted. Even under the 
 arrangement it was difficult to procure the rapid building 
 
 75 
 
76 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 of roads into the long stretches of thinly inhabited terri- 
 tory. 
 
 About this time the introduction of the cable and 
 electric trolley methods of street car propulsion was 
 being agitated in the larger cities. In this the Aldermen 
 found a means of solving the entire transportation diffi- 
 culty. Franchises for the substitution of cable or electric 
 power for that of horses were bestowed' in consideration 
 of the necessary extensions or new constructions, and in 
 this way the city secured the rapid development of the 
 street car service it now has, justly claimed to be the 
 most extensive and convenient in the world. 
 
 When the surface service began to prove inadequate, 
 elevated railway companies were invited to come to the 
 rescue. They soon, as a matter of economy, abandoned 
 steam for electric service. Hence, Chicago streets are 
 free from the noise, dirt and general old-fashioned ugli- 
 ness of the little racking steam motors that are still 
 trying to do business on the elevated railways of New 
 York City. 
 
 While the population gladly availed itself of every 
 improvement in the transportation system, it seemed 
 ever ready to assume or believe that each step in the 
 progress was obtained by corrupt means. Seldom was 
 any grant made to a street car company that a cry of 
 "boodle" did not accompany it. Perhaps in no city of 
 recent growth has there been less corruption than in 
 Chicago in the work of developing street car service. 
 
 Nevertheless, nearly every Alderman who had the 
 courage to stimulate the investment of capital in the big 
 town's street car lines, either by voting an extension of 
 franchises, additions to them, or new charters, had to 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 77 
 
 face open or covered attacks upon his conduct. Matters 
 grew so very bad in this habit of reckless abuse of the 
 city's public servants, that men on assuming the duties 
 of an aldermanic career were often compelled to start out 
 with a firm resolution to wholly ignore the criticisms of 
 the press. In this way the newspapers frequently lost 
 their power altogether. If people would not believe 
 what they said about good men, what they said about 
 wicked servants was also ignored. This immunity kept 
 many men in the public life of the city whose stay would 
 have been impossible if the city press had conserved the 
 power of its criticism. 
 
 A great deal of the injustice that characterized much 
 of the newspaper work during the period of Chicago's 
 most rapid growth was due to the fact that much of the 
 literary talent employed in the city at that time was nec- 
 essarily imported from older cities of the East, principally 
 from New York and Washington. There corruption 
 unquestionably accompanied much of the public work, 
 and the writers spoke with knowledge. Their constant 
 acquaintance with official dishonesty led them to believe 
 it was a universal accompaniment of public life, and they 
 looked for it as a matter of course. In the new city 
 these writers, having no real acquaintance with the men 
 who were engaged in the herculean labor of giving the 
 metropolis form, took it for granted they were the same 
 as the eastern looters, and gauged their written censure 
 upon this conjecture, making it severer and more ram- 
 pant upon the hypothesis that the opportunities were 
 greater than the well plucked East afforded. 
 
 The conditions were, however, entirely different. 
 The East was old and had a large population displaced 
 
78 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 by business competition. This population yielded the 
 adventurers whose only remaining chances of making 
 money, within any cover of respectability, lay in holding- 
 office under the opportunities afforded by the spoils system 
 that gave them entry. In Chicago there was no old pop- 
 ulation. There were no crowded-out men. There was 
 work for all in normal times. There were outlets for 
 every species of honest endeavor. The chances of mak- 
 ing money were so numerous that it was difficult to get 
 men to take part in public life. As a rule, only those 
 accepted public tasks who could afford to work for little 
 or no pay. These were either ambitious politically or 
 were men inspired to do their share in the constructive 
 work then necessary. There were exceptions, certainly, 
 but they were fewer than the story of the building of any 
 other large town could show. In Chicago the number of 
 men who needed watching in public life never was large 
 enough to dominate any period of its legislation. During 
 the eight years following the great annexation, the time 
 during which the city was shaped and fitted out for its 
 career, the Board of Aldermen was composed almost 
 wholly of "city builders;" of men broad-gauged, able, 
 honest, hard-working; who knew the requirements of a 
 cosmopolitan city, believed firmly Chicago had them all, 
 and who had enough civic pride and national patriotism 
 to give their time, their talents and their means to the 
 arduous, and generally thankless, task of constructing 
 the most suitable foundation for the largest city in the 
 world, and then seeing to it that the work of superstruc- 
 ture was properly commenced and adequately prose- 
 cuted. 
 
 Said an eastern political reformer one day to. Mr. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 70 
 
 Madden: "I am perfectly astonished at you and your 
 methods in the Board." 
 
 44 What causes your astonishment?" was the reply. 
 
 "The fact that you allow such men to be members of 
 the Council as many that have seats, and the fact that a 
 man like you should act with them and. secure the pass- 
 age of bills with their votes. Why, some of them are not 
 gentlemen at all; their language and demeanor show 
 that. What will become of your city, if its laws are to 
 be made by men who are not even gentlemen?" 
 
 44 If all the voters in Chicago were clergymen, I sup- 
 pose the Council would be composed of bishops," 
 answered Madden; 44 if the suffrage were limited to col- 
 lege graduates, the Aldermen might all be professors. 
 But as things are this cannot be. Suffrage is universal 
 here, and the people who have the right to choose their 
 lawmakers will not select bishops and professors. These 
 voters prefer to have their laws made by people just like 
 themselves. It may be they imagine that folks like 
 themselves are more apt to give them what "they as tax- 
 payers pay for than clergymen and school teachers 
 would be. However that may be, the Board of Aldermen 
 is elected by the tax-payers, and is perhaps just the kind 
 of body the people desire to make their laws. Now, it is 
 the law that neither I nor any other mail can get a city 
 ordinance legally made unless it receives the consent of 
 a majority of the men who are elected Aldermen, whether 
 they are what you call gentlemen or not. If we should 
 refuse to propose any city legislation until all the mem- 
 bers who have a right to vote on it were what you might 
 certify to be gentlemen, the city, I think, would stop, 
 and I am afraid it would stay stopped a long time. 
 
80 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Every man in that Board has the same right in it that I 
 .have; his vote counts as much as mine does; he repre- 
 sents what his constituency wants in the city government 
 just as thoroughly as I do what the Fourth Ward desires; 
 and his people believe he is just as much of a gentleman 
 as my people think I am. People differ in their views 
 as to what a gentleman is. I believe no ward in this 
 city has sent any member here who is not considered a 
 gentleman by those who sent him. They are, therefore, 
 according to the powers that have the deciding voice, all 
 gentlemen — the whole sixty-eight of them — gentlemen of 
 different kinds. Our population is cosmopolitan. The 
 Scandinavian wards send Scandinavian gentlemen; the 
 Polish wards, Polish gentlemen; the Italian wards, 
 Italian gentlemen; the Bohemian wards, Bohemian gen- 
 tlemen; the German wards, German gentlemen; the Irish 
 wards, Irish gentlemen; the American wards, American 
 gentlemen, and so on through the thirty-four wards 
 composing the city. It so happens that the foreigners in 
 town outnumber the native-born three to one. On this 
 account, there are more foreign gentlemen in the Council 
 than native. It is the result, you see, of the American 
 system of representative government. Now which of these 
 foreign gentlemen would you have me refuse to do busi- 
 ness with in my efforts to get city legislation enacted? 
 Shall I refuse to procure a needed ordinance if a Pole pre- 
 sumes to vote for it, or a Swede or a Bohemian? Oris it the 
 Italians or the Germans you think are not gentlemen? It 
 may be that you would bar out from your class only the 
 Irish members? You see, if only the Americans in the 
 Board are gentlemen according to your standard, and 
 you confine the making of the city laws to them, there 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 81 
 
 are not enough to pass any. The Irish, the German, and 
 the other foreign gentlemen are needed to help. It is the 
 American system, my dear sir, and in Chicago we find it 
 works very well indeed. Much confusion arises in our 
 minds sometimes when we forget that a man may be well 
 informed and very able, although he makes a poor show- 
 ing when he attempts to speak our language. That may 
 be the only thing he lacks knowledge of. Several of 
 those Aldermen whose speech makes you and the galleries 
 laugh are much better educated and informed than 
 others whose statements you applaud as the utterances of 
 gentlemen. If you will permit me to put myself in your 
 class, what sort of an impression would you and I make, 
 with all our knowledge and polish, if we were in the civil 
 government of Paris and attempted to talk good political 
 economy in bad French? You see, representative govern- 
 ment compels us to do the best we can with the legislative 
 material the people give us. The more you look into it 
 the less funny it is and the more serious and good." 
 
 The auditor grew very restive while getting the 
 answer to his shallow inquiry. He was hardly gentle- 
 man enough to wait for it all. "Beg pardon," said he; 
 "I didn't know, you know. Good-day. " 
 
 "Oh, I beg pardon, too," rejoined Madden; "I cannot 
 believe you didn't know; you simply didn't think. 
 Think better of us hereafter, please." 
 
 To a celebrated college President who made a similar 
 criticism, Mr. Madden said: "Legislation in this Council 
 is almost invariably the result of compromise. Chicago is 
 a city of nationalities. All the countries of the world are 
 largely represented in the two millions of people we legis- 
 late for in this Board. We have more Poles, more Bohemi- 
 
 6 
 
82 MARTIN B. .MADDEN 
 
 ans, more Germans, more Irishmen in Chicago than there 
 are in most of the large cities in Poland, Bohemia, Germany 
 or Ireland. The Americans are in the minority with us. 
 Our city government is a representative government. In 
 it all classes of our people have an equal voice. What 
 prevails does so by the consent of the majority. That 
 consent must be obtained for success. These different 
 men are here to speak for our differing peoples because 
 the latter cannot all be here to speak for themselves. I 
 do not see the man solely — in him I always see the 
 people who sent him here to make . their wishes known ; 
 I see the constituency. Each constituency is equal. 
 The men here may be unequal as men ; but in the law 
 they are equal as representatives. They must be looked 
 upon in that way and so treated or there cannot be fair 
 legislation. It is unjust to think that because a constit- 
 uency of foreign-born Chicagoans desires some legislation 
 that an American district does not ask or wish, it is on 
 that account bad. Very little bad legislation has ever 
 been sought in this Council since I have been in it. I 
 know that much of the legislation proposed here has been 
 called bad, but I also know that nearly every allegation 
 of fraud that has ever been made against Chicago Coun- 
 cil action was inspired by the 'stop-thief principle. It 
 is the cry of the schemer who is 'knocked out' or fears to 
 be, raised to save himself or to revenge himself. Every 
 ordinance proposed to improve civic conditions causes the 
 evil threatened with displacement to howl 'corruption!' 
 and every bill granting the use of a public utility to a 
 deserving corporation draws from the rejected seeker the 
 cry of 'boodle!' These slanders sometimes deceive the 
 press and often do the public, but they seldom fool 
 the Aldermen." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 STREET RAILWAY FRANCHISES—THE BEST SOLUTION— SOME 
 EXAMPLES. 
 
 ONE of the greatest evils which resulted from the 
 unthinking and indiscriminate attacks upon the 
 motives of the city's legislators was that which grew into 
 a general demand that every public franchise within the 
 city's gift should, when about to be bestowed, be put up 
 at public auction and sold to the highest bidder. It was 
 argued that if public utilities were worth anything in the 
 nature of cash payments, the city should get all the pro- , 
 ceeds instead of having them intercepted, as was alleged, 
 by the city's legislative servants. The argument, without 
 examination, seemed plausible; but upon analysis, really 
 proved fallacious. If corporations had to pay for fran- 
 chises, under the spoils system then prevailing in Chi- 
 cago, it would have been better to let the Aldermen take 
 the pay than to leave the money for the City Hall to 
 appropriate, upon the assumption that both the legisla- 
 tive and executive branches of the municipal government 
 were equally corrupt.. The former could have claimed 
 they were the discoverers of the money. This would 
 have been an inconclusive claim, of course, but the City 
 Hall had none at all. 
 
 It required a good deal of fortitude to stand up against 
 the public demand for cash payment for franchises at 
 ; ' 83 
 
84 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 that time in Chicago. The municipality was all the time 
 in arrears and all the time in need of money. It was 
 growing so fast that it was generally found impossible to 
 keep income and expenditure in tally. Mr. Madden, 
 however, after bestowing all the study he could upon the 
 question, concluded that it was better to not sell fran- 
 chises for lump sums and put the money into the local 
 treasury. It would be better to obtain all the franchises 
 were worth in some other way. Gradually he worked 
 out a plan of obtaining franchise values that would all 
 go to the town without any possible diversion. The 
 question had now become one of absorbing interest, 
 because most of the street car lines were being consoli- 
 dated and the corporation supposed to be operating them 
 was putting out tenders to ascertain on what basis the 
 city would extend all the tramway franchises that 
 expired in 1903. Several measures bearing upon this 
 movement were introduced and discussed in the Board 
 of Aldermen. The discussion provoked resulted in the 
 formation and general entertainment of the opinion that 
 a twenty-year renewal would bring the sum of $20,000,000 
 from the corporation. Such an amount was desirable to 
 the municipality for public improvements and to the 
 spoils politicians for handling. The Alderman from the 
 Fourth, in a public address on civic reform, boldly 
 declared that he was opposed to cash sales of franchises. 
 He stamped them as transactions that could always in 
 municipal governments be made to partake of the nature 
 of blackmail. He took the ground that in the case of a 
 street railway company seeking a franchise for the use 
 of a public thoroughfare and willing to pay for it, there 
 were three parties interested in the payment whose 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT S5 
 
 rights should be considered. There was, first, the general 
 public that made up the municipality; second, the people 
 owning the property on both sides of the way to be trav- 
 ersed; third, the travelers who paid the fares and whose 
 patronage supported the line and returned the cost of its 
 construction. If the city got the money, neither the 
 injured property owners nor the fare payers might ever 
 receive benefit from any part of its expenditure. If the 
 sum were spent on the street used, then citizens living 
 elsewhere, who never rode in that street, would not 
 obtain any advantage from the fund. If the payment 
 were made in reduced fares altogether, then neither the 
 property owners along the road nor any other citizens, 
 unless they patronized the line, would derive any advan- 
 tage. If the payment were divided into a reduction of 
 fares and a care of the street used, all interests would 
 receive consideration. The general public would be 
 relieved of the cost of maintaining the thoroughfare. It 
 might cut down taxation that much, or spend that much 
 more on other streets. The property owners would be 
 assured of constantly well ordered pavements and a well 
 kept street in front of their houses. The passengers 
 would ride for less along the line and by an extension of 
 the policy would have the certainty of being able to ride 
 everywhere else in the city for less. This plan, Mr. 
 Madden argued, would use the money paid for street 
 railway franchises in a way that would give the benefit 
 of it to those who made the railways possible. It would 
 reach every one of this class. No other plan would. He, 
 therefore, advocated it as the municipal policy. 
 
 To the clear-headed and disinterested Madden's pro- 
 posed solution was instantly acceptable. Those belong- 
 
86 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ing to other classes could see no value in it, or pretended 
 they could not. The proposition was assailed on many 
 sides from many motives. Madden was challenged to 
 produce an instance of the successful operation of any 
 plan in any way similar to his. He accepted the chal- 
 lenge. 
 
 The Wentworth Avenue car line was operated under 
 a franchise that lapsed on that part between Twenty- 
 second and Thirty-ninth Streets. The company requested 
 a renewal. Mr. Madden asked as compensation that the 
 company pave the street between curb and curb, keep it 
 constantly in repair, keep it clean in all kinds of weather 
 and sprinkled in summer, and curb the sidewalks on both 
 sides. The company did not hesitate at all over the 
 proposition. 
 
 The company operating the car line in Indiana 
 Avenue desired to change its power from horses to elec- 
 tric trolley. It was given permission subject to the con- 
 sent of a majority of the property owners on both sides 
 of the thoroughfare. This ran through Madden's ward. 
 The street was fully occupied and nearly all the houses 
 were of the better class, many of them palatial. The 
 horse cars were bad enough, with their slow, irregular 
 service, their noise and dirt. The proposed trolley was 
 deemed by many intolerable. Mr. Madden was appealed 
 to for advice. He examined the situation. Much of the 
 pavement was Nicholson wooden block, sunken, uneven, 
 rotting. He got from the company an acquiescence in 
 the proposition to pave the entire street with asphaltum 
 of the best quality from sidewalk to sidewalk; keep the 
 roadway always in complete repair; keep it sprinkled in 
 summer and free from snow in winter, and always clean, 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 87 
 
 and to lay and maintain the curbing on both sides, for 
 the privilege of substituting the trolley for the horse. 
 He advised the property owners to accept these terms. 
 He pointed out the superiority of the trolley service, its 
 greater cleanliness, speed, regularity and power, and 
 dwelt on the advantage of having asphaltum instead of 
 wood, and of having the roadway always clean and clear. 
 He also said the company, in case the propostion was 
 rejected, would undoubtedly sooner or later obtain the 
 majority consent needed, even if it had to purchase it, 
 which would really be cheaper than to carry out the pav- 
 ing, cleaning and maintenance proposal. The people 
 were excited and angry and stubborn. They declined 
 the company's overtures. The result was what Madden 
 foresaw. The company eventually secured the majority 
 consent and erected the trolley. It gives Indiana Avenue 
 one of the best street car services in the country, but the 
 beautiful thoroughfare still has the unsightly patched-up 
 pavement and the uneven curbing. 
 
 One of the most valuable freight lines in the metrop- 
 olis is the Calumet and Blue Island route in South Chi- 
 cago. This road was originally proposed by the Illinois 
 Steel Company. It desired to erect an additional mill at 
 its plant on the Calumet. It needed additional railway 
 accommodations to do that. Without them it would be 
 compelled to increase its facilities by erecting the pro- 
 posed new mill at its Joliet plant. The mill would fur- 
 nish employment at the start for 3,000 men. The com- 
 pany asked the Council for a franchise for a right of way 
 that would place the tracks about four blocks from the 
 water along three-quarters of a mile of the lake shore. 
 I The entire right of way would be through marshes and 
 
88 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 sand-dunes. To go elsewhere would cost for right of 
 way more than the enterprise would be worth to the 
 company. 
 
 The appearance of the proposed ordinance granting 
 this application raised a storm in the Council and a bigger 
 one in the northern part of the city, where the merits of 
 the question could not be seen. It was many weeks 
 before the Council. The oftener it was brought up for 
 consideration the more public denunciation it aroused. 
 The interests opposed to its passage succeeded until the 
 very last in inflaming the people against it. One of the 
 most successful schemes devised to defeat its adoption 
 was the proposal by an objecting property owner to 
 donate the city sixteen acres for park purposes on the 
 lake front between Ninety-sixth and Ninety-eighth 
 streets if the Council would refuse to allow the road to be 
 built along that route. This caught the popular imagi- 
 nation. Delegations of all kinds went before the Aldermen 
 and besought them to save the water front for the weary 
 workers of South Chicagp and secure the proffered 
 44 breathing spot" and 44 play-ground" for the 44 babies 
 and women at least." One deputation of ladies made a 
 pathetic appeal on this score. The Illinois Steel Com- 
 pany was under a cloud in the popular mind because of 
 recent strikes among its employes, and the cry was 
 raised that the railway scheme was a subterfuge to 
 acquire a right to part of the lake front. The Chicagoans 
 were sensitive to everything that looked like an encroach- 
 ment on the lake front. Mr. Madden and other public 
 men had educated them into the resolution of setting 
 apart forever for park uses the entire lake front in the 
 city. There appeared to be no hope for the bill. None 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 89 
 
 but a few of the hardiest men in the Board dared advo- 
 cate it. The Alderman from the Fourth voted with his 
 party, which had declared opposition to the ordinance. 
 He had not looked carefully into the matter, taking it 
 for granted that his party's leaders had sufficiently done 
 this to justify his action. The fact was that these leaders 
 had not examined into the merits of the question. Their 
 attitude was taken on the general principle that it was 
 wise to oppose anything desired of the Council by the 
 Illinois Steel Company. After Mr. Madden had twice 
 voted against the bill and had by so doing made its pros- 
 pects hopeless, Mr. Marshall Field and other prominent 
 business men, who were thoroughly acquainted with the 
 facts in the case and alive to all things conducive to the 
 city's welfare, called a conference of citizens to consider 
 the merits of the dispute between the Council and the 
 great steel company. The meeting appointed a commit- 
 tee to visit South Chicago and look into the matter on the 
 ground. This committee requested Mr. Madden to be 
 its guest during the journey. He accepted the invitation 
 and went. 
 
 The investigation was thorough and convinced Mad- 
 den that his attitude was wrong. He at once changed it 
 and went before the Council and told it the truth. He 
 said it was foolish to oppose the measure simply because 
 the steel company wished it passed; that the bill had 
 merits of its own which appealed with particular force to 
 the interests of the city. With the road the company 
 could afford to put up the additional mill. Without it, 
 it could not. The erection of the mill meant the employ- 
 ment at once of 3,000 more skilled workmen at high 
 wages. That would add no fewer than 15,000 inhabitants 
 
90 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 to the city. The gain would be but the initial advantage, 
 as the mill would grow with the increased railway facil- 
 ities the new road would furnish the steel company. The 
 railway proposed would open up a new region then unin- 
 habited because inaccessible, and would in a short time 
 add the population of a ward to the city. All the munic- 
 ipality had to do for this was to grant a franchise that 
 would endanger no public interest, interfere with no 
 private right, and cost nothing. Men having faith in the 
 enterprise were ready to take all the risk of it and put up 
 all the money necessary to carry it through. In regard 
 to the opposition that had been aroused against the 
 project and which had deceived him into voting twice 
 against it, he was prepared to state from personal inves- 
 tigation that there was no good ground for it. In fact, it 
 had been started and built up entirely by people who 
 wanted the road between the agreed terminals, but who 
 insisted on having it laid out along another route. This 
 would take it through property they had to sell. One of 
 these people had 300 lots he believed the company would 
 have to buy if the project as before the Council could be 
 defeated and the road diverted into the only other route it 
 could take. The park land offered lay buried, he said, in 
 from twelve to fourteen feet of Lake Michigan water, out- 
 side of other immersed territory the donor proposed to re- 
 tain for himself. " Why, I rode all over it on a tug drawing 
 ten feet!" he exclaimed. To fill in the proffered breath- 
 ing spot and raise it sufficiently to enable the breathers 
 to stand upon it with dry feet would cost the city not less 
 than $500,000, and that expenditure would make the 
 donor's inside contiguous reserve worth a large fortune 
 to him. It was these land speculators alone who had 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 91 
 
 raised all the opposition. He was prepared to give their 
 names either privately to Councilmen desirous of know- 
 ing the truth, or to the whole Board if that were necessary 
 to remedy the wrong that was being done. Against all 
 this was the steel company's plan of erecting additional 
 works at a cost of $2,000,000, in which would be paid out 
 in new wages every year several hundred thousand dol- 
 lars. Every person who would be affected in any way by 
 the road if constructed^ except those speculators, not 
 only desired the building of the tracks, but wished it 
 done along the route asked for of the Council. Mr. 
 Madden's report and the cold, hard facts he gave made 
 those who had been caught by the apparent philanthropy 
 of the opposition feel silly. His statement, coming 
 from a colleague above suspicion, had the effect of bring- 
 ing over to the support of the enterprise enough mem- 
 bers who secretly favored it, but had not dared to openly 
 vote for it, to secure its passage, in spite of even the 
 Mayor's public opposition. 
 
 When the Calumet and Blue Island ordinance was 
 passed by Mr. Madden's influence, there was a furore of 
 public denunciation, which lasted for a long time and 
 was powerful enough to destroy any man vulnerable to 
 public attack. An example of its influence was seen in 
 the conduct of a public man who believed fully in the 
 enterprise and for a long time advocated it, and was even 
 on the committee with Mr. Madden which was sent to 
 look into the scheme. He joined with the Alderman and 
 the others of that committee in unanimously recommend- 
 ing that the Council pass the ordinance. But the public 
 storm frightened him into complete desertion from any 
 further support, either private or public. 
 
92 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 The road has proven one of the best for the city and 
 its people ever allowed by the Council to be constructed. 
 The Illinois Steel Company to-day employs more than 
 five times as many men at its South Chicago plant as it 
 had at work before it obtained permission to build the 
 road, which is five times as many as it could employ there 
 without the road. 
 
 These examples of fairness to railway corporations 
 and justice to the tax-payers added to Mr. Madden's influ- 
 ence in public life. They also gave vogue to his steady 
 and intelligent opposition to the idea of selling franchises 
 for sums of money to be turned into the treasury as 
 temptations to official cupidity or public extravagance. 
 As the time approaches for the expiration of the street 
 car franchises, as 1903 draws near, public opinion in 
 Chicago is. rapidly crystalli^ng into the Madden senti- 
 ment, that the best payment for the use of the city 
 streets by transportation companies is the one that will 
 result in lower fares to the travelers and complete care 
 .of the roadways occupied. For nearly a decade he has 
 claimed that a twenty-year renewal of the franchises 
 expiring in 1903 should net the city at least the sum of 
 $20,000,000, to be expended at the rate of $1,000,000 a 
 year on the streets used, as well as a reduction of fares 
 to perhaps three cents per passenger. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 A GREAT FINANCIER — THE WAY CHICAGO WAS FINANCED — THE WAY 
 
 IT IS NOW. 
 
 THE process of obtaining the revenue for the annual 
 expenditures and of appropriating it when esti- 
 mated was laborious and complicated. The first step 
 was the ascertaining of the amount the city would prob- 
 ably secure for the expenditure. This was arrived at by 
 calculating the sum two per cent, of the assessed valua- 
 tion of the real and personal property owned in the cor- 
 porate limits would yield after the town assessors had 
 completed their estimates and they were corrected by 
 the State Board of Equalization. When this amount was 
 arrived at, there was added to it what all the saloon and 
 other licenses would bring from January ist to December 
 31st of the year under consideration. The license rev- 
 enue could nearly always be calculated with approximate 
 exactitude; that from taxation never could. The latter 
 was uncertain because of constant legal resistance, tax- 
 dodging and loose methods in collection. While the 
 license fees produced cash, the taxes took about twelve 
 months to gather. To bridge over there were two 
 expedients. One was to pay expenses from the general 
 fund, and the other was to borrow on vouchers bearing 
 on the taxes as they came in. The general fund was the 
 sum that had been saved by all the departments of the 
 municipal government from the appropriations made to 
 
 93 
 
94 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 them during the previous year. As a rule, the total of 
 these savings was always inadequate to meet the deficit 
 caused by slow or irregular collection of the taxes, owing 
 to the very rapid growth of the town and the constant 
 emergency expenses. The borrowing was habitual, 
 expensive and frequently so difficult to accomplish that 
 thousands of municipal employes were often kept from 
 their salaries months at a time. 
 
 When the estimates of revenue were made up by the 
 Finance Committee of the Council, whose business it was 
 to attend to all this preliminary work, it could be guessed 
 how much money the city could afford to spend during 
 the coming year. The next step was to find out how 
 much all the departments desired to use. This was 
 learned by calling upon the official heads of each to send 
 in detailed demands for all their probable financial needs 
 for the whole year ahead. These demands included the 
 number of persons to be employed, the title, position and 
 salary of each, and the description of the work or duty 
 every one of them was to be assigned to perform ; the 
 amount needed for buildings, repairs and other construc- 
 tion and maintenance purposes; and the costs of new 
 bridges, sewers, streets, and subways, as well as water 
 and sewer pumping, street cleaning, and so on. 
 
 T^nese demands were called for on the first of the 
 year. Generally it took about a month to get them all in 
 hand. When they were in, the Chairman of the Finance 
 Committee called that body together and placed before it 
 in detail all the information collected respecting both the 
 revenue expected and the appropriations demanded. 
 The items on both sides were then scrutinized, debated 
 and sifted down to the minutest detail. This work occu- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 95 
 
 pied many hours every day for three or four weeks. It 
 was usually completed about March ist, and was nine 
 times out of ten accomplished by scaling down the 
 demands to about one-fourth their original sum. The 
 committee then reported its recommendations to the 
 Council. The Board organized itself into a committee of. 
 the whole and worked over the matter for perhaps a 
 week. The result was placed before the Council in reg- 
 ufar session. In this, open controversy dealt with all the 
 items, each interested department obtaining some kind 
 of hearing against the paring down decided on. Finally, 
 the Council adopted the Finance Committee's report in 
 its amended condition. 
 
 The report as approved was now sent to the Mayor as 
 the year's appropriation bill. To him rushed all the dis- 
 satisfied department interests and made their last essays. 
 The Executive had the right to veto any item in the 
 bill, or any number of items, and to approve the others. 
 He returned it to the Board, with or without vetoes. It 
 required a two-thirds vote in the Council to pass any 
 vetoed item. The opposition to the Mayor seldom could 
 rally such a vote, and he often succeeded, when all other 
 interests had failed to do it, in killing certain proposed 
 expenditures. When the bill was at last voted on by the 
 Council, after coming from the Executive's hands, it 
 became the legal appropriation for the city's expendi- 
 tures for that fiscal year, which began on January ist. 
 The work had to be completed by midnight on March 
 31st. Failure to finish the task then made it impossible 
 for any of the city departments to obtain any regular 
 income for the ensuing twelve months. 
 
 When the appropriation bill was passed by the Board 
 
96 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 of Aldermen, it became the duty of the Finance Commit- 
 tee to see that all the departments received the share of 
 the revenue assigned to them ; to attend to the task of see- 
 ing that the money was used for the purposes towards 
 which it was contributed; and then to arrange for extra 
 allowances when they became necessary, and procure the 
 cash to meet them. The committee generally left this 
 all to its Chairman, who was elected by the whole Council 
 because of his ability in this kind of work. 
 
 The Chairman of the Finance Committee, it will be 
 seen, was practically the most important member of the 
 city legislature. He was of necessity the Finance Minis- 
 ter of the municipality. It was his duty to know at all 
 times what the condition of the city's financial resources 
 were; to visit all departments of the government every 
 day; to see that those in charge were conducting them 
 in an economical manner, and that they were not exceed- 
 ing the appropriations set apart for them without abso- 
 lutely good reasons. He had to familiarize himself with 
 every detail of the management of each department ; to 
 know its needs and be able to say whether the number 
 of men asked to perform the work going on was requisite 
 or in excess; to listen to complaints on disputed claims 
 against the corporation and to secure evidence thereon ; 
 to act with the Mayor and Comptroller on all important 
 financial matters in which the city was interested; 
 to be a traveling encyclopaedia of information on every 
 question of municipal administration; to carry out all 
 orders of the Finance Committee, whose executive officer 
 he was, and all orders the Council saw fit to give him to 
 attend to relating to city business of every kind. He 
 had to investigate and report on additional water, sewer, 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 97 
 
 bridge, and street needs; to enquire into and inform 
 the Board about every occasion or emergency requiring 
 unforeseen expenditure of public money, and to stand 
 between the tax-payers and all attempts to collect dis- 
 puted bills. In addition, he had to adjudicate all claims 
 against the city for damages before the cases were turned 
 over to the law department for final action. These 
 claims amounted to millions every year, and hundreds 
 and thousands of them were annually cast out after inves- 
 tigation. 
 
 The enormous amount of work thrown on the Chair- 
 man of the Finance Committee during the seven years 
 after annexation required his best thought and energy 
 for an average of not less than eight hours every day 
 during the greater part of each year. He had to per- 
 sonally see not less than one hundred people each day 
 and discuss with them every question put to him on any 
 phase of the city's business. He was obliged to circum- 
 vent the efforts of the crafty to impose upon the public, 
 and to withstand the enmity and revenge of the disap- 
 pointed. He was the great buffer between the treasury 
 and all its assailants, and he had to possess vast resisting 
 as well as extraordinary recuperative powers. 
 
 No other man that ever was elected to the Chicago 
 Board of Aldermen succeeded in performing the duties of 
 Finance Minister more than a couple of terms in succes- 
 sion ; Madden held the office five. His five years were 
 the most trying in the history of the city. They were 
 the years of adjustive growth; those in which a financial 
 policy had to be extracted and formed out of conditions 
 so new that there was no experience on which to base 
 operations. The work pulled him down and nearly 
 
98 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 brought him to a grave. But he stuck to it, completed 
 it, and when at last he did retire he left an established 
 system that was nearly automatic. 
 
 When he first assumed the cares of that office the con- 
 dition of the city's financial business was such that it had 
 required never less than ten full days to get the Finance 
 Committee's annual appropriation report passed as a bill 
 by the Council. During his last year in office he had 
 accomplished such systematic method in the conduct of 
 financial legislation that the longest time it then required 
 to obtain the Board's acceptance of the same committee's 
 annual budget was twenty-seven minutes, and the short- 
 est seventeen. Only once was any reduction made by 
 the Council in any of his annual appropriations, and that 
 amounted to $265. When elected Finance Minister the 
 General Fund was inadequate by $1,500,000 at least every 
 year; when he resigned it had been built up to reliable 
 and automatic sufficiency. 
 
 During his first year as Finance Minister he saved the 
 city $1,000,000, and during his second $1,500,000, by 
 cutting off unnecessary expenditures without any impair- 
 ment of the public service, while he at the same time 
 increased its revenue. He found the salaries reasonable 
 and refused to permit them to be reduced. He insisted 
 that none of the public servants was overpaid and resisted 
 every effort to put them on poverty wages. He stood 
 for efficient and well paid labor and effected his econ- 
 omies by destroying extravagant or useless expenditures. 
 He augmented the revenues by developing the locality's 
 commercial and manufacturing advantages, in this way 
 increasing the population and enlarging the taxable prop- 
 erty. By such means he managed gradually to raise the 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 99 
 
 public school appropriation from $3,000,000 to $8,000,000 
 per annum. Whenever the departments found it neces- 
 sary to legitimately spend more than had been allotted to 
 them, he never hesitated to help them out. If the short- 
 age resulted in difficulty in meeting the pay rolls, he 
 would without delay procure a loan rather than have the 
 employes suffer. 
 
 An instance of his disposition in this respect was his 
 borrowing from a number of banks the sum of $600,000, 
 during November, 1894, to pay the fire and police salaries 
 for the two previous months, when the necessary con- 
 struction accounts of these departments, added to tax 
 delinquencies, left no money on hand with which to pay 
 these needy and deserving men. 
 
 The Alderman never lost his early sympathy for labor. 
 While in New York on business one day during the 
 period of his finance ministry, in November, 1894, he 
 noticed in the papers of that city serious reflections on 
 Chicago's treatment of its public laborers. The incident 
 that furnished the jealous writers foundation for their 
 abusive attacks on Chicago's credit was the sudden and 
 summary discharge from employment, without pay, of 
 200 poor men who had been engaged at moderate wages 
 in shifting the water' mains in Lake street. This was 
 hard and unhealthful toil. It had been made necessary 
 by the construction in that thoroughfare of the pillar 
 foundations for the elevated railway then being erected. 
 When the Council had granted the company permission 
 to build, Mr. Madden had secured a proviso that it should, 
 before the commencement of work, deposit in the city 
 treasury sufficient cash to cover the cost of removing the 
 water pipes away from the line of the pillars. Surveys 
 
100 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 showed that this work would cost $35,000. The com- 
 pany agreed to the proposition. When the Alderman read 
 of the discharge of the 200 laborers he knew they could 
 not have been set to' work at first unless the company 
 had carried out its part of the contract, as there was no 
 other fund than that arranged for with it available for 
 their employment. He at once telegraphed asking why 
 the men had been dismissed. He was answered there was 
 no fund at hand with which to pay their wages. Astounded, 
 he took the first express train home. He went straight 
 to the treasurer's office and found there the railway 
 company's certified deposit of $35,000. Going to the 
 department of public works, he learned that office had to 
 let the men go and stop the work because the Comptroller 
 refused to cash the warrants drawn on him for the wages 
 of the laborers, on the ground that he had no funds on 
 hand applicable for the purpose. When the Alderman 
 informed him of the presence of the company's money 
 in the treasury, the Comptroller replied that he had no 
 official knowledge of its presence there, as the Treasurer 
 had not yet legally notified him of it. There was a 
 rustle in that department and the workmen got their 
 money and re-employment. The episode shows one of 
 the many causes of popular discontent with official man- 
 agement of public affairs. 
 
 Instances like this were not rare. All kinds of 
 schemes were resorted to by people who desired to have 
 money out safely at good rates to get and keep the city 
 in their debt. Sometimes officials connived at this. At 
 others the creditor derived advantage from official 
 unwillingness to divulge shortage in other directions. 
 The gas bill against the city was permitted to run and 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 101 
 
 accumulate for sixteen months, until it had reached the 
 sum of $190,000. In this way the municipality was per- 
 mitted to fall into arrears. It was so solvent that invest- 
 ors seeking interest allowed their claims to rest as long 
 as they could; it was so unreliable as to dates of payment 
 that creditors exacted and obtained high rates for their 
 patience; and heads of departments were so constantly 
 pressed for money because of the astonishing and incal- 
 culable development of the town, that they were prone 
 to incur any kind of obligation that would enable them 
 to have funds for unanticipated needs. It was no won- 
 der that the total arrearages grew until they amounted 
 to the sum of $7,000,000. Then there was an attempt 
 to induce the city government to issue bonds to raise this 
 amount. This could not be done without the consent of 
 the State Legislature, the city being prohibited by law 
 from issuing bonds. Chicago's possibilities were so uni- 
 versally appreciated that there was no time after-i88o, 
 and particularly after the fair of 1893, that it would have 
 experienced difficulty in floating a vast public debt at any 
 reasonable rate. Such a debt would have been hailed by 
 investors everywhere as a desirable lodgment for surplus 
 money. The Finance Minister was strongly and ener- 
 getically opposed to every plan set on foot to induce the 
 city to bond for any purpose. His position, declared on 
 every available occasion, was that Chicago should pay as 
 she went; should invite world-wide attention as the one 
 great city without a large public debt; should conserve 
 hei^ credit by keeping it free from burden at least until 
 events demonstrated beyond dispute just what position 
 in the world municipalities she was destined to occupy, 
 when she might desire at one great stroke to settle all 
 
102 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 question of rivalry and would have the most available as 
 well as the most valuable financial standing with which 
 to then attain her aim. 
 
 When sent to Springfield on a special committee to 
 secure legislative consent to bonding or issuing interest- 
 bearing warrants for the purpose of adjusting the 
 $7,000,000 of arrearage, he made no secret of his prefer- 
 ence for a permit to issue the warrants for the amount, 
 rather than one for bonding. The latter would create a 
 bad precedent and a financial interest in keeping the city 
 in debt for a source of income to investors. The war- 
 rants would be negotiable and would be a kind of demand 
 notes, whose existence would always act as a warning 
 to economy and against further indebtedness. The Leg- 
 islature refused to sanction bonding and legalized the 
 issue of the warrants bearing interest, thus affording 
 relief in a way every disinterested financier now admits 
 was the best. 
 
 The result of the Alderman's untiring efforts to finance 
 Chicago through the spendthrift period of youth, by 
 increasing its business and its taxable assets; by reduc- 
 ing its extravagances and its outlay; by enlarging its 
 opportunities and its credit, is plain now. The lakeside 
 metropolis has more unincumbered assets than any other 
 city in the world. It has more unburdened opportun- 
 ities, and greater ability to either utilize them or realize 
 on them. As a corporation it has the greatest potential- 
 ity of all municipalities, because whatever it decides to 
 do it has the power easily to do, having no debt impedi- 
 ment. During the five years Mr. Madden acted as finan- 
 cier for the city of Chicago, he not only practically led 
 in shaping the legislation that made the place what it is, 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 103 
 
 but he superintended the collection of $125,000,000 of 
 revenue for municipal uses, and personally controlled the 
 expenditure of every dollar of that vast sum. His work 
 shows that the city has assets to display for every shilling 
 of the investment. 
 
 When on March 22, 1897, with health nearly worn 
 out by hard, long public service, he was compelled to 
 announce physically enforced retirement from further 
 Aldermanic labor, his valedictory aroused sentiment 
 whose applause it took a long half hour to express. * * When 
 I entered this Council as a member," he said, "the city 
 contained but thirty-seven square miles of territory. It 
 now has 186. It then had 880,000 people. It has 2,000,- 
 000 now. We have in eight years constructed 500 miles 
 of new sidewalks, laid 618 miles of water mains, built 
 814 miles of sewers, and paved 947 miles of new streets. 
 We have erected 345 miles of buildings and spent on 
 them $311,600,000. We have increased the water rev- 
 enues from $1,621,786 to $3,716,835. We have by law 
 abolished grade crossings on several hundred miles of 
 railways, and have substituted the cable, the electric line 
 and the elevated road for horse car service in the streets. 
 We have now 392 miles of this improved transportation 
 system in operation within the city limits. We have 
 established civil service in the city, and all who do pub- 
 lic work now do it for the tax-payers who pay their sal- 
 aries and for no one else. We have secured the lake 
 front forever to the people for park purposes and put 
 the pleasure grounds for all time alongside the business 
 streets. The city is at present spending $50,000,000 for 
 the construction of a drainage canal that will both cleanse 
 the town and secure for its population an unlimited and 
 
104 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 an indestructible supply of the best drinking water avail- 
 able in any community in the world. We have at an 
 expenditure of $30,000,000 built a White City that has 
 made all mankind acquainted with the fact that here live 
 the greatest city builders the human race has ever had. 
 To-day the streets of Chicago have more of the rush and 
 activity of modern life than have the thoroughfares of 
 London. Into our city every twenty-four hours 1,500 
 trains arrive and depart, and 200,000 strangers come and 
 go. In eight years the permanent assets of our city have 
 been increased from $24,000,000 in value to more than 
 $56,000,000. We have more property belonging to the 
 public now than we then had by an amount exceeding 
 $32,000,000 at actual cost, and at real value by an amount 
 exceeding $160,000,000. The city's credit is to-day the 
 best possessed by any municipality on earth. Our prop- 
 erty is the least encumbered and is the most available of 
 any owned by cities. We owe practically less money 
 than any other civic corporation. Our bonded debt, all 
 told, is net but $11,670,000. Less than one-half our 
 yearly revenue would pay all we owe. So that Chicago 
 has the best borrowing power of any existing civic cor- 
 poration, and she has the greatest power to achieve any 
 great task her future ambition may decide on. Chicago 
 is better founded, better started, and has more power for 
 endurance and improvement in the race for municipal 
 supremacy than any other place now inhabited by men, 
 whatever claims and aspirations any other may put 
 forth." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ENTERTAINING WORLD'S FAIR GUESTS— A BATTLE FOR MORALITY- 
 A GREAT SPEECH. 
 
 IN 189 1 Mr. Madden was prevailed upon to be a candi- 
 date for re-election to the Board of Aldermen for a 
 second term of two years. He had two opponents, an 
 Independent and a regular Democratic nominee. He was 
 Chairman of the Councilmanic Committee for the Colum- 
 bian Fair. During the campaign the Fair Directory sent 
 into the ward and had circulated a request that the voters 
 of all parties unite in keeping Mr. Madden in the Board. 
 The Directors belonged to different political organiza- 
 tions, and their circular contained the following: " While 
 Mr. Madden has been a zealous guardian of the city's 
 interests, he has also been an earnest and untiring advo- 
 cate before the Council of all measures calculated to 
 advance the interestsof the Exposition, and the Directors 
 feel that they cannot spare his services for the next two 
 years if it is possible to avoid it." 
 
 The Evening Post, Democratic, published this' appeal 
 March 25, 1891, and said of it: "No higher tribute could 
 be paid to a Chicago Alderman in this, the World's Fair, 
 epoch in Chicago's history. In Alderman Madden'scase 
 the tribute is well deserved." He defeated his opponents 
 by a plurality of 1,500 votes. 
 
 During this period in Chicago's growth it was what 
 everywhere was known as a "wide open town." There 
 
 105 
 
106 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 was a state law in existence making it illegal to keep 
 drinking saloons and all places of amusement of that 
 kind open for the transaction of business after midnight 
 unless the municipality specially legalized it. The inten- 
 tion of this was in the direction of public morality. It 
 placed the onus of extending license upon the communi- 
 ties countenancing it, the theory being that even as large 
 a city as Chicago would not legalize an "open town" 
 except for some special "good reason," or upon demand 
 of the public. The so-called sporting community of the 
 city had never been able to secure the passage of an 
 extending ordinance, nor had the people ever been able to 
 get more than spasmodic efforts at enforcement of the 
 law as it was. The whole problem remained at a stub- 
 born hitch. There could hardly be a question that 
 because of the scandal and immorality resulting from the 
 openness of the city, the majority of the native citizens 
 were in favor of the midnight law. But they could not 
 get a majority of the Council to vote that way. because a 
 majority of the wards were opposed to the law. It must be 
 remembered that at this time something less than thirty 
 per cent, of the population of Chicago were of native 
 birth. As late as 1896 the school census showed that 
 seventy and one-half per cent, of the people of Chicago 
 were of foreign birth. Not only were these people 
 accustomed to the use of spirituous liquors, but most of 
 them looked upon this country as a land of the utmost 
 liberty, and they resented any public interference with 
 personal habits in the matter of drink. Then the foreign 
 population congregated according to nationality, consti- 
 tuting the larger number of people in most of the wards, 
 the Americans living as a rule by themselves. As each 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 107 
 
 of the thirty-four wards was entitled to two members in 
 the city legislature, it will be seen what a difficult prob- 
 lem was that of handling the temperance question 
 through any legislation possible at that time. Neither 
 party could do it, and public men who had personal 
 ambitions to serve were easily persuaded to cater to the 
 foreign and sporting vote. 
 
 Mayor Washburne, Republican, realized the difficulty 
 of the situation ; but he also understood the impossibility 
 of dealing with it as the "better element' ' desired him to 
 do. The majority and popularity were unquestionably 
 on the other side. 
 
 After much thought over the whole question, whether 
 it would be better to oppose the majority sentiment 
 favoring freedom and enforce the state law, or fly in the 
 face of the minority and legalize what the greater num- 
 ber wanted continued, he at last decided upon the latter 
 course. 
 
 He prepared an ordinance permitting the keeping of 
 saloons open in the city after midnight under certain 
 restrictions. He did not take Mr. Madden into his con- 
 fidence. He had 20,000 appointments under his absolute 
 personal control. He could dismiss from the public 
 service any policeman, any fireman, any clerk, any 
 laborer, or any other of the one score thousand people in 
 the city pay. Civil service tests and security of tenure 
 in public place had not yet been introduced into the civic 
 habits of the giant city. He saw each Alderman but the 
 one from the Fourth Ward, separately, described the pro- 
 posed ordinance, gave his reasons for desiring its passage, 
 and in this way obtained a pledge of support for it from 
 sixty-seven of them. Several asked before they gave 
 
108 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 their pledges: "How does Madden stand on it?" The 
 oracular response, "Oh, Madden is all right," usually 
 convinced the hearer that the Finance Committee's 
 Chairman was to support the measure. 
 
 When every vote in the Council had thus been secured 
 but that of Madden, the Mayor called upon him, showed 
 him the bill, and then said: "Before submitting the 
 ordinance to the other members or introducing it, I 
 thought it best to obtain your opinion on it as leader of 
 the party in the Council. What do you think of it?" 
 
 "I think it is bad as morals and bad as a party meas- 
 ure,'* replied the Alderman. "The Republican party is 
 not in favor of legalizing the vicious practice now in 
 vogue, and it would be immoral to sanction it.'' 
 
 "What would you do if such a measure should be 
 introduced in the Council?" 
 
 "As a Republican, I should do all in my power to 
 induce the party majority in that body to repudiate the 
 bill; and as a citizen strive with all my might to defeat 
 it." 
 
 "But sixty-seven members of the Board of Aldermen 
 desire such an ordinance introduced, and have pledged 
 themselves to support it. It is because of this general 
 desire that it is proposed to introduce it at the next 
 meeting. You wuold not place yourself in opposition to 
 the expressed desire of every other member of the 
 Council, would you?" 
 
 "I certainly would on such a matter as this, because 
 it is wrong. I would try to convince them of its wrong- 
 fulness. ' ' 
 
 "But when sixty-seven of the sixty-eight in the 
 Council desire the measure, would it not be better to con- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 109 
 
 fine your opposition to voting against it, and refrain from 
 argument? That might simply set them in opposition to 
 you, and impair your usefulness in the Board in the 
 future. The thing is wanted by the whole Council. 
 Why not let them have their way and vote without 
 speaking?" 
 
 44 That would be criminal. I should be bound to 
 oppose the passage of such an ordinance with everything 
 in my power and do all I could to persuade the other 
 members against it. There is but one thing for a man 
 in a legislative body to do, and that is to do right with 
 all his might, at the right time, and all the time." 
 
 4 'Then you are determined to speak against such a 
 measure if it should be introduced, as well as vote 
 against it?" 
 
 44 I am." 
 
 44 I am sorry you take that attitude, because the ordi- 
 nance is desired and it will pass by a vote of sixty-seven 
 against one — you that one." 
 
 "Don't be too sure about that." 
 
 Mr. Madden went to work among his colleagues, and 
 when the all-night ordinance was introduced he succeeded 
 in preventing its passage by obtaining a tie vote. 
 
 The Mayor was surprised and disgusted by this vote, 
 "but his surprise," said a daily paper, "was not equal to 
 his anger, which, although well concealed, was boiling 
 over at the action of Madden and some of those he had 
 induced to oppose the measure." What the Chief Execu- 
 tive then did to renew the contest was fully described by 
 the daily papers and reveals the extraordinary character 
 of the political life of the city at that time. "The very 
 men whom the Mayor had looked to for support failed 
 
110 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 him," said one paper; * 4 he had been generous in his 
 patronage to these very men, and his anger knew no 
 bounds when he heard of their action. At two of them 
 he was especially angry, for he had loaded them down 
 with political favors and allowed them to draw on his 
 resources to pay their political debts. He vowed he 
 would not brook their opposition and would show them 
 who was Mayor by cutting off their patronage. Yester- 
 day afternoon and this morning the Mayor has been 
 quietly at work getting the rebellious Aldermen around 
 again to his way of thinking. This morning another con- 
 ference was held and as a result the Aldermen who 
 opposed the ordinance will now vote for it. They were 
 simply given to understand that if they could not be with 
 the Administration they could not expect any favors and 
 that the favors that had already been granted them would 
 be withdrawn. The threat was effective and the Alder- 
 men became submissive. The ordinance will be sent in 
 again and this time it will be passed." 
 
 This was in the beginning of September, 1891. At 
 the next meeting of the Council the bill was again intro- 
 duced. An instructed man was in the chair. The meas- 
 ure was no sooner read, the echo of the last word still in 
 the air, than Mr. Madden was on his feet at his place 
 with, 4t Mr. Chairman!" 
 
 The Chairman nodded to him and automatically 
 responded: 4t The gentleman from the Fourth Ward. " 
 Before he could finish what he intended to say, like a 
 shot there was hurled out a motion for the previous 
 question. Now, such a motion, carried, absolutely cut 
 off all debate, even a remark. There were sixty-seven 
 votes ready to be plumped for the motion; not only 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 111 
 
 ready, but impatient. The impatience rapidly grew to 
 fury when it was seen that Madden remained on his feet, 
 pointing to the chair and continuing his call, i4 Mr. Chair- 
 man!" He was white, but cool and calculating, with his 
 whole head on his shoulders. 
 
 A great cry arose all around him, and for a while 
 there was a perfectly riotous denunciation of his appar- 
 ent opposition to the wishes of the whole body. When 
 the babel of * 'Voter "Vote!" "Question!" "Question!" 
 finally took a breathing spell for a fresh start, the mem- 
 ber from the Fourth was still erect. Seizing his oppor- 
 tunity he sent out straight and clear the cry: "Mr. 
 Chairman, the motion for the previous question is not in 
 order!" That was the most astounding thing the other 
 members thought instantly they had ever heard in that 
 hall. A motion for the previous question, made as 
 theirs had been, not in order! They looked at one 
 another so amazed that silence overcame them, wonder- 
 ing "What next!" 
 
 "No, Mr. Chairman, the motion for the previous 
 question is not in order, because you gave me the floor, 
 and while I have it no motion is in order." 
 
 This was a revelation to the whole house. Madden 's 
 word was positively indisputable when given for a fact, 
 to every member of that Council, and they knew he was 
 faultless as a parliamentarian. Here he was saying the 
 floor had been given to him. They had not seen that, 
 and, as if by a common instinct, they held still to see 
 how it was. 
 
 The Alderman's action was quick. "Before the last 
 word of that proposed measure had lost its sound, on my 
 feet I addressed you in the words, 'Mr. Chairman/ and 
 
112 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 you responded, beckoning to me, 'The gentleman from 
 the Fourth Ward.' Did you not?" 
 
 44 1 did," answered the Chairman. 
 
 "That recognition was a recognition of my desire 
 to speak, and it legally gave me the floor for the purpose of 
 saying what I had to say. It gave it before the first 
 word of the motion for the previous question was uttered. " 
 
 He was right. The whole house instantly perceived 
 it after the Chair's admission, and not a sound was now 
 uttered from any other place. 
 
 "Therefore," continued Madden, "the motion for the 
 previous question is not in order. Neither that motion, 
 nor any other motion, can be lawfully made while I have 
 the floor, nor until I have finished what I have obtained 
 the floor to say. I have not very much to say, and when 
 I am through I will move the previous question, as it is 
 very evident no one else desires to speak. It is plain 
 all the other sixty-seven votes in this body are ready to 
 be cast." 
 
 There was not a man there who was not both relieved 
 and glad over what was said. Madden' s service and 
 character had been such that his bitterest opponent in 
 the Council would have been sorry to find him in actual 
 error, and every one of them would have sincerely regret- 
 ted if his conduct in setting up against them had proven 
 simply factious. He had never in the hall been either 
 disputatious or wrong. He had always been right and 
 always reasonable. He was both now. They would abso- 
 lutely have applauded him, even in their opposition, such 
 was made their humor in the quick comprehension of 
 his attitude, but they were seized with an overpowering 
 wish to hear what next he had to say. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 113 
 
 He seemed to concentrate his powers of wit, expres- 
 sion and character into a description of the night immor- 
 ality, crime, violence, corruption and official shameless- 
 ness that flaunted their evil upon the world as synony- 
 mous of Chicago life. The story he told made many of 
 even the most experienced of his auditors blush with 
 shame for the government under which their children 
 were going to school, and before the end of it the major- 
 ity had begun to shrink from participation in any share 
 of guilt for the infamy. When every eye was riveted 
 upon him and every form bent his way, in manifest sym- 
 pathy, he concluded: 
 
 "I have been told by the Chief Executive of the city 
 that in this legislature, where the town laws are all 
 made, the vote upon this bill is arranged to be sixty* seven 
 to one in favor of its passage. Such a vote, if cast, will 
 demonstrate to mankind that it is impossible to stop the 
 evil dragging us all down, as the city legislature is prac- 
 tically unanimous for its continuance. If you are all for 
 it, why not let it alone? If you want it, you are certain 
 of having it without taking any action at all. You cannot 
 doubt that it will continue. The Administration could 
 stop it by executing the present state law which forbids 
 it. But the Administration will not execute the state law, 
 because, like you, the Administration desires a continu- 
 ance of the present condition. So you both want it. 
 You both wish it to continue. You have the assurance 
 that it will continue without any action on your part. 
 The introduction of this ordinance by the Mayor shows 
 that he is committed to continuance. There is, then, no 
 need for any action on your part. You have what you 
 want, and you have executive assurance that you will 
 
 8 
 
114 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 continue to have it. Then why take any action? If you 
 take the action proposed you gain nothing, but you 
 assume responsibility which there is no reason for your 
 taking and that will give you no gain. As things are the 
 Mayor is solely responsible for the open dives. If you 
 pass this ordinance you assume the responsibility which 
 he now bears alone. He will then be free and you will 
 carry the whole load, and you will gain nothing, for he 
 is committed to carrying what there is no excuse for you 
 to bear, except his desire to get rid of it and to put it on 
 your shoulders. You 'now have the condition you wish 
 without blame, and you have assurance that it will con- 
 tinue without any responsibility on your part. The 
 Mayor desires the condition the same as you do, and, like 
 yon, he wishes its continuance. But now he has the 
 blame for it, and in the future he will have the responsi- 
 bility. He wishes to escape both the present blame and 
 the future responsibility,, I ask you to refuse to accept 
 either, there being no necessity for you to do it and noth- 
 ing to be gained by you in doing it. Let both remain 
 where they are now, upon the Mayor. Think how 
 much better it will be to have but one man in this city 
 responsible for these things, than to have the whole com- 
 munity, through you sixty-seven gentlemen, committed 
 to their continuance, when, if you like them, you are just 
 as sure of having them without a single one of you being 
 to blame. " 
 
 Mr. Madden then moved the previous question and the 
 ordinance was defeated by a majority of ten. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 REFUSES MAYORALTY THREE TIMES — NOMINATES RIVAL — SACRI- 
 FICE FOR PURE BALLOT. 
 
 IN 1893 Mr. Madden accepted renomination. In this 
 campaign he defeated his Democratic opponent by a 
 majority of 2,000. 
 
 The World's Fair was now about to open and the 
 pressure of the work pertaining to it upon the officials 
 responsible for the vast enterprise was appalling. Mr. 
 Madden had during his past term in the Council been 
 Chairman of the Aldermanic Fair Committee. He had 
 had the direction of the legislation coyering the city's 
 relations to the enterprise, and it had been his task to see 
 that all the transportation companies were impartially 
 encouraged to extend their facilities to the grounds in 
 every possible way without obtaining any permanent 
 encroachment on popular rights. He had in the previous 
 January been sent on a committee to Washington to 
 obtain from Congress permission to have the Exposition 
 open on Sunday, and was now elected Chairman of the 
 committee appointed to entertain the city's guests during 
 the Fair. In this office he was obliged to arrange for the 
 proper reception of all foreigners invited, both when they 
 landed on American soil and when they reached Chicago; 
 see that they were suitably entertained while in the city, 
 and then superintend their departure. The social and 
 the official characteristics of all nationalities had to be 
 
 115 
 
116 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ascertained and constantly borne in mind during this 
 work. Special programmes had to be studied out and 
 carried through for the guests representing each different 
 people. Some idea may be formed of the cosmopolitan 
 character of the task from such facts as these: Day and 
 evening entertainments were provided every day for five 
 weeks for the eighty officers sent to represent the differ- 
 ent navies of the Old World. Scrupulous adherence to 
 Spanish royal etiquette had to be observed in receiving, 
 entertaining and adieuing the Princess Eulalia and the 
 Duke of Veragua, and this had to be nicely differentiated 
 from the character of reception expected by the Lord- 
 Mayor of Dublin. Not only were distinguished guests 
 from all foreign countries — European, African and Asiatic 
 — entertained in the manner they were accustomed to at 
 home, but Americans from every state and country on 
 the continent were also suitably received and treated. 
 This work was constant, day and night, during the whole 
 period of the Exposition — six months. Not one social 
 "break" was made in it during all that time. All over 
 the world the praises of Chicago as a model host were 
 sounded. General Nelson A. Miles, Commander of the 
 United States Army, served on Mr. Madden's staff, to 
 lend his aid to the proper entertainment of military 
 guests, and men of similar standing and knowledge in 
 other walks of life served to assist in the work of caring 
 for other official visitors. It is said that every one of the 
 scores of programmes made out by Madden during the 
 Fair was correctly drawn up and followed out. 
 
 After the Exposition had been open for a few weeks 
 the attendance was found to be insufficient. Madden's 
 financial talent was called upon for a remedy. He at 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 117 
 
 once devised the competition of the " Great Days." This 
 allotted to each commonwealth in the Union a State Day 
 at the Fair, and apportioned the remaining days to the 
 larger cities, setting aside the Fourth of July as the 
 Nation's Fete Day. The plan incited intense rivalry in 
 attendance between the states, and afterwards among the 
 cities, and filled the grounds and saved the show. The 
 rivalry between New York City and Chicago was phe- 
 nomenal, and assembled the two largest crowds ever 
 gathered at any exhibition in the history of the world. 
 
 The Chairman of the Entertainment Committee did 
 not spend many hours in repose while the Columbian 
 Fair was open. He has said that the hardest work he 
 ever did was done in that six months. 
 
 Mr. Carter H. Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, was 
 assassinated on Oct. 28, 1893. The Columbian Exposition 
 was at the very height of its popularity, and the tragedy 
 produced intense excitement. There was no clear legal 
 provision in the city's charter arranging for an immediate 
 succession. It was very unfortunate that this was so, for 
 never in the history of the city had it been more neces- 
 sary to have the government continuously conducted. 
 When the lawyers, who were called on for advice, 
 divided on the question as to whether the Chairman pro 
 tern, of the Board of Aldermen automatically succeeded 
 to the powers of the office until a new Mayor could be 
 elected, or whether the Board had the power to elect one 
 of its members to assume the temporary duties, the situ- 
 ation became threatening. Then the citizens realized 
 how fortunate the municipality was in the character of 
 the men who were leaders in the local legislative body. 
 
lib MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 These men held the government well in hand and pre- 
 vented anarchy. 
 
 Mayor Harrison had been elected on the first of the 
 preceding April for a term of two years. The charter 
 plainly called for a new election when the office became 
 vacant during the first year of the term, but it made no 
 provision at all for a vacancy caused by death. It 
 simply enacted that when a vacancy in the office occurred 
 during the first year a new election should be had to fill 
 the office, without specifying when it should be called. 
 As elections could not be ordered without thirty days 
 notice to the electors, the conditions placed the situation 
 under the control of the Aldermen. They could, appar- 
 ently, postpone action to suit themselves, and if they 
 decided they had the power to fill the office for the time, 
 they could put into the Mayor's chair one of their own 
 members and keep him there an indefinite period. 
 
 The Council at the time was composed of thirty-eight 
 Republicans and thirty Democrats. As party leader 
 in the city and Chairman of the Republican City Central 
 Committee, Mr Madden had done more than any other 
 citizen to effect the change in the town's politics which 
 had resulted in Republican control of its legislation. The 
 Democrats felt that the office of Mayor belonged of right 
 to their party, as Mr Harrison was a Democrat, and when 
 he died had left eighteen months unexpired of the term 
 which the voters had entrusted the party to fill. The 
 disposition was to resist by every art of filibustering any 
 attempt of the majority in the Board of Aldermen to 
 take advantage of their numerical strength. A caucus was 
 held at the city hall to agree on a line of action. The 
 spokesman designated to announce the result said: "We 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 119 
 
 would be satisfied with Alderman Madden as Mayor pro 
 tern, if the Republicans take advantage of their power to 
 elect one, but with no other man in his party in the 
 Board. We would overlook the straining of the law on 
 the part of the Councillors, if they select Mr. Madden. 
 He has been agreed upon by the Democrats as the only 
 acceptable Republican Alderman for the filling of the 
 vacant office until an election can be held. No other 
 man in the Council possesses his qualifications for the 
 office of Mayor. He can secure the co-operation of the 
 Council, which is Republican, with the present heads of 
 the departments in the city government, all of whom are 
 Democrats. He is better acquainted with the finances of 
 the city than any other person connected with municipal 
 affairs, not even excepting the Comptroller, who is a 
 Democrat. Mr. Madden has never allowed himself to be 
 swayed by partisan considerations in the discharge of his 
 duties as Alderman. For that reason the Democrats in 
 the Council, as well as the heads of departments, are dis- 
 posed to gracefully acquiesce in his rule and support and 
 co-operate with him if his party elect him to fill Mr. Har- 
 rison's place, although we realize that if Mr. Madden 
 takes the place pro tern, it will make him the next Mayor 
 by election. " The caucus nominated Mr. John McGillen, 
 the Chairman of their City Central Committee and a 
 member of the Board, to be their Aldermanic candidate 
 for Mayor pro tern, in case the majority concluded to 
 attempt a selection. 
 
 The Republicans, as well as their Democratic cor- 
 leagues, in the Council were divided on the legal aspects 
 of the problem. Mr. Madden was the leader of the 
 Republicans in the Board. His party in the city had been 
 
120 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 for a long time practically committed to him as the next 
 Republican candidate for the office of Mayor He was 
 pressed to take it now by Aldermanic election. He hesi- 
 tated to do that, because he doubted the Council's right 
 to choose. Ex-Commissioner of Public Works, George B. 
 Swift, another important member of the Board, and a 
 leader whose Republican following had been urging him 
 forward as a Mayoralty candidate, had no doubts as to 
 the Council's right to put a successor to Mr. Harrison in 
 the Executive office. He not only believed the Board 
 had the right to do this, but he publicly advocated the 
 immediate doing of it to preserve the continuity of the 
 administration of civic affairs. The result of his agita- 
 tion was that the Council concluded to elect a Mayor pro 
 tern., the citizens manifesting a disposition to endorse the 
 act. 
 
 When the Council met, therefore, on the Saturday 
 following the assassination, Nov 4, 1893, two resolutions 
 were introduced and passed. One called tor a popular 
 election of Mayor on the 19th of December following, 
 and the other for an immediate election from among the, 
 members of the Board of a Mayor pro tern. by ballot. The 
 Democrats nominated Alderman John McGillen and the 
 Republicans, on the motion of Mr. Madden, put up Alder- 
 man Swift. When the ballots were counted the report- 
 ing teller said: "Mr. Chairman, we find that there were 
 cast in all sixty-eighc votes. Of these Swift received 
 thirty-four, McGillen thirty-three, and one was blank. " 
 
 For a moment there was a breathless silence. If the 
 teller had not used the word sixty-eight, but had reported 
 sixty-seven ballots cast, Mr. Swift would have been 
 declared elected. Counting the blank deposited as a vote 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 121 
 
 cast, arrayed thirty-four votes against the Republican 
 candidate. The chair was occupied by Mr. McGillen, 
 who instantly perceived his party's opportunity. He 
 quickly declared there was no election, as neither candi- 
 date had received a majority of the sixty-eight votes 
 polled. This decision provoked a row that eventually 
 degenerated into a riot. The trouble was kept up all 
 day. The Republicans sided with Swift and made his 
 cause theirs. But he did not succeed in changing the 
 result. The unfairness of the decision against him, how- 
 ever, produced such an effect on the people that there was 
 an unmistakable popular demand for its withdrawal. On 
 the following Monday evening the Democrats in the 
 Council retreated from their previous position and per- 
 mitted Mr. Swift to be elected Mayor pro tern. He 
 qualified on November 9th, assumed the office on the 
 10th, and served until December 29th. 
 
 Mr. Madden at once declined to allow his name to be 
 put forward as the Republican nominee for the December 
 election. He insisted that Mr. Swift, by the unfair action 
 of the Democrats in the Council, had been made the 
 party's logical candidate. Under no circumstances, he 
 said, would he permit the use of his own name in the 
 conditions existing at the time. The decision discon- 
 certed many of the Finance Chairman's party adherents. 
 They were absolutely sure of being able to elect him to 
 the chief office in the city, because of his general popu- 
 larity and the widespread desire to have at the official 
 head of municipal affairs just such a man as his public 
 conduct had shown him to be. They had calculated to 
 run him at the end of Mayor Harrison's term, when it 
 expired on March 31, 1895, and had no doubt of their 
 
122 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ability to elect him against even Harrison himself. Now 
 that the opportunity was presented of putting him up 
 against a weaker man, they were sorely disappointed at 
 his refusal to enter the race. " Don't you want the 
 office?'* he was asked. "You may have it for the trouble 
 of reaching out for it. " 
 
 "Yes, I would like to be Mayor of Chicago," he 
 answered, "and I believe that I would be elected if I 
 should be nominated. But the nomination belongs to 
 Mr. Swift by right. I could not take it. That would be 
 countenancing what our party has pronounced fraud 
 against Mr. Swift. Let us all turn in and elect him and 
 in that way punish and stamp out unfair politics. " 
 
 At the Republican Convention, held on December 2d, 
 Mr. Madden, as party leader, presided. When he called 
 the body to order he named Mr. Swift as the man who 
 was to be nominated, and urged the party to do all in its 
 power to elect him, and thus place itself on record as the 
 party of fair dealing in city affairs. Mr. Swift was nom- 
 inated. The Democrats named as his opponent John P. 
 Hopkins. When the ballots were counted, on the night 
 of December 19th, the contest was found to have been 
 close, and the count resulted in the declaration that the 
 Democratic candidate had been chosen to fill out Mr. 
 Harrison's term by a majority of 1,100. He took offic^ 
 on December 29, 1893. 
 
 The result was not only disappointing, it was irritat- 
 ing, to the majority of Republicans in the city. It was 
 now generally believed by them that Madden would 
 easily have defeated Hopkins. When the latter assumed 
 office he did not gain in popularity. He rapidly lost 
 because of his palpable political use of his place. The 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 123 
 
 Madden movement was revived and gained strength until, 
 during the summer and fall of 1894, it was taken for 
 granted that he would be his party's nominee in the 
 spring of 1895, and be elected by a great majority, no 
 matter who ran against him, but especially if Mr. Hop- 
 kins should oppose him. Mr. Madden did not hesitate to 
 allow the use of his name, and he did all he honorably 
 could to further the movement in his interest. He made 
 no concealment of his willingness to be Mayor of Chi- 
 cago, and never hesitated to declare the policy he would 
 adopt and carry out if elected. Every such declaration 
 he made added to his popularity and political strength. 
 
 The friends of Mr. Swift refused from the beginning 
 to accept Mr. Hopkins's election as honestly obtained. 
 They pointed out evidences of fraud in the count and 
 went to work intelligently and systematically to unearth 
 the criminality. Republicans outside the immediate 
 circle of his friends regarded these efforts for a long time 
 with impatience as the work of indiscreet party men to 
 keep a discredited candidate before the public as a legacy 
 upon the party's fidelity. The Swift men, however, per- 
 sisted in their endeavors. By December, 1894, they had 
 made out a complete case, and were able to convince the 
 public that Mr. Swift had carried the election the year 
 before by a substantial majority. 
 
 At this time the Republicans were busily preparing 
 for their nominating convention, which was to be held in 
 February, to name their city ticket for the Mayoralty 
 election in April. There was no serious talk of anyone 
 to head the ticket but Mr. Madden. He had become 
 interested in the Swift investigation. When he learned 
 of the disclosures his colleague in the Council was pre- 
 
124 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 pared to make, he carefully examined into the whole 
 case. He concluded from discoveries he made that 
 Swift had beaten Hopkins by about 4,000 majority, and 
 had been counted out of the office of Mayor of Chicago. 
 At once he determined to do all in his power to rectify 
 the wrong. He realized that there was no redress at 
 law for Mr. Swift, as Hopkins could delay any proceed- 
 ings towards ousting beyond the remaining duration of 
 his term. 
 
 The Forty Club, a social political organization in the 
 city, had invited Mr. Madden to address it at a banquet 
 to be given on the evening of December 20th. He had 
 accepted the invitation, and as the time approached he 
 made up his mind to use the opportunity for making pub- 
 lic his discoveries in the Hopkins-Swift case. The news- 
 papers carefully reported the entertainments at the club, 
 and would afford a vehicle- for the publication of what he 
 might have to say. 
 
 The evening came and the guests and the reporters. 
 At the dinner the toastmaster at length proposed "The 
 health of Martin B. Madden, the next Mayor of Chicago. " 
 
 When the cheers greeting him as he arose had ceased, 
 Mr. Madden thanked his hosts for their welcome and 
 their wishes, and then said: "Much as 1 might like to be 
 the Chief Magistrate of this great city, I am compelled to 
 announce to you, gentlemen, that I shall not be the next 
 Mayor of Chicago. It is my duty to make a Christmas 
 present of the Republican nomination for that office, 
 which this year will be the certainty of election to it, to 
 the Hon. George B. Swift." 
 
 The auditors were spell-bound. The,y could not real- 
 ize for a few moments that they had heard aright. Mr. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 125 
 
 Madden then told them of what had been ascertained by 
 the Swift investigation. These discoveries, he said, made 
 it the duty of every good Republican, as well as every 
 good citizen, of Chicago to do the utmost in his power to 
 publicly condemn the crime that had robbed Mr. Swift 
 of the office and the honor the public had conferred upon 
 him. The sacredest thing in American public life was 
 the integrity of the ballot. Every institution in the 
 country every phase of its legal, political and national 
 life, depended for its welfare upon the quality of the 
 suffrage. To attack the purity of the ballot was to 
 poison American life at its very source. It was the 
 worst of all public crimes and the most far-reaching. It 
 was so abhorrent that no citizen should rest a moment 
 when action could either punish it or prevent it. In the 
 present case every sacrifice should be made to repair the 
 wrong done, as well as to put the seal of public con- 
 demnation upon the crime. The best way to do both was 
 to again nominate Mr Swift for the Mayoralty, and then 
 elect him by such a large majority that no corruption 
 could overcome it. The result would vindicate the 
 injured man in the only way vindication could at all make 
 amends, and it would^ at the same time warn the crim- 
 inals in the only way public condemnation could affect 
 them. 
 
 This speech profoundly moved the club and as pro- 
 foundly stirred the public when spread before it next 
 day. Mr Madden followed his oral declaration by a 
 card to the people. In this he announced his retirement 
 from the candidacy as a protest against fraud at the bal- 
 lot box and as an act of possible reparation for Mr. Swift. 
 
 In this remarkable case there was not the smallest 
 
126 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 opportunity for any kind of doubt that a man was sacri- 
 ficing a great post for a principle. -The candidate retir- 
 ing had a certainty of success by a phenomenal majority. 
 His act was an absolute presentation of the office of 
 Mayor of Chicago, by a man as ambitious to have it as 
 any man could be, to a political rival he believed entitled 
 to it as an act of justice, but who might not receive the 
 gift, much as he desired it, with any feeling of gratitude. 
 Such donations have provoked enmity of the most injuri- 
 ous and lasting nature in the history of the human race. 
 
 "He won't thank you for it. He will resent your act 
 as an effort to detract from his ability to get the office 
 without your assistance," was said by an influential 
 Republican leader. 
 
 44 1 can't help what Mr. Swift does about my con- 
 duct," answered Madden; <4 all I know is I have been a 
 candidate for a nomination that belongs to him. When 
 I found out that he was entitled to what I was after, 
 there was nothing for me to do but at once stop my pur- 
 suit. What he may think about my conduct has nothing 
 whatever to do with it. It was not regulated by his 
 thoughts, but by my own. I thought I had no right to 
 the nomination, and that he had every right to it. That 
 being so, what else could I do but what I have done?" 
 
 "Yes, but you are a stronger candidate than Mr. 
 Swift is. Your election was certain. His is not. It 
 would be better for the city to have Republican govern- 
 ment. Your nomination would have insured that. His 
 does not insure it. Your retirement jeopards Republican 
 success. It is an injury to the party and to the city, too; 
 a greater injury than has been done to Swift." 
 
 **The injury to Swift," answered the Alderman, "is 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT L27 
 
 the minor consideration in the affair. By all means it 
 should be repaired, as it can be, by nominating him 
 again. The main thing is the outrage on the suffrage. 
 If Hopkins be renominated, his contest will be one for 
 endorsement of the alleged false count. His defeat by 
 the victim of that count will be the only possible kind of 
 defeat that will be unmistakably a public condemnation 
 of the crime charged. A defeat by any other candidate, 
 myself, say, might be ascribed to many other causes 
 than a public desire to punish offense against the purity 
 of the ballot. A defeat by Swift cannot be ascribed to 
 anything else than such public desire. It is essential that 
 Swift be the Republican nominee, not because he is 
 Swift, but because he alone personifies the cause for 
 which the party must make the fight— -the integrity of 
 the ballot. That is the whole issue. "* 
 
 The retirement of Mr. Madden concentrated public 
 attention upon the ballot question and made certain Mr. 
 Swift's nomination without opposition. 
 
 The Republican Convention was held on Feb. 21, 
 1895. As Chairman of the Party Central Committee, Mr. 
 Madden presided. To make the position he had assumed 
 and had concluded to continue clear beyond cavil, he had 
 gone into the convention with 325 of the 545 delegates 
 entitled to vote on the nominations at his back — a major- 
 ity of eighty-five. For the third time he placed Mr. 
 Swift in nomination for the office of Mayor of Chicago, 
 and in a powerful speech stated his claims and urged 
 united action in his support. The nomination was 
 accorded by a unanimous vote. 
 
 The magnanimity of the political conduct of the Alder- 
 man from the Fourth Ward in this whole episode was so 
 
128 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 decidedly in the interests of the public that the citizens 
 rallied to the support of the Republican ticket at once. 
 The indications of popular support were so unmistakable 
 that the Democrats decided not to meet the issue that 
 would assuredly result from the renomination of Mr. 
 Hopkins. They attempted to escape by putting up as 
 their candidate a new man, who had not been identified 
 in any way with the election scandal, and they nomi- 
 nated Mr. Frank Wenter. He was so decisively defeated, 
 the majority against him being 40,000, that there was 
 no attempt at false counting. 
 
 In that campaign Mr. Madden stumped the entire city 
 for Swift, making several speeches each night, and doing- 
 managerial campaign work during the day. He con- 
 tributed towards the success of the ticket more, perhaps, 
 than any other one-man. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MEETS UNPARALLELED ABUSE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE — ELOQUENT 
 PARLIAMENTARY SPEECH. 
 
 THE most dangerous strike that ever threatened the 
 safety of a large city in the United States was the 
 Debs outbreak in Chicago in the spring of 1894. The 
 grievances leading to it lay in those economic differences 
 of opinion regarding wages and hours of work, which are 
 characteristic of the unsettled and unscientific relations 
 existing in all modern civilization between capital and 
 labor. The trouble would probably have been early 
 adjusted in ordinary times. But the period was full of 
 troublesome elements. The panic in the manufacturing 
 trade, precipitated by the change in the tariff laws in 
 1893, had thrown several million men out of employment. 
 These included not only the skilled and unskilled laborers 
 who had been engaged in the closed factories, but hun- 
 dreds of thousands of others who had now nothing to do 
 because of the stoppage in the business of transporting 
 raw material to the shops and finished products away 
 for distribution. The Columbian Exposition had attracted 
 scores of thousands of the idle to Chicago, where for the 
 brief period of six months they had found some means 
 of living. The Fair over, the city was swarming with 
 stranded and desperate men. The general industrial sit- 
 uation grew worse as the winter advanced, and by the 
 middle of spring the western metropolis seethed with 
 9 129 
 
130 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 social discontent and thq breedings of anarchy. For 
 every bit of employment that would yield even bread 
 there were many desperate applicants. Tens of thou- 
 sands of strong men never thought of being able to earn 
 both food and bed ; they slept on the grass in the parks 
 and on the turf between the walks and curbs. It was all 
 many employers could do to find business sufficient to 
 run their establishments enough hours every day to keep 
 the machinery from rusting. In such a time to seek 
 increase of wages was considered insane, and to resist 
 any reduction meant tramping. Nothing but an indus- 
 trial explosion could, it seemed, prevent a revolution. 
 The Debs railway men's strike brought the explosion. 
 It prevented formal attempt at revolutionary measures 
 by giving anarchy other vents. During the progress of 
 the strike there was discovered, just in time to prevent 
 its execution, a conspiracy to destroy the city by a con- 
 flagration to be started in many widely separated locali- 
 ties simultaneously. 
 
 Alderman Madden, as Chairman of the Republican 
 Central Committee, had thoroughly traversed the town ; 
 as a life-long associate, friend and employer of working- 
 men, his attention everywhere was directed to what was 
 going on and what was threatened. When he became 
 convinced that precautionary measures energetically 
 taken on a vast scale would alone prevent the destruction 
 of the city, he called upon the Mayor and Chief of Police 
 and advised them about the whole situation. Both 
 seemed astonished and would not believe the facts for 
 some time. At length, however, the city government 
 arranged to increase the police force by 320 patrolmen 
 and about 500 substitutes. The Alderman agreed to have 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 131 
 
 the City Council appropriate money for these extra men 
 during the emergency. 
 
 When the strike was at its worst the merchants and 
 tax-payers petitioned the Federal Government to come in 
 and save the city, as the state and local authorities were 
 totally unable to do it. President Cleveland found occa- 
 sion to interfere, in the conduct of the strikers stopping 
 the movement of trains hauling United States mail 
 through the town. In the name of all the people of the 
 country he sent troops to protect the passage of the 
 mails, and he sent enough to suppress the whole trouble. 
 
 By September the strike was over. The general 
 condition of the city was then much betted than before. 
 The Federal soldiers had scared away from the entire 
 locality most of the dangerous temporary population. 
 When the City Council then voted $90,000 as a special 
 appropriation to pay the extra policemen their dues, it 
 passed an order, on Mr. Madden's motion, to reduce the 
 police expenditures by dismissing the 320 extra officers. 
 The Mayor by law had the right to veto any order passed 
 by the Council, and his veto could not be overcome except 
 by a two-thirds councilmanic vote. He vetoed this 
 order, giving as a reason that any action by the Council 
 ordering a reduction of the police force was an interfer- 
 ence with the prerogative belonging solely to the Chief 
 Executive. The Republicans in the Council had but 
 thirty-seven votes, and as the Democrats in the Board 
 stood united by the Mayor, the veto could not be overrid- 
 den. The issue was then joined and it raised perhaps the 
 worst, the most prolonged, and the most scandalous leg- 
 islative storm that ever excited the people of the city, 
 for they all took part in it before it was over. . - 
 
132 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 The management of the contest in the Board against 
 the Mayor fell upon the Alderman from the Fourth Ward, 
 as leader of the majority and Chairman of the Finance 
 Committee. As matters developed he gradually appeared 
 to be alone in the fight. It was not thought he either 
 could or would maintain his position. The people were 
 unquestionably with the police, and the police to a man 
 were with the Mayor. He was a candidate for renomi- 
 nation in the coming spring, and at the time the struggle 
 was begun Mr. Madden was the only man thought of by 
 the Republicans as their Mayoralty nominee. The people 
 of the city were much dissatisfied with the Democratic 
 management of municipal affairs and the majority of 
 them had been looking to the Finance Chairman to lead in 
 the fight for the Mayor's overthrow. 
 
 The Alderman's attitude produced much bitterness all 
 around. Many accused him openly of throwing the 
 election away in advance by playing straight into the 
 Mayor's hands. If Mr. Madden had been a politician 
 he would have at once yielded. Even an ordinary hon- 
 est man might have felt compelled to do that under the 
 circumstances. But the member from the Fourth was 
 not a politician. He was a citizen and a business man 
 acting in a representative capacity for the citizens of his 
 own ward and, as Chairman of the Finance Committee, 
 for all the people of the town. In his mind it was per- 
 fectly clear that the Mayor had no right to the 320 police- 
 men and that the Council, therefore, had no right to pay 
 out public money for their salaries. It was the Board's 
 duty to refuse the money and secure the dismissal of the 
 men. As leader of the Council and head of its Finance 
 Committee it was his. duty to see that both were done. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 133 
 
 That was all there was to it. He set himself to the task 
 without any regard to the results to himself. 
 
 He asked his colleagues to vote down the veto. They 
 refused to do it. The Mayor kept the men. They were 
 assured of their salaries. 
 
 In October the question of the salaries again came 
 before the Council. Mr. Madden refused the money and 
 had another order passed demanding that the Chief of 
 Police reduce his force. The Mayor vetoed this as he 
 had the other. 
 
 The same thing was done in November and again in 
 December. 
 
 As soon as it was found that the September salaries 
 for the new men would not be paid by the Finance Com- 
 mittee, the Chief of Police, in order to keep them, ordered 
 that every man on the force be allotted a vacation of ten 
 days without pay. The money thtis saved he used to 
 pay the extra men, without exceeding the regular appro- 
 priation for police purposes, which was in the Comp- 
 troller's hands and subject to monthly drafts made by 
 the Chief. Mr. Madden having ordered the Comptroller 
 not to allow the regular appropriations to be overdrawn, 
 the department had no way of raising money to pay the 
 unappropriated salaries but that of curtailing expenses, 
 and the reduction of ten days' pay per man on vacation 
 account produced what was wanted. 
 
 The victory was now, to all appearances, so decidedly in 
 favor of the Administration that the disheartened Repub- 
 lican voters, seeing the prospective control of the city gov- 
 ernment slipping from their grasp, besought, then tried to 
 coerce, and finally attempted to destroy the Alderman as 
 party leader. Through the press they denounced him in 
 
134 v MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 violent language and demanded that he cease attempting 
 to .act as Mayor of the town and permit the actual officer 
 to manage civic affairs. One of the papers accused him 
 of having sold the party out to the Mayor for a consider- 
 ation. Some of the district leaders spread the report 
 that he had really deserted the party and was carrying 
 out an agreement to make the Mayor's renomination and 
 election inevitable by keeping him on the popular side 
 and drawing public odium on the Republicans. News- 
 papers called him a self-appointed czar, dictator and 
 tyrant. They openly charged him with corruption. One 
 went so far as to say he had used his position in the 
 Council to play the Republican party into the Mayor's 
 hands for influence in the department of public works for 
 the purpose of making money by unloading upon the city 
 inferior stone from the quarries he managed. This story 
 contained the circumstantial allegation that he had got 
 the city to buy from him $2,500,000 worth of material at 
 an enormous profit. Prominent editors called attention 
 to the Alderman's happy financial circumstances, and 
 suggestively asked how it was that he had increased his 
 wealth so rapidly since he had become leader in the 
 Council. Every franchise ordinance that had been 
 obtained from the Board of Aldermen was attributed to 
 his alleged cupidity. The "boodle" bills that were 
 passed during his absence were said to have been engi- 
 neered by him, and it was hinted that he took considera- 
 tion for being away to facilitate their enactment. There 
 was not one newspaper on his side. The columns of 
 every one of them were open to every species of attack 
 upon him and closed to all defense. 
 
 Then the police were set upon him. The roll at this 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 135 
 
 time had upon it the names of nearly 4,000 men. Every- 
 one of them was working at reduced pay, and believed 
 Madden was the sole cause of it. The entire force were 
 inspired to act as detectives upon his whole career and 
 spies upon his everyday movements, and to try to drive 
 him out of public life by scattering and exaggerating 
 everything they could dig up possible to use in the work 
 of inflaming the public mind against him. 
 
 One day a delegation of carefully picked men from 
 the police department waited upon the Alderman in his 
 private office to ask him to alter his attitude. Their 
 language was so uncivil and their threats so open and 
 insulting that it became impossible to discuss the ques- 
 tion with them, and they were on the point of being 
 ordered out, when they revealed the fact that they had a 
 memorial with them. This was a formidable document. 
 It was signed by a majority of the large business firms 
 in the city and petitioned the Chairman of the Finance 
 Committee to cease his attempts to cut down the police 
 force, because the town needed it all for patrolling pur- 
 poses; and to stop compelling the men to work for les- 
 sened pay, as it diminished their spirit and demoralized 
 their service. It was too evident that the signers of this 
 concoction had either not read it or were ignorant of the 
 actual state of affairs, and Mr. Madden felt it to be his 
 duty to talk to the deputation. 
 
 He began by telling them that he was personally 
 acquainted with everyone of the signers, and that he 
 knew perfectly well that when they put their names to 
 that paper they did it knowing he would do the right 
 thing, whether that was to desist from his opposition to 
 the Mayor or continue it. Then he pointed out that the 
 
136 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Mayor's conduct in forcibly docking the salaries of the 
 men on the force was an act of pure despotism without 
 any justification whatever, and done to illegally swell 
 out the Administration's patronage at the financial 
 expense of the regular policemen. Each man's salary 
 was fixed by law and could not be reduced by the Mayor 
 without committing an act of extortion. Ten days* pay 
 had been forced from each man for no purpose but that 
 of finding money to hire new men illegally. The regular 
 men had to submit to this or lose their places. The 
 Council was trying to befriend the old policemen; it was 
 the Administration that was oppressing them. The 
 deputation went away with new light and it opened their 
 minds. 
 
 Then the city's great editor called and wished to know 
 why the Alderman "carried on" as he was doing. "Mr. 
 Medill," he answered, "if you entrusted me with the 
 financial management of your paper during a period when 
 you could not personally be appealed to, the most effect- 
 ive way you could equip me to protect your interests 
 would be that of entrusting me with the giving out of the 
 checks for the expenses authorized to be incurred for the 
 establishment, wouldn't it?" 
 
 "Yes, " replied the editor. 
 
 "Well, then, it would be my duty to refuse to give 
 any out for unauthorized and unnecessary bills?" 
 
 "It certainly would." 
 
 "These 320 policemen were put on the force for the 
 specified period of two months, or longer if the strike 
 continued beyond that time. An appropriation to cover 
 that special and specified expense was made. The strike 
 is over and the appropriation is exhausted. The term 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 137 
 
 for which the extra policemen were engaged has expired, 
 and they are no longer legally in the city's employ, nor 
 is there any necessity for hiring them. I am Chairman 
 of the city's Finance Committee and may be said to have 
 the giving out of the checks. All I have been author- 
 ized to give out for the extra police service have been 
 paid out. What right have I to pay out any more?*' 
 
 4 * None whatever," replied Mr. Medill. . "I am with 
 you on that proposition. But your attitude has been 
 misunderstood. The Tribune will try to remove the 
 misapprehension." It did and was effective. 
 
 Then public sentiment began to change by enlighten- 
 ment. The police on the regular force found nothing in 
 Mr. Madden's career that could be twisted into con- 
 demnation, and the men were not long in changing 
 about in their view of him. From being the greatest 
 engine of persecution ever set against one man in public 
 life, the force became as a whole his strongest supporter 
 and most efficient agent in vindication. 
 
 No man in the Board of Aldermen was for one moment 
 deceived by any of all the slander. They all knew that 
 their colleague had a record beyond reproach. He had 
 never sold any stone to the city, not a dollar's worth; 
 had never been personally interested in any franchise 
 given or ordinance passed ; had never once supported or 
 voted for any measure not perfectly clean; had never 
 absented himself from a session possible for him to 
 attend; and had been such a powerful foe to all kinds of 
 vicious bills that most of those that ever passed had been 
 suddenly introduced and rushed through when it was 
 found he would be away. In the Council whatever 
 opposition existed against him was either that of party 
 
138 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 policy or party expediency. His Republican colleagues 
 stood nobly by their duty as he pointed it out, and grad- 
 ually solidified themselves into a majority always sup- 
 porting him. 
 
 But the Mayor kept the police. His success in retain- 
 ing them in spite of the Alderman's persistent attempts 
 to have them dropped still continued to fool a majority 
 of the taxpayers. They thought the Administration was 
 engaged in a desperate effort to save the regular force of 
 patrolmen from being reduced. With the memory of 
 the awful days of the strike still fresh, this looked like a 
 noble action in the public interest. On the other hand 
 it seemed as if the Alderman was trying to cripple the 
 Administration by cutting down its police revenue, so that 
 it could not have the thoroughfares sufficiently guarded. 
 It was necessary, a mind like Mr. Madden's reasoned, 
 to defeat the Executive in a way that would completely 
 expose the entire situation to every tax-payer's compre- 
 hension. The difficulty of obtaining or of creating an 
 opportunity to do this successfully was great. The 
 Mayor would hardly risk taking any action that would 
 let it appear he was trying to increase the force; it was 
 more probable he would remain inactive, trusting that 
 any action the majority in the Council might take would 
 continue to be in the direction of dismissing the extra 
 men. That would always look to the people like effort 
 to decrease the police force and cut down the patrolling 
 of the streets. 
 
 The Alderman never failed to use all his opportunities 
 among his party brethren in the Council for the spread 
 of the arguments buttressing his position. When the 
 first of the New Year approached, he pointed out to 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 139 
 
 them that the entire fund obtained by the Chief of Police 
 by the vacation reduction of pay would be exhausted 
 early in January. Then it would be necessary to find 
 new means of meeting the salaries of the extra officers, 
 and a crisis might be looked for. The Republican vote 
 in the Council was kept in full attendance. 
 
 At one of the sessions in January Alderman Gallagher, 
 acting for the Executive, to every one's astonishment 
 offered an ordinance instructing the heads of departments 
 to ignore the repeated monthly orders of the Board to 
 keep expenditures within the regular appropriations. 
 At most other times the proposed ordinance would have 
 been looked upon as innocent enough and attracted no 
 especial notice. But with observation strained over 
 every Executive act, it was perceived instantly that here 
 was at last an attempt on the Mayor's part to take the 
 initiative for securing legality for the surreptitious 
 increase of the police force. If the Gallagher ordinance 
 were passed, all the previous orders to dismiss the new 
 men would be nullified. They might then be retained 
 and an expectation be founded that the Council would 
 make a new appropriation for their pay. It looked as if 
 the Mayor had concluded that public opinion was now 
 sufficiently aroused in favor of his conduct to warrant 
 belief that it would change the Council's attitude. 
 
 In an instant Alderman Madden was on his feet. He 
 had just what he desired and had waited for nearly five 
 months. It was an opportunity to effectively bare the 
 whole conspiracy, and at the same time have the Mayor's 
 entire action officially declared illegal. Realizing that 
 what he now might say would be spread before every 
 reader in Chicago next day, he was spurred into one of 
 
140 . MARTIN B. MADDENT 
 
 those compact, complete, carrying orations which so often 
 distinguished his legislative career. He moved that the 
 Gallagher resolution be placed on file and the action of 
 the Finance Committee, in its January and other notices 
 to the police department to keep its expenditures within 
 the regular appropriation, be concurred in. He pointed 
 out that by placing it on file the Mayor's motion would 
 be practically shelved until the majority chose to take it 
 off file, and that by voting to concur in the Finance Com- 
 mittee's action the Council would officially legalize it 
 without having the committee bring it before the body 
 in the usual form of a report. A report that the com- 
 mittee had ordered the Chief of Police to discharge the 
 extra men, if brought* in and approved by the Council, 
 would become an order. This the Mayor could veto, 
 and as there were not enough Republican votes in the 
 Board to sustain the order over the veto, the whole ques- 
 tion would remain open as before. But as the Mayor 
 had himself brought the entire subject before the Council 
 by the Gallagher resolution to instruct the heads of 
 departments to ignore the Finance Committee's order, 
 the passage of the motion to concur in that committee's 
 action, and at the same time file, would legalize the order 
 to retrench as well as declare the Mayor's retention of 
 the extra police unlawful, without passing an order or 
 doing anything else that the Mayor could veto, or reach 
 by any Executive action. The proceeding would result 
 in making the defeat of the Mayor simply a matter of 
 record, and he could in no way interfere with that. By 
 asking the Council to instruct the departments to ignore 
 its previous orders to keep expenditures within the 
 appropriations, the Mayor was petitioning the Board to 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 141 
 
 rescind its several commands to the Police Department 
 to dismiss the men for whose retention there was no 
 appropriation. The request was one to legalize the 
 keeping of the extra men. The mere making of such an 
 application was an Executive admission that the reten- 
 tion of these officers was not yet legal and that they had 
 been kept on the force for five months unlawfully. The 
 refusal of the request would have to be accepted as con- 
 clusive proof that the further keeping of them would be 
 illegal and would cause their instant dismissal. How 
 came these men on the pay roll? The speaker had him- 
 self brought it about. He had directed the attention of 
 the Administration to the danger of the impending riots 
 before the trouble broke out, and had urged increased 
 patrol. He had undertaken to have the Council make 
 a special appropriation to cover the emergency, and that 
 action alone had made it possible to temporarily increase 
 the force. The Council's action had created the 320 
 extra offices for the Police Department to fill. They were 
 created for the specified period of two months, and 
 became void at the expiration of that time. No execu- 
 tive power, or any other power than that of the Board of 
 Aldermen, could rightfully extend the duration of any 
 one of these offices one day beyond that period. No 
 power but the legislative power of the Board could add 
 one official place to the pay roll or take one away. The 
 Council every year fixed the number of policemen to 
 be employed by the city, and fixed the particular salary 
 each one of them was to get,* from the Chief down. 
 The pay of every officer was specified by law, belonged 
 to him by law, and could neither be reduced nor enlarged 
 by any power but that of the Board while the man 
 
142 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 retained his place. The Council had ordered the Hayor 
 to add 320 patrolmen to the force for the period of two 
 months. It had specified that they were to be patrol- 
 men, and it had appropriated the sum necessary to pay 
 them patrolmen's salaries for two months, and no longer. 
 At the end of that time the power that put these men on 
 the force ordered them taken off, there being no further 
 need for their services. The matter should have ended 
 there. But the Mayor refused to decrease his patronage 
 and kept the men. When he could not secure a contin- 
 uation of their salaries, he compelled the legitimate 
 policemen to pay it by an enforced subscription of ten 
 days' salary from each man. This was done through 
 the subterfuge of an enforced ten days' vacation without 
 pay. Every dollar of this money belonged by law to the 
 men, and the taking of it from them was an act of unlaw- 
 ful spoliation. This forcing of money from the regular 
 police was done to get a fund to further break the law 
 by hiring employes forbidden by the law to be in the 
 public service. When the extorted sum was used up in 
 this unlawful spoilsmanship other amounts belonging to 
 the police fund were unlawfully expended for the main- 
 tenance of it until the department's appropriation had 
 been exceeded $1 10,000. Every effort ingenuity was able 
 to devise had been used to deceive the tax-payers about 
 the proceeding. The Finance Committee was bound to 
 see that the moneys appropriated by the Council were 
 expended economically and in the work for which they 
 were specifically bestcrwed. When it insisted on this 
 conduct in the expenditure of the police funds, the 
 Administration succeeded in persuading the public to 
 resent what it took for an attempt to lessen the com- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 143 
 
 munity's safety by reducing the police force. There was 
 no attempt to lessen the force, only a resistance to the 
 increase of* it by unlawful means. When the already 
 underpaid regular police were forced to give up ten days' 
 pay per man, they were made to feel that it was a sacri- 
 fice advanced to preserve the integrity of the force. 
 When the Council made no appropriation either to refund 
 the men this squeeze or to cover the enlarged criminal 
 expenditure, the men were made hostile to the city's 
 legislature and indifferent to their duty of enforcing ordi- 
 nances. They were convinced the Council was specially 
 unfriendly to them, was attempting to burden each over- 
 worked man with more labor by compelling a less num- 
 ber to do it all, and was trying to compel men to quit the 
 service by making the receipt of salaries uncertain and 
 cutting down the appropriation. The real truth was, the 
 Board had been struggling to secure each man his full 
 pay and regularity in getting it by preventing diversion 
 of the ample police fund. If the city had plenty of 
 money, the speaker would oppose increasing the number 
 of city employes without good reason. If the treasury 
 were bursting he would not, while he was at the head of 
 the Finance Committee, permit any official to put one 
 man on the pay roll tmless the Council first created a 
 place for that man and appropriated a salary for him. 
 He would use every power available to him as party 
 leader, as member of the Council, and as director of the 
 expenditure of the tax money, to prevent the Mayor, or 
 any other official, from forcing the city to pay unlawful 
 salaries, whether they numbered 320, as in the present 
 case, or but one. That was the position he had taken 
 and held during this entire controversy. It was the only 
 
144 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 one an honest man could take. It was the one he meant 
 to continue, no matter what the consequences might be 
 to himself. For these he had no right to care. But he 
 besought the other members to stand by him for the 
 city's sake. 
 
 This speech produced a profound impression. It 
 stirred the spectators into an uproar of applause and 
 brought thirty-seven votes to his side to uphold him in 
 any action he might take. To the executive party in 
 the chamber it was a revelation. They saw it was then 
 or never with the Mayor's scheme. They rushed frantic 
 into a fight as if for life. They moved for a division of 
 the Alderman's motion, arguingMt was two in one. 
 They insisted on having it made into a motion to file and 
 one to conciir. But Madden had anticipated this, and 
 shown that a motion to concur would make it necessary 
 to have his committee bring the matter before the house 
 in a report, which concurrence then the Board would 
 transfer into an order that the Mayor could veto. Now 
 the matter was before the house by the Mayor's own 
 action in the Gallagher resolution. The motion to divide 
 was voted down amid the wildest excitement. The only 
 hope of the administration party was now in adjournment. 
 A motion to adjourn was made and declared carried by 
 the Chair, occupied for the occasion by an administration 
 selection, in spite of a roll call demanded by the major - 
 it}'. This gave the Democrats an excuse for leaving and 
 attempting to destroy the quorum necessary for the trans- 
 action of business. They rushed for the doors and a few 
 got out, through the connivance of the janitor, who 
 swung the portals wide. The Republicans carried the 
 roll call through, showing the motion to adjourn had 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 145 
 
 been defeated and that the house was still in full ses- 
 sion, and then by force attempted to save the quorum 
 present by preventing further desertion. In the encoun- 
 ter which resulted, the quorum was saved. The defeated 
 and whipped minority refused to vote. But they were 
 present. Their number made the voting legal, and Mr. 
 Madden 's motion was carried by thirty-seven votes, 
 those belonging to the twenty-three prisoners not being 
 cast. The struggle had lasted four hours and was per- 
 haps as great in the parliamentary skill and eloquence 
 brought into play as any that ever was witnessed in any 
 deliberative body. 
 
 The Mayor gave up the contest and the police force 
 resumed its normal and legal condition. The men soon 
 realized the value of the presence of a just, enlightened 
 and courageous man in the town Council. There being 
 no "extras" now to be supported by "docking," the reg- 
 ulars received their full salaries. 
 
 The Council proceedings were fully reported in all 
 the papers next day. They produced such a revulsion 
 of feeling among all classes of citizens as let in the real 
 truth to the public mind. The result was a rally to the 
 general support of the Alderman from the Fourth Ward. 
 If he had retained any desire to be Mayor of Chicago he 
 could have had the Republican noominatin for that office 
 for the ensuing spring election and would easily have 
 defeated the Mayor, who was arranging to run for re-elec- 
 tion , or any other man the Democrats might nominate. 
 But the Alderman had retired from the field in favor of 
 Mr. Swift, and the wholesome political effect of his long, 
 well-fought struggle for the tax-payers went to another 
 man. 
 
 10 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 STARTS CIVIL SERVICE REFORM MOVEMENT — FURNISHES IT ARGU- 
 MENTS — MANY NEW IDEAS. 
 
 jkjk R. MADDEN'S experience with the method of con- 
 / T 1 ducting the municipal government of Chicago con- 
 vinced him not only that civil service reform was the only 
 available method of correcting the evils afflicting the 
 public service, but that its immediate adoption was 
 imperative. It held out the means of eradicating the 
 disease and of preventing its recurrence. Every Mayor- 
 alty election was a contest for 20,000 salaries. These 
 were good for two years. Few of them were to be earned 
 by giving the tax-payers service worth the wages 
 received. Most of them were paid rather for the value 
 of the help rendered in getting the Chief Executive his 
 position, or for the activity expected in procuring him 
 another term. The employer was too ostensibly the 
 Mayor and too evidently not the people who paid the 
 money. The official's interest in the expenditure of these 
 20,000 salaries could not but be largely personal. He 
 naturally accepted his election under the system as a 
 warrant for exploiting himself at the public expense. 
 His adherents looked upon themselves as in his pay, in 
 his service, at his command. They felt bound to make 
 themselves as valuable to him as they could, to get out of 
 him as much as possible, and to prolong their opportuni- 
 ties to the utmost. by maintaining him in the place of dis- 
 
 146 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 147 
 
 tribution. On neither side, that of paying out the wages 
 or that of receiving them, was there a tithe of the con- 
 sideration for the tax-payer that there was for the dis- 
 penser of the places. The cow was fed for the milk she 
 would yield. She might desire to be some other kind of 
 cow, but so long as she did not go dry, the fellow that 
 filled the pail did it solely for the boss, and his thoughts 
 were about butter. Her ladyship might begrudge that 
 use for milk; she'certainly had no interest in butter; but 
 the other two had, and was she not in their hands? 
 
 The Alderman concluded that if the tax-payers should 
 by law appoint a body of non-partisan competent 
 men with permanent commission to control, under 
 proper public regulations, all appointments and dis- 
 charges in the civic service, the immediate effect would 
 be to bar out from public employment all but those fitted 
 to enter it. This would result at once in the formation 
 of a new class of men, those who had natural aptitude for 
 public work. The moment it should be established that 
 no one w r ould be employed in civic work unless competent, 
 and that once employed a public servant could not be 
 dismissed except for cause, men qualified to do what 
 tax-payers paid for having done would apply for the task 
 with a view of rendering public service equivalent for 
 the salaries paid and making of it a life occupation. 
 These would undoubtedly include the truly worthy among 
 the spoils class, but it would exclude the parasites. That 
 in itself would be a great gain, for it would conserve all 
 that was worth saving of the pernicious system and 
 destroy the rest. It would keep out of administrative 
 office men with nothing but personal following, and put 
 in persons solely for their ability to -manage public 
 
148 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 affairs. It would prevent re-elections for all reasons but 
 those of continued usefulness. Not only that, it would 
 reduce taxes by making impossible any public expendi- 
 ture except for actual public service. While all the 
 servants the city paid were doing nothing but city work, 
 there would never be employed as many as when a large 
 part of their time had to be devoted to the political in- 
 trigue necessary to keep the Mayor either in office or 
 before the public as a big personality. 
 
 When Mr. Madden announced his determination to 
 advocate civil service reform in the city government and 
 to do all in his power to bring it about, he was at once beset 
 by every kind of political persecution his party adver- 
 saries could devise and every effort at dissuasion 
 his party associates could invent. The result was a dis- 
 cussion seldom equaled for the skill of the arguments 
 brought into play. One prominent political authority 
 held that the Almighty had himself given the first and 
 best example of the principle that to the victors belong 
 the spoils. Divine service, he said, was induced alto- 
 gether by expected reward — no one " could get either 
 a seat or a harp except by loud praise and effective work. M 
 The member from the Fourth thought this logic feeble, 
 as Love of Him served and not Expectancy was the real 
 inspiration to sound religious living. If not profane to 
 institute a parallel between sacred and lay things it 
 would be much better for public life if party service were 
 attracted by pure love of party principles than by hope 
 of office ; and, as to gratitude, it would be much better to 
 have men grateful to their party than to any individual 
 of it for political favors received, and better yet to have 
 them grateful to their country; as the offices belonged to 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 149 
 
 the country, and when they were bestowed by a party 
 they never were the personal gift of the official instru- 
 mental in delivering them. 
 
 So far as public offices were in the gift of a party, he 
 contended, they were a sort of wage-fund — the only kind 
 of currency the party had to pay its hands with ; and it 
 was just as dishonest for a man elected by a party to an 
 administrative office to liquidate his personal political 
 debts by paying them out of the party's wage-fund as it 
 would be. for a business manager to pay his personal obli- 
 gations out of the company's safe. In both cases the 
 wage-earners might be deprived of their earnings, and 
 in the end both the party and the company would fail 
 because unable to obtain labor. On this account he 
 thought that all such offices as Presidential appointments, 
 for instance, which could not well be included in the 
 civil service list, as the filling of them for securing that 
 change of policy called for by national elections was 
 necessary, should be considered a sort of fund belonging 
 to the party as a whole, and, with few exceptions, like 
 those to a cabinet and the principal foreign appoint- 
 ments, should be at the disposal of the organization and 
 never within the exclusive gift of either the President, 
 Senators or Congressmen. If the members of Congress 
 were allowed to control these appointments, they would 
 more often be used for personal than party advantage, 
 more often given to secure individual retention in place 
 than party retention in power. If the President were 
 permitted to bestow them, he might use them for per-. 
 sonal ends rather than for party advantage. 
 
 The nearest approach to perfect civil service reform 
 in the bestowal of Presidential places possible, Mr. 
 
150 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Madden urged, would lie in a plan that would prohioit 
 the appointment to any of these of any person except 
 upon the certification of the local committee of the party 
 in power of the place where the appointee was to per- 
 form his work. Such a plan would induce the best 
 party men in all localities to be active in committee 
 work, because then they would have real influence in 
 party action. They would see to it that in their local- 
 ities the most deserving as well as the most efficient 
 party workers got the places at the party's bestowal 
 there. Where several candidates possessed equal ability, 
 the one who in addition had that of best serving his 
 party when it was entitled to service in the office would 
 get the place. In this way alone could the best party 
 service be everywhere obtained, because it would assure 
 proper recognition for correct zeal everywhere, and 
 would put office-holders in debt to the organization 
 instead of to individuals. It would be much better for 
 the country as well as for the party in power to have all 
 partisan appointees indebted to the organization for 
 their places than to have them grateful to a mere Con- 
 gressman, or Senator, or even a President. The party 
 was bigger and more important than either or all three 
 together. It was the party which was elected to power 
 and not any individual of it, and the place-holder's obli- 
 gation, where it could not go to the country as a whole, 
 should go to the party as a whole, and never to an indi- 
 vidual of it. Such a policy would also relieve Congress- 
 men and Senators, as well as Presidents, of not only a 
 great deal of useless work and worry, thereby enabling 
 them to attend to their duties better and with more 
 single-mindedness, but it would place the responsibility 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 151 
 
 for party appointments upon those to whom it properly 
 belonged — the managers in the localities where the office- 
 holders' work was to be done. The managers would 
 carry this responsibility much better, as a rule, than ever 
 it had been borne under the way things were conducted 
 now. When Presidents, Senators and Congressmen 
 should be confined strictly to the doing of the work they 
 were elected to do, and were deprived of patronage as a 
 means of getting into office or of remaining there once 
 in, better public, work would be done and better men 
 would be elected to do public work. When both the 
 great parties into which the people of this country had 
 always been divided and into which they bid fair to 
 remain divided, were made solely responsible for the 
 policies they advocated by having entire control of the 
 selection of their members who were to carry it out, 
 then only would party government reach the real effi- 
 ciency of which it was capable. No President, no Sena- 
 tor, no Congressman that ever was elected to office pos- 
 sessed either the ability, the knowledge, or the inclination 
 that would enable him to select as good a postmaster, 
 collector, or revenue officer, to perform federal service 
 in any locality, as were possessed for that purpose by 
 such committees of residents as would be induced to 
 manage party interests if this plan of political home rule 
 were generally adopted. It would be ideal civil service 
 reform in Presidential appointments. 
 
 Mr. Madden intimated it could perhaps be success- 
 fully contended that if the plan he suggested for the reg- 
 ulation of Presidential appointments had long ago been 
 put into operation for all federal offices by both parties, 
 there never would have arisen the necessity for the civil 
 
152 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 service reform which within recent years had removed 
 so many thousands of government places from the per- 
 sonal control of public men. The whole evil of the so- 
 called spoils system had been due to the personal element 
 in the control of public places. It was the same element 
 that had vitiated the public service in municipalities. It 
 was that alone that had brought about the wretched con- 
 dition of the civil service in Chicago. 
 
 , V Consider the situation here," he said. "Our 
 Mayors have personal control of about 20,000 appoint- 
 ments. They, appoint every policeman, fireman, clerk, 
 head of department, street sweeper, jailer, and so forth. 
 All these men are at the absolute mercy of the Mayor. 
 He can transfer, suspend or dismiss them — make it pos- 
 sible for them to earn a good living, a poor living or no 
 livelihood at all. The fortunes of all of them are bound 
 up in the Mayor's career. If he desires to remain in 
 office, they must all spend their time electioneering for 
 him instead of serving the public which pays their sala- 
 ries. When their time is in this way partly taken up in 
 the Mayor's service, either the public work is neglected, 
 or more people are required to do it. As the duration 
 of the Mayor's term is that of their employment, they 
 are more likely to use their time 'feathering their nests' 
 than in attending to their duties. If the Mayor is cor- 
 rupt, they are more so. If he is not popular enough to be 
 assured of another term, they increase their looting. If 
 he is an open-town man, they race him preying on vice. 
 No matter what the Chief Executive may be, the entire 
 horde cannot be good public servants, because they are 
 in the service for 'what there is in it' for two years i 
 the administration term. The whole thing is wrong 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 153 
 
 from top to bottom. The only cure is civil service 
 reform. We must take all these appointments away from 
 personal control and put them under public control. 
 That can only be done by putting all civic appointments 
 into the hands of a public body which shall represent the 
 tax-payers, select the public employes solely for their 
 fitness to do the work they are to be paid for, and 
 appoint them for life or good behavior. Every fireman 
 passed should be assured of his place while able to work. 
 Every policeman selected should know that he is in ser- 
 vice for life. Every fireman and policeman should be 
 assigned to duty in the district where he has decided to 
 live, so that he may know all the people there and be 
 able to distinguish strangers. 
 
 "They should not be compelled to pay money or lose 
 time going to and from work. They should know that 
 no one will have the power to annoy them by transfer, 
 and that they will always have their salaries unimpaired 
 by any deduction so long as they do their duty, and that 
 they or their families will be cared for if they are injured 
 in the public service. They should do duty entirely 
 where they live, because their interest there would be 
 greater than it could be anywhere else, and every one in 
 the locality would be a friend and ally in their work. 
 Criminals would be less likely to locate or dwell in neigh- 
 borhoods where policemen live as well as work than in 
 those where they go only as strangers. There should be 
 no change in any but executive officials when there is a 
 change in Executives. The civil service should 'be com- 
 posed of a staff that has been composed to remain, has 
 been selected to stay, and that cannot be either dis- 
 turbed or harried in any way by any change in the mere 
 
154 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Mayoralty. It should be the well selected machinery 
 for the running of the business of the city, founded to go 
 right along, irrespective of any change in engineers. 
 The Mayor should be simply the engineer engaged by 
 the corporation to run its machine and not his own, its 
 machine a carefully selected and constructed fixture, 
 manageable by any reputable engineer. " 
 
 "Yes, but a pure man in the office of Mayor could do 
 a great deal of good with those appointments. You are 
 being urged for the place. See the power for good you 
 would have in the control of 20,000 offices. Why then 
 attempt to destroy the system ; why not stand by it and 
 save it for the influence it preserves for good men?" 
 
 "The human nature in me might make me as suscep- 
 tible as any other man to the enjoyment of the power 
 lying in the control of such a large number of people 
 depending on me. But I would rather be Mayor with- 
 out that patronage than with it. With the office in view, 
 I am in favor of having it shorn of all this power of 
 appointment. If I should become Chief Executive at a 
 time when the Mayor still had these 20,000 appointments, 
 I would do all I could to fill them with the best men pos- 
 sible to obtain, and might be able in doing it to help the 
 party that elected me and at the same time build up a 
 personal following useful to any ambition I should have 
 for the future. But I cannot see that with all my expe- 
 rience I could fill all these places as well for the tax- pay- 
 ers as could a commission devoted to that work alone. I 
 could not possibly be as disinterested as that body 
 would be, no matter how much I tried ; nor could I give 
 the work of selection as much time and skill. If you 
 should consider me a perfect public servant and your 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 155 
 
 opinion and the fact should match, yet a commission 
 would in the work of finding efficient employes for the 
 city surpass me in every way. That being so, if 1 were a 
 candidate for the Mayoralty, for the only good reason 
 warranting aspiration to that office — a desire to serve the 
 public — 1 should be bound to prefer having all the 
 appointments controlled by a permanent non-partisan 
 Board. And so far as personal convenience could- right- 
 fully enter the question, I still would prefer to have the 
 Board control the appointments. I should desire to be 
 as good a Mayor as I could be. It would be easier to 
 be a good Executive with Board appointees to carry on 
 the civil service than with personal appointees, for the 
 former would be far more likely to be all efficient than 
 my own selections. If I had the office already equipped, 
 with all the places filled with better public servants than 
 1 could pick out, I could give my full time to executive 
 work. If, on the other hand, after being sworn in I had 
 to find 20,000 suitable persons to help me, and then 
 maintain continual political interest in them all, I should 
 have on my hands another job that might prove far more 
 exacting on my time and ability than the office I was 
 elected to fill. Every disinterested consideration of the 
 subject leads surely to this conclusion: that in municipal 
 government the non-executive offices should be perma- 
 nently filled by selections made by a continuous non- 
 partisan Board acting for all the tax-payers. So far as 
 these city servants go they should constitute a fixed fea- 
 ture of the civil administration, like the parts of a 
 machine an engineer is to handle for the concern that 
 employs him. They should be always ready at hand, 
 supplied in advance, permanently appointed, so far as 
 
156 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 possible; and not subject to change or substitution by 
 each new Chief Executive employed. The Mayor of a 
 city is elected to office to execute the will of the citizens 
 as expressed in the city ordinances. His entire time 
 should be devoted to executive labor. He should not 
 have to find public servants; they should be already in 
 place as parts of the system he is engaged to direct, 
 not form." 
 
 41 But isn't the quality of the men elected to the Pres- 
 idency a proof that the old way is the better way? 
 They were all elected under the spoils system." 
 
 44 We have elected twenty-five Presidents. Among 
 the thousands of rulers who have governed all other 
 countries there cannot be found an equal number of men 
 comparable in ability and virtue to the twenty-five Pres- 
 idents the American people have elected consecutively. 
 This fact is the greatest of all the arguments in favor of 
 republican form of government. The superior character 
 of all the Presidents who have managed our national 
 affairs successively for over one hundred years does not, 
 in any w r ay, prove value in the spoils system. It does, 
 however, demonstrate the value of placing the responsi- 
 bility for the selection of candidates on the whole party 
 organization, and, properly considered, affords the strong- 
 est of arguments for civil service reform. The history 
 of the Presidential elections conclusively proves that the 
 greater the number of the people who actively engage in 
 the work of selecting federal executives, the better the 
 selection. When the people of the country are divided 
 into two parties, each candidate for the Presidency 
 represents the choice of one-half the population. For 
 more than a century the population has been so divided 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 157 
 
 in national elections. The results show that one-half 
 the people have always selected better men for office than 
 smaller divisions have; for the Presidents have all been 
 better men than those elected by smaller constituencies, 
 such as Governors, Senators, Congressmen, and so on. 
 The smaller the number of people making choice of an 
 official, the more inferior, as a 'rule, the man chosen, 
 until you get away down to the constable, in whose elec- 
 tion probably the least number of voters take interest. 
 Now, if the greater the number you can interest in the 
 selection of a public official, the better the man chosen, 
 until you get up to the President, selected by half of the 
 people, it would seem to follow that if you could get all 
 the people to choose you would do better still, as was 
 done in the selection of Washington. That is the very 
 essence of the principle of civil service reform. It 
 assumes that in the selection of men for the performance 
 of public duties, the choice of all the people is the best 
 choice and that of the individual the worst. It proposes, 
 because of this, to remove the selection of public serv- 
 ants from the control of individuals, the worst selectors, 
 and place it in the control of the whole population, the 
 best chooser. This it proposes to do through a Board 
 appointed by all the people and representing them all, 
 having for its purpose the selection of men for the pub- 
 lic service, not'in the interest of any individual or of any 
 party, but of the entire community, comprising all indi- 
 viduals and all parties." 
 
 Those were remarkable arguments to be made in the 
 five or six years preceding 1895 in Chicago by a 
 man ambitious to be Mayor of the city. They are, per- 
 haps, the best ever uttered on the subject; at least, they 
 
158 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 have not been excelled. They convey an idea of Mad- 
 den's method of expounding his principles, but do so no 
 better than the two following examples, drawn out by a 
 very recent debate on the same subject with some inti- 
 mate political friends: 
 
 A managing politician of his own party in the city 
 said to Madden: "This civil service humbug is but a 
 college industry devised to find employment for the sur- 
 plus product of the colleges." 
 
 "If the colleges do nothing else than educate young 
 men for the public service they will be doing about as 
 good a thing for the country as they can well do," was 
 the response; "for up to date there have been no per- 
 sons at all trained for public employment. Heretofore, 
 men have got their training for office in office at the tax- 
 payers* expense. It will be a good deal gained if the 
 schools at their expense furnish the knowledge before- 
 hand needed to run the offices of the country properly 
 from the start. ' ' 
 
 "Yes," said another Bourbon, "but this here thing 
 of refining in the tests for officeholding kin be carried 
 too far. They've got it to a point now where it bars out 
 the great majority of the American people from holding 
 any office in the country. When I was a boy any man in 
 the country could hold office. Now, only a few kin stand 
 the tests and get in. All the rest is barred out. Its 
 gettin' to be like China. That's where civil service 
 started. And they've got the thing down so fine there 
 now that all the offices in the empire is held and monop- 
 olized by a few rich fellers that kin afford to put in their 
 whole time on books. The great majority of the Chinese 
 have no hope of ever gettin' any share in the govern- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 159 
 
 ment of their country. That's why they don't care any- 
 thing for the government of their country. That's why 
 there's no patriotism in China. It's gettin' to be the 
 same way here. The people are losing their patriotism. 
 When I was young everybody was a patriot in this 
 country. Then, everybody could hold office if he wanted 
 to. But now civil service bars most of the people out, 
 and they've grown indifferent to the government and 
 don't care as much for it as they used to. People ain't 
 as patriotic as they used to be. Civil service reform has 
 killed patriotism off. It was different in the old days. 
 Then, every Presidential election there was 100,000 
 offices for the winners, and about 1,000,000 men in each 
 party struggling to get them. That made politics lively. 
 Everyone was interested in the outcome. That stirred 
 everyone up. That made public sentiment healthy. 
 Now there's nothing to fight for. The civil servicers 
 get everything, no matter which party wins. So politics 
 is dead. Nobody cares any more which party wins. So 
 patriotism is dying out. Civil service is killing it." 
 
 Madden was not taken by surprise at this effort at 
 reasoning. He instantly recognized in it the prevailing 
 ignorant view cultivated by the lowest clas.s of politicians. 
 He said: ''China probably devised the system of public 
 examinations to ascertain the fitness of candidates for 
 office, and has carried it to such perfection that in normal 
 times none but well qualified men can attain important 
 positions in the public service of the empire. The exam- 
 inations are open to all and the tests do not bar any from 
 public place but those not qualified to serve. Li Hung 
 Chang, the son of a farmer, is a conspicuous example of 
 the rise of a Chinaman by means of ability demonstrated 
 
160 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 at the public examinations. Although Chinese of pure 
 blood, he has by publicly proved ability risen to first place 
 under the foreign government of the Manchu dynasty. 
 In the recent international war he was entrusted alone 
 to negotiate the peace settlement with the representatives 
 of all the powers combined. He had through public 
 tests established perfect confidence in the minds of all 
 his countrymen in his ability to successfully meet all 
 who might be arrayed against him, and his achievement 
 in securing an agreement by the powers to let the 
 indemnity forced on China be paid mainly from the 
 duties on those things on which the foreigners pay the 
 tax, would seem to fully justify the good opinion of him 
 entertained by his people. The partisanship called 
 patriotism has no field for display in China, because the 
 government is paternal and there are no party divisions. 
 The people hate the dynasty because it is foreign and, 
 of course, their patriotism would all be manifested in 
 opposition. Their civil service system, instead of dull- 
 ing their patriotism, really increases their pride in their 
 public officials because of their known and demonstrated 
 ability. 
 
 "The whole world recognizes the increase of patriot- 
 ism in this country. In the 'old days,' say those of the 
 Revolution, there was a Tory party in the United States. 
 In the War of the Rebellion there still was a party of 
 Copperheads, not, however, so potent as the opposition 
 George Washington had stabbing him in the back. But 
 patriotism has become to nearly universal in the Union 
 that an American President would now practically have 
 no American enemies to encounter in a foreign war. In 
 every instance in the history of the country wherein any 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 161 
 
 popular manifestation of dissatisfaction with the govern- 
 ment has occurred, the facts show it was caused by the 
 evils of the spoils system. As these evils have disap- 
 peared, as control of federal offices has been removed 
 from individual power, as consequent corruption and 
 scandal have been eliminated, as civil service reform 
 has been extended in the federal departments and the 
 public service has been improved by trained and efficient 
 servants, patriotism, pride in the government, has corre- 
 spondingly increased, and its manifestations have become 
 proverbial all over the world. 
 
 44 The mere mention of the alleged necessity of hav- 
 ing offices to give for political work in order to induce 
 interest in elections in the 'old days,' shows the utter 
 lack of real patriotism in the workers who required such 
 incentive. They didn't labor for their country because 
 they loved their country. They simply loved 4 what there 
 was in it. ' The presence of the successful class of these, 
 4 crib livers' in the offices of the country did more to dis- 
 courage patriotism and disgust citizens with their govern- 
 ment than any other thing, except the disgruntled vapor- 
 ings of the class kept out. If civil service reform did 
 nothing more than starve such men into the necessity of 
 earning their bread by any kind of honest labor they 
 were capable of, it helped the cause of patriotism 
 immensely. With the disappearance of these parasites 
 from public life interest in politics has so increased that 
 in the two last Presidential elections nearly the whole 
 suffrage of the country was polled, a thing never pos- 
 sible to attain in the 4 old days' of the spoils system. The 
 real fact is that in the spoils period it was difficult to 
 interest the average citizen in the work of procuring a 
 
 n 
 
162 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 change of office-holders for the benefit of the 'outs,' and 
 political activity was as a rule left to the 'grub hunters. 
 Now that elections are held mainly for the promotion of 
 principles, and cause little change in office-holding, they 
 afford a real interest to citizens who love the government 
 and have an increasing pride in the method of its con- 
 duct, and inspire full voting." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PASSES CIVIL SERVICE REFORM BILL— IGNORES INGRATITUDE- 
 RESCUES LAW FROM DESTRUCTION. 
 
 IN 1895 Mr. Madden was nominated for his fourth term 
 in the Council, There was arrayed against him the 
 strongest candidate his combined opponents could put 
 into the field. This was a Reform candidate placed in 
 opposition to Mr. Madden by the local branch of the Civic 
 Federation for some reason that has never been 
 explained. This organization was composed of a large 
 number of the most influential citizens of the town, 
 banded together for the purpose of securing Civil Service 
 Reform. Of this the Alderman had been not only the 
 most persistent advocate but the most influential. He 
 had done more than all the other reformers together to 
 create sentiment in the Board and among the citizens for 
 the movement. It was mainly through his efforts that 
 the Civil Service Ordinance presented to the Council by 
 Alderman Mann on Dec. 3, 1894, had been brought for- 
 ward. This ordinance, after being passed, was form- 
 ulated into a legislative act establishing Civil Service 
 Reform in Chicago, providing the statute should be sub- 
 mitted to the voters of the city at a regular election and 
 by them approved by a majority vote. The proposed 
 law was at the time before the Legislature, with the 
 Civic Federation as its sponsor. Efforts were being 
 made to have it passed in time to have the voters act on 
 
 J68 
 
164 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 it in that spring's Mayoralty election. The measure was 
 "held tip'* securely by interests opposed to its passage 
 and others using it as a block to obtain consideration for 
 bills. 
 
 The Federation's open hostility to Madden in his own 
 ward created suspicion and general misapprehension. It 
 caused the fiercest and closest canvass ever made in the 
 district. Three different house to house polls were 
 taken. All parties became divided. A Democratic 
 Madden club was organized to offset Republican defec- 
 tion. It grew until it contained 500 members. It paraded 
 the streets every fair evening with transparencies calling 
 on the voters to rally to the support of Madden, "the 
 best Alderman the city ever had." 
 
 The excitement in the city over the election was 
 equaled, though on a smaller scale, in Springfield over 
 the Civil Service Bill. The Hon. Lyman J. Gage, pres- 
 ent Secretary of the United States Treasury, was there 
 in the interest of the bill, in company with the Hon. John 
 H. Hamline, President of the Civic Federation, and a 
 host of similar prominent reformers. Nearly all of these 
 had lent the use of their names to the Reform Candidate 
 running against Alderman Madden in his own ward. 
 
 About March 15th, in the most exciting period of the 
 city struggle, the officers of the Federation who were at 
 Springfield realized that they could not secure the passage 
 of the Reform Bill without party help. Alderman 
 Madden was at the time Chairman of the City Central 
 Republican Committee and acknowledged party leader 
 in Chicago. The Civil Service Reformers at Springfield 
 sent to him as party leader an urgent request to come to 
 the capital and assist in getting the measure passed, stat- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 165 
 
 ihg that it was in the vSenate and lacked nine votes, which 
 could not be obtained. This request was perhaps the 
 most extraordinary ever made of a candidate running for 
 office. The Federation was doing all in its power to 
 retire Madden from public life and was pushing him 
 hard in his home district by the use of a special candi- 
 date put there by the organization to split the Republican 
 vote. To now ask him, within a few days of election, 
 to abandon the contest in its critical stage and leave it 
 to the Federation's nominee and go to Springfield to 
 assist the Society in the cause of Reform, looked to most 
 of the Republican workers like a well conceived subter- 
 fuge to assure Madden's complete overthrow. 
 
 He took a different view. The request indicated to 
 him that the Civil Service Bill must be in a desperate 
 tangle at Springfield to induce his avowed enemies to 
 solicit his help. Their request convinced him they were 
 sincerely in favor of the proposed reform, else they would 
 not seek assistance from an enemy in a cause both 
 espoused. He concluded to go and telegraphed to that 
 effect, asking merely that he be absolved from blame for 
 obnoxious city legislation that might be rushed through 
 the Council during his absence. It was suspected at the 
 time that certain Aldermen were prepared to introduce 
 and hurry through a couple of bad franchise measures 
 they had in hand during the hurry of the closing days of 
 the old Board's life. Gathering a number of the ablest 
 city party managers together he went with them to 
 Springfield. Grasping the situation at once, he and his 
 friends set to work to obtain the nine votes needed to get 
 the Civil Service Bill out of the deadlock and passed. It 
 took two days and nights of the hardest kind of work. 
 
166 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 On March tgth the Alderman turned over to the Civic 
 Federation for the passage of its measure twelve new 
 votes, and the Civil Service Law was enacted. In the 
 history of. Reform legislation Madden is the only person 
 who is recorded as having alone been able to put on 
 statute books a Ci^il Service Reform Law. 
 
 His work at the capital accomplished, Madden returned 
 to Chicago, arriving in the morning. He at once went 
 before the Republican Executive Committee of Cook 
 County and suggested the adoption of a resolution, which 
 he presented, calling on all the voters and political work- 
 ers in the county to do their utmost to secure the adop- 
 tion of the Civil Service Law in the election on April 
 2d. If the voters then by a majority approved the law 
 it would become operative on the first of the following 
 July; if they did not, the date of its operation would be 
 indefinitely postponed. The fate of the law was entirely 
 within the control of the Republican party in the city. 
 The committee unanimously adopted the resolution. 
 Then he had issued a proclamation urging every voter 
 to use every legitimate influence' within his control to 
 procure votes for the law, so that the tax-payers might 
 realize its benefits as soon as possible. This was posted 
 immediately all over the city and sent out in special 
 mails to the electors. The whole machinery of the 
 Republican party was put to work and strained to its last 
 possible effort to destroy the whole spoils system in the 
 municipality. This was the work that produced the 
 result accomplished. Mr. Madden made no display; he 
 had neither disposition nor time for that ; what he was 
 after, as usual, was results. 
 
 He then went back to his canvass, after a three days' 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT . 167 
 
 absence from it. As he had feared, two "boodle" ordi- 
 nances had been put through the Board of Aldermen dur- 
 ing his absence and the Civic Federation party in the 
 Fourth Ward were industriously using the fact against 
 him. They were arguing that he was really responsible 
 for both measures and that his absence was a trick to 
 allow them to be passed without himself going on record 
 foi them. These same reformers both concealed and 
 denied the fact that the Alderman had gone away in the 
 interest of the very Reform movement they were man- 
 ipulating against him. 
 
 To the credit of the press of Chicago it must be said 
 that when the news from the State capital was placed 
 before its editors and they realized fully what had been 
 done at Springfield, and were informed by their local 
 reporters of what was being done in the city campaign, 
 they lost no time in raising a row over the whole hypoc- 
 risy that was being operated in the Fourth Ward against 
 the real achiever of Civil Service Reform for the city. 
 Several editors, whose papers had up to this time been 
 bitterly fighting Madden, turned them entirely about into 
 advocates of his election, some even demanding it in the 
 name of good government. The campaign was in its 
 last days and the revulsion had barely time to enlighten 
 public sentiment. President Hamline took it upon him- 
 self, in the name of the Civic Federation, to go into the 
 Alderman's district and take the stump against the work 
 of his own Society. He announced everywhere he 
 obtained an audience: "To Mr. Madden belongs the 
 credit of having secured for the City of Chicago the passage 
 of the Civil Service Reform Law. Without the votes he 
 got for the measure the bill could not have been passed. " 
 
168 . MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Mr. Slason Thompson, editor of the Journal, led in 
 this work. His paper had been one of the most intelli- 
 gent and powerful agencies used in the campaign up to 
 this time for the support of the Civic Federation's Alder- 
 manic candidate in the Fourth Ward. He did not hesi- 
 tate one moment in changing his attitude. He was dis- 
 interested and sincere. On March 2 2d he came out in 
 an editorial calling on all the voters in the Fourth Ward 
 to rally to the support of Madden. t4 Speaking for 
 myself/' said Mr. Thompson, "and the Journal, t think 
 Alderman Madden is a public benefactor. In the first 
 place/ the people of the State of Illinois and of the City 
 of Chicago owe it to the Republican party that the Civil 
 Service Law has been given to them for adoption. Had 
 it not been for Alderman Madden we (speaking for the 
 Civic Federation) could not have passed the bill and the 
 reform might have been indefinitely delayed. I was at 
 Springfield with the Citizens' Committee. We had only 
 five of the ten Republican Senators from Cook County 
 favorably inclined to us before Mr. Madden came. The 
 country Senators would not come to our support so long 
 as we lacked unanimity among those from our own 
 county. Mr. Madden came to the capital and with his 
 personal and political influence secured to us the five 
 home votes we needed and which, until he worked on 
 them, had been opposed to us. They gave us the local 
 unanimity we had to have. It strengthened our favor- 
 able men and welded the Cook County Senators together, 
 and this solidity enabled us to obtain the other votes we 
 needed from the country. I consider this the most 
 important piece of work on the part of a public man 
 that has been done in ten years either in Illinois or Chi ; 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 169 
 
 cago. It stamps Mr. Madden as a public man of vast 
 usefulness. He has been called a machine politician, 
 but by his work for Civil Service Reform he has proven 
 himself a citizen of the highest type. We advise the 
 voters of the Fourth Ward to send him to the Council. 
 It is not possible that his opponent in his whole life has 
 performed for the public services as valuable as Mr. 
 Madden has accomplished in two days." 
 
 President Hamline, of the Civic Federation, made this 
 public announcement: "The Civil Service Law is the 
 most important enactment that has been added to the 
 statutes of Illinois in many years. Alderman Madden 
 enabled us to secure its passage. Without the aid he 
 gave the law could not have been passed. He is a pub- 
 lic-spirited citizen and a representative of the people to 
 whom all true Chicagoans owe a debt of gratitude. He 
 should have full credit for his work." 
 
 The News, Independent, on March 2 2d, said: "The 
 election of Mr. Madden is more necessary in the interest 
 of reform and good municipal government than the elec- 
 tion of any other nominee on this year's tickets." 
 
 "His record, his leadership, are an example few could 
 emulate. Since 1855 Chicago has had bright and bril- 
 liant men as Chairmen of the Finance Committee, but not 
 one other of them all has done as much as Mr. Madden," 
 said another newspaper. 
 
 City Comptroller Jones, Democrat, said for pub- 
 lication: "As Chairman of the Finance Committee 
 Mr. Madden is a bulwark of strength to the city 
 government. His thorough and complete knowledge 
 of the financial conditions of the city, its resources 
 and necessities, is marvelous. Without a moment's 
 
170 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 hesitation, he can, without reference to a book, give 
 an accurate answer to any question about a financial 
 fact relating to the city. As Chairman of the Finance 
 Committee Mr. Madden is the right arm of the Mayor, 
 an invaluable aid and assistant to the Comptroller." 
 
 44 He is the brainiest, most capable and most self-sac- 
 rificing man that ever held the helm of the Republican 
 ship of state in this city He stands without a peer, 
 without a rival, the ablest Alderman of them all " 
 announced the Dispatch, 
 
 The Inter- Ocean said: 44 Mr. Madden has been engaged 
 in a single service all his life. He is the head of 
 the house in which he first labored in the humblest 
 capacity. Thirty years of faithful duty is the highest 
 possible proof of merit. His financial management of 
 the city has challenged universal admiration. The rec- 
 ord he has made in the Council is that of a leader of men, 
 wise in counsel, courageous in action, and successful in 
 all he undertakes to do. He never in all his life betrayed 
 a friend or broke a promise. His name is a synonym in 
 business circles for integrity and uprightness." 
 
 Alderman Hepburn appeared before the public in an 
 address in which he used the following statement: 44 I 
 have sat in the Council now six years with Mr. Madden, 
 and I desire to say this to the people of Chicago: Never 
 in the history of the city has there been a man in that 
 body who served either his ward or the whole city as 
 faithfully as this man has done. He has done more in 
 the past two years for the city than any Mayor has ever 
 accomplished. He has stood up time and again in the 
 two years just passed when Chicago was on the verge of 
 bankruptcy and saved it from toppling over. He has 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 171 
 
 stood at bay an administration that was plunging the 
 city into ruinous debt, and it has been this one Alder- 
 man's efforts, his determination, his will, his force and 
 his power alone that have saved the town from utter 
 bankruptcy, It has been well said of him that he was 
 not more the representative of the Fourth Ward than of 
 the entire population. He has introduced and passed 
 more bills for the benefit of Chicago and its citizens than 
 all the balance of us put together, and 1 know thoroughly 
 what I am talking about, and the records of the Council 
 will prove it.'* 
 
 Madden's own explanation to his constituents was 
 that when the choice was presented to him of remaining 
 at home and attempting to fight the assured majority 
 that would put on passage the two obnoxious ordinances, 
 or of abandoning both that struggle and the one for his 
 re-election and going to Springfield, he chose the trip, 
 because he believed he would be able to obtain the votes 
 Civil Service Reform needed to become an accomplished 
 fact He had ascertained he could not prevent the pas- 
 sage of the ordinances; all he could do was to make a 
 record of opposition by staying at home and he had been 
 convinced he could secure the passage of the law. The 
 law would prove of more value to the city than any piece 
 of legislation enacted since he had been in public life. 
 It was a thousand times more necessary to all the tax- 
 payers, those of the Fourth Ward included, than the elec- 
 tion of any Alderman or any number of Aldermen. 
 
 He was returned to the Council by a majority of 1,200. 
 
 The election resulted in the popular adoption of 
 the Civil Service Law by a large majority. It went into 
 effect on July 1, 1895. The Mayor, according to its 
 
172 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 terms, appointed three Commissioners to frame rules for 
 the selection and discharge of employes in the city's civil 
 service. At the outset these officials established an age 
 limit, putting it at forty-five years. This barred from the 
 public service every surviving soldier who had served in 
 the Civil War. Nothing could have been done more 
 perilous to the cause of the reform. The public of Chi- 
 cago rose against the outrage. There was danger that 
 the whole plan of having public servants examined for 
 qualifications would be swept out of existence by the 
 indignation of the people. Heroic measures had to be 
 adopted at once to correct the blunder and save the law. 
 Mr. Madden took the question up and arrayed the entire 
 Council against the Commissioners , ruling. He chose 
 for his ground the contention that constitutionally no 
 power but that of the city legislature could determine who 
 should hold office in the city, and that even that body 
 had no right to fix an age limit. The Commissioners had 
 no discretion whatever in the matter of prescribing 
 eligibility. All they had the right to do was to ascertain 
 and report upon the ability to fill office of those who 
 applied for public positions under the classifications made 
 by the Council. It alone could say what offices were to 
 be filled and who should have them. The examiners 
 could do no more than certify to the fitness of the appli- 
 cants as shown at the public examinations and furnish 
 lists to the appointing powers from which to select ascer- 
 tained capables. The Commissioners themselves could 
 neither appoint nor discharge; they could only make and 
 carry out rules for preventing the appointment of incom- 
 petent or the discharge of competent men. The only 
 ability they had the power to certify to was purely that 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 173 
 
 of being able to properly perform the duties of the posi- 
 tions the applicants asked to be examined for. This ques- 
 tion of ability was entirely one of fact, ascertainable by 
 examination, and in no-wise one of age, except in the 
 extreme cases of senility or immaturity. The prerog- 
 ative of deciding how old or how young office-holders 
 should be, as well as that of saying what classes of citi- 
 zens should be eligible to office, belonged solely to the 
 law-making power; the Commission being confined to the 
 work of simply certifying to the fact that applicants 
 belonged to the classes designated by law as those 
 entitled to hold office. To limit the age for office-hold- 
 ing to forty-five years was to establish a class. That was 
 usurping a legislative power. It was an outrage as well. 
 A case had never been known in which a man had proven 
 himself incapable of performing public civic duty simply 
 by being forty-five years old. For much public work 
 men of that age were better qualified than men under 
 it. The soldiers were all past it, and those of them not 
 yet decrepit were especially fit and deserving. The rule 
 of barring these men from public service in the city of 
 Chicago almost approached insanity in its lack of sense 
 and patriotism. It Should be instantly stabbed to death. 
 For the purpose of ending the injustice and scandal 
 at once, Mr. Madden introduced and proposed the 
 immediate adoption of an ordinance declaring unequiv- 
 ocally that in all matters respecting the classification of 
 persons eligible to positions in the city service the Coun- 
 cil alone had the power of decision; prohibiting the 
 establishment of the proposed age limit, and confining 
 the duties of the Civil Service Commission to the preven- 
 tion of the appointment of incapable persons to office and 
 
174 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 the protection from discharge of those deserving to 
 remain in the service. The speech he made in support 
 of his measure was one of the most eloquent ever heard 
 in the city. It carried the Council without a dissenting 
 voice, and the ordinance was adopted by a unanimous 
 vote. This was extraordinary, as the Civil Service Law 
 had many opponents in the Board, and the vote saved 
 the law. If its enemies had successfully resisted the 
 Madden ordinance and thus permitted the Commissioners 
 to have their way, they might have made the law so 
 odious as to have brought about repeal of its enactment. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ASSURES CHICAGO S SUPREMACY IN MANUFACTURE — SAVES LAKE 
 . FRONT— CREATES PARK THERE. 
 
 AFTER Mr. Swift's election a movement was strongly 
 organized to form the Republican party in the city 
 on lines that might diminish Alderman Madden's ascend- 
 ancy. This grew to such extent that it arrayed the 
 Mayor and his official adherents in a somewhat hostile 
 attitude even in the conduct of municipal affairs regu- 
 lated by the Council. When the conflict reached the 
 point where it began to threaten the impairment of Mr. 
 Madden's usefulness as a public servant he called upon 
 the Mayor and said; *'It is best that there should be a 
 clear and unmistakable understanding between us. You 
 are Mayor, and as such, represent in an official capacity 
 the citizens of Chicago. You are also the acknowledged 
 leader of the Republican party in this city. The major- 
 ity of the citizens, by electing you to your office, have 
 publicly declared that the policy of the party, as outlined 
 in the platform upon which you stood as candidate, is 
 the one they wish carried out during your term of office. 
 As a member of the City Council I represent the major- 
 ity that elected you, in the legislative work of the munic- 
 ipality. As Chairman of the Finance Committee I repre- 
 sent the citizens of the city in all questions respecting 
 taxation and disbursement of the public moneys. As 
 spokesman in the Council of the party that elected both 
 
 175 
 
176 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 of us I represent its integrity in all matters consistent 
 with the city's interests. Now, all this being so, I wish 
 you to know that it is my intention, as it is my duty, to 
 support you in every measure you may take both as 
 Mayor and as party leader, so far as councilmanic action 
 may be necessary or helpful to you in such measures. 
 You may always in these matters call upon and demand 
 my help, and you may rely upon it that I will readily 
 give it, and give it cheerfully and with all the ability 
 that I possess. I desire that you accept this avowal. It 
 is made without any reservation. " 
 
 Chicago's natural advantages should in time, Mr. 
 Madden for years has argued, make it the most beautiful 
 city in the world and the most pleasant to abide in. The 
 territory is level and easily improved. The situation by 
 the lakeside gives it two possessions unequaled for sani- 
 tation and comfort. Lake Michigan, nearly 500 miles long, 
 ninety miles wide, and over 400 feet deep, is fed by sub- 
 terranean springs. The water is cold, pure and health- 
 ful. All the corporation needs do is to pump it out and 
 distribute it. The cost of doing this enables the popula- 
 tion to have all they wish for use and waste for less than 
 any other large community can obtain a needed supply. 
 The lake is so large that it cannot be perceptibly raised 
 in temperature. It modifies the summer heat so that 
 the city is saved from torridity, and is cooler than any 
 other place in the same latitude during the heated term. 
 The winds are much of the time in June, July and 
 August from the east, and as they cross the cooling 
 water on their way to the town they bring energy and 
 refreshment to its people at the time when other popu- 
 lations cannot escape depression and lassitude. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 177 
 
 The city lies along the western shore of this remark- 
 able sea for a length of twenty- five miles. This beach 
 line affords an opportunity for civic pleasure and adorn* 
 ment nowhere else possessed by any large city. For 
 nature has decided, and the people of Chicago have 
 arranged, that the immense shipping trade shall be car- 
 ried on in the heart and back of the city, where even 
 better facilities exist, and that the lake front shall for- 
 ever be devoted to beauty and to pleasure. 
 
 The lake front in the southern half of Chicago was for 
 many years left'to raggedness and disuse because of a 
 stubborn dispute all the time over the title to the sub- 
 merged land. The Illinois Central Railroad had a right 
 of way along about seven miles of the best water line 
 and used it for trackage for its own cars and those of 
 other lines entering the city. This use prevented pop- 
 ular access to the water, and its resultant dirt, smoke, 
 noise and rumble made the most desirable residence dis- 
 trict on the South Side practically unavailable for home 
 building. ^The question was taken into the courts, where 
 the financial resources of the company kept it until the 
 people got it to Washington. There at last the supreme 
 deciding body in the country affirmed the city's conten- 
 tion that it owned the submerged land. 
 
 What to do with the vast estate now became the most 
 important matter for consideration the people had had 
 since they started to build the greatest city in the world. 
 The Federal Government engineers had reported that 
 the average depth of water for a distance of 1,250 feet 
 out from the shore line and a distance of about seven 
 miles north and south was too shallow for shipping with- 
 out artificial interference and might, therefore, be appro- 
 
 12 
 
178 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 priated by the v municipality as not being navigable and 
 under government control. The drainage canal was 
 being dredged at the city end and the millions of cubic 
 yards of excavated matter would go a great ways towards 
 making dry land of this water waste. 
 
 The problem attracted universal attention, and great 
 speculators from all over the world flocked to the work 
 of offering solutions. In New York reports got out that 
 'Chicago was going to create $500, 000,000 worth of real 
 estate and put it on the market to obtain a permanent 
 municipal fund for making the city a cosmopolitan place. 
 
 After much discussion and sifting of propositions, the 
 more skillful politicians succeeded in impressing the 
 public with the idea that the best thing to do with the 
 new estate was to utilize it altogether for shipping pur- 
 poses. Fill in the area, dredge great slips, construct 
 immense wharves, build enormous elevators, put up vast 
 docks and storehouses, and make Chicago the finest 
 harbor in the world— that was the tempting vision held 
 out. The revenue, the prestige, the business it would 
 attract, would enrich the city beyond calculation and 
 make it grow so great that every foot of land in it would 
 become worth more than whole lots then brought. 
 
 Mr. Madden had now been in the city legislature for 
 five years, during three of which he had managed its 
 finances. He had become thoroughly versed in the 
 town's needs and advantages and was alive to its many 
 opportunities. He had been watching the legal contest 
 over the shore line question, and with much study and 
 controversy had worked out a solution that aimed at the 
 best permanent results. He took ground at the start 
 that the lake front should never be given over to any 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 179 
 
 other than public uses. All the people, he argued, had 
 a common right of access to the water. To permit any- 
 business to be built up along the submerged land that 
 would make it either impossible or inconvenient for the 
 people to exercise their right of access, would be both 
 unfair and unwise. It would, so to speak, shove the city 
 that much farther from the lake. It would be like put- 
 ting the back yard in front of the house. Because of its 
 climatic advantages, Chicago would gradually attract a 
 large number of summer residents from the south, and 
 in time, as it should be beautified, would become the 
 metropolitan place of living of the well-to-do from the 
 whole middle west. The chief educational center of the 
 Union would eventually be there. . The principal natural 
 beauty of the locality was the lake shore front. To 
 destroy this by turning it over to the ugliness, the bustle, 
 the turmoil and the uncleanliness of the shipping traffic, 
 would be to chase away or keep from coming a popula- 
 tion that would be of more advantage financially to the 
 place than the profits of the wharves. 
 
 His main argument, however, was that to concentrate 
 the shipping on the lake front would forever rob the 
 city of the advantage triat was bound sooner or later to 
 make Chicago the greatest manufacturing place in the 
 world, and therefore the richest town. After the drain- 
 age canal was completed the Chicago River would be 
 joined to it, making a forty-mile deep-waterway in the 
 center and rear of the city. Not long after that the 
 Calumet River, at the southern boundary, would be 
 extended until it also joined the canal. That would add 
 about fifteen miles to the internal waterway, making of 
 the whole South Side a vast island, surrounded by rivers 
 
180 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 entering the lake twenty miles apart. All the railroads 
 coming into and leaving the city would in time find their 
 ways in and out along the interior waterway. The 
 result would be an advantage for manufacturing not 
 equaled anywhere else. Factories located along the 
 rivers and canal could receive their raw material direct 
 from trains or boats without cartage, and could send 
 away without cartage their finished products. This one 
 saving of cartage would be such a valuable element in 
 the cutting down of expenses and the increase of profits 
 in the business of making and distributing goods, that 
 it would gradually draw to Chicago all the principal 
 lines of manufacturing carried on in the country. Iron 
 ore could be brought in bulk from the northern mines 
 and delivered from the ship to the furnace, and the fin- 
 ished iron or steel could be delivered in bulk from the 
 mill to the train or boat, without any hauling. The coal 
 underlying most of Illinois, which produced heat in less 
 time than any other coal, could be delivered in Chicago 
 for factory or mill purposes to the factory or mill, with- 
 out hauling, for less than a dollar a ton. There were 
 enough sites along the canal and river frontages to 
 accommodate more manufacturing than was now done in 
 the United States, and every site could have railroad 
 switches or water front, and most of them both. Trans- 
 ferring the shipping to the lake front would retard the 
 growth of the manufacturing business of the city by sub- 
 jecting it to cartage. The raw material would have to 
 be hauled from the docks across town to the factories, 
 and the finished products hauled back to the ships. That 
 cartage would be an element of cost that would prevent 
 the investment in the city of millions of dollars which 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 181 
 
 its absence on the interior waterways would invite. The 
 hauling back and forth across town would so interfere 
 with the local trade as to ruin most of it and hamper it 
 all. It would also seriously interfere with travel and 
 spoil whole districts devoted to residence. 
 
 New York was now the chief manufacturing city on 
 the continent. There was but one railroad entering it. 
 Its depots were so situated that goods had to be carted 
 to and from them. All the other railways terminating 
 at New York had to deliver goods to the city by both 
 ferriage and cartage and receive goods by wagon and 
 water transportation. That ate up profits and piled up 
 costs. Chicago alone of all large American cities had 
 the natural monopoly of absolute freedom from all these 
 local expenses. That monopoly would enable her 
 rapidly to distance all competitors in the inevitable 
 struggle for ascendancy in the manufacturing trade of 
 the country. Nothing but absolute folly in throwing 
 away, or refusing to exercise, her monopoly could pre- 
 vent her from acquiring that preponderance in manufac- 
 turing that would concentrate it along the interior water- 
 ways of the city. Nature intended Chicago to be the 
 center of factories and distribution of goods for the whole 
 Union; the city of the vastest weekly pay roll in the 
 world ; the home of the largest, best paid, most comfort- 
 ably housed and happiest population on earth. 
 
 Asia would soon wake up. Her half of the human 
 race would go into trade and increase their consumption. 
 Asia would be the western man's market, and would 
 take all the food the yet untilled lands could yield for 
 export. Oriental trade might, and probably would, 
 vastly exceed European trade. It would people the west 
 
1&2 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 more densely than the east was occupied. Chicago 
 would grow with the west, would manufacture for it and 
 finance for it. The city, already having 2,000,000 of 
 people, was merely in its infancy. 
 
 To abandon the river and move to the lake would be 
 taking a step backward, would be retreating into the 
 manufacturing class of New York ; would be commercial 
 folly. 
 
 With all his energy the Alderman set about the task 
 of disseminating these arguments, and many more like 
 them, to arrest and throw back the movement for lake 
 front shipping. The moment he learned that the 
 Supreme Court had fixed the title to the lake front in the 
 city, he took steps to at once kill off the shipping transfer 
 scheme. For this purpose he drew up an ordinance 
 creating a park of the submerged lands accruing to the 
 municipality. This called for the immediate filling up 
 of the tract from Randolph Street south to Park Row, a 
 distance of one mile, and from the railway tracks out 
 1,250 feet. The tracks were seven feet below the level 
 of Michigan Avenue, the nearest thoroughfare parallel 
 to the lake. They could be lowered four feet and the 
 strip of land between them and the avenue raised 
 inclinedly until it attained an elevation of four additional 
 feet at the tracks. That would leave the railway bed 
 fifteen feet below the new surface. The ground on the 
 eastern side of the tracks could be raised to the same 
 level along the railroad line and be joined to that on the 
 western side by architectural bridges at each street 
 crossing, leaving the roadbed down in a sort of lighted 
 subway. Then the made land could be gently sloped 
 to the water's edge. In this one park there would be 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 183 
 
 about 200 acres. It would be the most valuable park of 
 its size in existence and one of the most beautiful, and 
 would lie abreast of the most crowded business portion 
 of the city. Nothing in civilization would equal it in the 
 way of municipal adornment, utility and advantage. In 
 time it might have grouped upon it the magnificent 
 buildings contemplated for libraries,, art galleries and 
 public museums. 
 
 The ordinance passed the Council at once and' imme- 
 diately took the public fancy. Washington Porter pro- 
 posed to continue the improvement from Park Row all 
 the way south to Jackson Park, the site of the Columbian 
 Exposition, a distance of about six miles, with a wide 
 canal and parallel driveway the entire distance. The 
 Porter plan was favorably received and accepted for 
 future action. 
 
 With the plan legalized there came the difficult labor 
 of obtaining the co-operation of the Illinois Central Rail- 
 road Company, the abutting property owners, and the 
 various civic societies working for public improvements. 
 There were many hitches, misunderstandings, back-sets 
 by the commercially inclined, and legal obstacles. 
 Public agitation was kept up and the obstacles were so 
 speedily overcome that in a few months all interests were 
 working in harmony with the Alderman, and the pro- 
 ject was pushed through. 
 
 The ordinance was submitted in June, 1894, and in 
 the following November the agitation had resulted in the 
 general adoption, without change, of the plan first out- 
 lined by Mr. Madden. He had done his part of the work 
 so carefully, even to the task of ascertaining what the 
 railway corporation might be induced to do, that it was 
 
184 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 found that he had anticipated and prepared for all the 
 emergencies and was able to successfully meet them as 
 they arose. Within two years that part of the improve- 
 ment lying west of the railway was finished and turned 
 over to the public, the retaining wall outside the 1,250 
 foot eastern line was completed and much of the filling 
 in accomplished. 
 
 The Lake Front Park is an accomplished fact for the 
 preservation forever from all but public use of the mag- 
 nificent water front of Chicago. When the whole park 
 plan is completed it will do more than all other schemes 
 combined to make the city the desirable place of residence 
 nature intended it to be. It will revolutionize to advan- 
 tage the dwelling districts, and make ideal for permanent 
 homes and the best class of hotels the extreme eastern 
 section. It will cause a gradual "congregation of the 
 shipping, manufacturing, wholesale merchandising and 
 railway business of the city along the internal water 
 lines, the least desirable place of residence, and confine 
 most of the trucking and heavy handling there, leaving 
 the other parts of the town free from its necessary dis- 
 turbances. The homes of the people and their shops, 
 churches, schools and meeting places will be free from 
 the annoyances and dangers of heavy traffic. The 
 artistic, educational, literary and theatrical interests will 
 be availably neighborly. The galleries, institutes, 
 libraries, museums, and exhibition buildings will be 
 grouped and arrayed together more conveniently and 
 more impressively than similar structures can be in other 
 places in the world. The lake front of Chicago will be 
 the future pride of the west, and to visitors from all the 
 countries will be the scene of a life travelers will pay 
 
, PUBLIC SERVANT 185 
 
 much money and come long distances to witness. No 
 legislator ever performed for his public a better or more 
 enduring service than was done when this land was 
 secured for public use, and no public servant ever left a 
 better monument. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 SECURES GOVERNMENT HELP FOR CHICAGO TRADE— A CONVINCING 
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 DURING the navigation season of 1895 it became, 
 apparent to all the commercial interests of the 
 Middle West that the port facilities of Chicago, through 
 neglect of the Federal authorities, were rapidly becom- 
 ing inadequate for national needs. A great movement 
 was organized to bring the subject to the active atten- 
 tion of the Washington Government. This resulted in 
 the winter of 1896 in the formation of a representative 
 committee of influential citizens to go before Congress 
 and solicit intervention. On this body the lake marine 
 interests appointed representatives, as also did the Board 
 of Trade, the coal dealers, the manufacturers, the com- 
 mercial men and the corporation of Chicago. At the 
 last moment, the Chairman of the Finance Committee of 
 the city legislature was induced to go as the municipal- 
 ity's spokesman. 
 
 The National treasury, although it had expended con- 
 siderable amounts in the improvement of the outer har- 
 bor at the mouth of the Chicago River, had never allowed 
 but $25,000 for any increase of navigation in the stream 
 beyond the first or lowest bridge, that at Rush Street. 
 The river being a navigable water, had since the earliest 
 navigation laws been under Washington control. Chicago 
 was willing to handle the whole question if the govern- 
 
 186 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 187 
 
 ment would relinquish its authority and turn the river 
 over to the city's custody. This being out of the ques- 
 tion, it was determined to ask for sufficient aid to enable 
 the business of the town to be fairly accommodated on 
 the waterway it could not regulate. Estimates of all 
 immediate needs were carefully made up. They showed 
 that the sum of $700,000 was requiredf at once. The 
 committee went before the Committee on Rivers and 
 Harbors and asked it to set that amount aside for the 
 necessary improvement of the Chicago River in the annual 
 appropriation bill then being prepared for submission to 
 Congress. 
 
 The addresses made were all unusually able. The 
 Tribune, in its* dispatches describing the proceedings, 
 without any reservation or disparagement whatever, 
 unhesitatingly pronounced the argument made by Mr. 
 Madden on behalf of the city the one that convinced 
 Congress and led to action. He took ground at the very 
 beginning of his speech that the question was wholly 
 national and in no sense local. The appropriation 
 requested was for the purpose of so increasing general 
 transportation as to keep down and lower the prices of 
 the necessities of life in the whole Middle West and of 
 food in the entire country. Chicago had not only become 
 the manufacturing and distributing center for upwards of 
 half the population of the country, but it had developed 
 into the main source of supply for all its people of their 
 two principal items of food— meat and grain. The trade 
 in animal products had so concentrated in Chicago that 
 it was the country's market for most of the live stock 
 raised for the American table, and the city's "abattoirs 
 furnished meat even to foreign countries. The largest 
 
188 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 aggregation of capital engaged in the furnishing of any 
 single commodity of human consumption was that 
 invested in the stock-yard business of Chicago. The city 
 had also become the grain market for the whole civilized 
 world. Its elevators had a storage capacity of 40,000,000 
 bushels at a time. Leaving all other considerations aside, 
 the population of the entire country was directly inter- 
 ested in having every means of transportation to and 
 from Chicago both enlarged and cheapened, in order to 
 favorably affect the prices of the two main articles of 
 human food whose production and distribution in their 
 final forms of consumption had by the operation of 
 natural laws centered in the city. Formerly, he went 
 on, when boats drew but little water they easily com- 
 peted with success in the work of transportation and kept 
 the rates down. When the railways substituted steel 
 rails for iron and were enabled to run larger and heavier 
 trains, the boats had only to increase their draught to 
 remain in the race and cause further lessening of trans- 
 portation charges on food products. So long as the boats 
 could be lengthened and deepened, water transportation 
 worked in the interest of all the people in lowering and 
 keeping down freight rates, by preventing the railways 
 from obtaining a monopoly of the carrying through their 
 augmented power of handling by means of the enormous 
 improvement in their power. The steam roads had now, 
 however, passed the point in competition where the boats 
 could longer retain their proper share of carriage, for 
 the reason that rail power had gone beyond the tonnage 
 possible any longer to the capacity of boats. The waters 
 had remained stationary in depth and the boats had at 
 last in their draught reached their limit, and could no 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 189 
 
 longer by enlargement compete with the roads unless the 
 navigable streams at harbors should be artificially deep- 
 ened. Until this was done the carrying trade would 
 gradually be monopolized by the railways and the prices 
 of products would correspondingly be increased. At 
 least they would not be lowered as they would have to 
 be if the water transportation were maintained by enlarg- 
 ing its facilities. 
 
 Statistics demonstrated the truth of all his contention, 
 Mr. Madden argued. When the capacity of the rail- 
 roads through improvement in their carrying power got 
 beyond the full competition of the boats because of their 
 inability to further increase their holds, the former began 
 to control the transportation to and from Chicago in a 
 way unfavorable to its trade because injurious to the 
 prices of products of general demand and universal 
 human necessity. 
 
 Anthracite coal, an eastern product, was too costly 
 under rail transportation for general consumption in 
 Illinois. By water transportation it had been delivered 
 at prices that had found for it an annual market in Chi- 
 cago of 1,475,237 tons in 1892. Then, the boats having been 
 largely superseded by the cars in the coal carrying trade, 
 prices began to rise and consumption to fall away. In 
 1893 the trade fell off about 50,000 tons; in 1894 the 
 consumption had declined 198,000 tons, and in 1895 it 
 was 206,665 tons l ess than it had been before the roads 
 took the transportation of it away from the boats. Dur- 
 ing these same three years the population of the city had 
 increased nearly 500,000. 
 
 The receipts of grain by water had from the same 
 cause so fallen off that in 1895 the city got by boat but 
 
190 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 1,629,023 bushels, although in that same year it sent 
 away no less than 82,300,214 bushels, in addition to 
 1,507,543 barrels of flour and 4,063,720 packages of mis- 
 cellaneous freight. In 1895 but 2,000,000,000 feet of 
 lumber came to Chicago by water, on which formerly 
 nearly all that came was brought, while by rail there came 
 1 , 000, 000, 000, feet. 
 
 The reason for the decline of the boat carrying and 
 the increase of that of the cars was that the river along 
 which most of both terminated and started was no longer 
 deep enough to allow large water cargoes to be handled 
 without lightering and other expensive aids. The cost 
 of handling freight at the wharves had risen until it now 
 amounted to twenty-five per cent, of the whole transpor- 
 tation charges each way. If the river were sufficiently 
 deepened this cost could be reduced until it would 
 become merely nominal. 
 
 The entire population of the United States had a vital 
 interest in the deepening of the Chicago River and the 
 maintenance of its competition with the railroads, as the 
 river was the greatest factor in the country in the busi- 
 ness regulation of the prices of meat and flour. The 
 problem was in no sense a local one. It was not a Chicago 
 question, nor an Illinois question. It was clearly a 
 national one. The arrivals and departures of vessels at 
 Chicago during the year 1895 aggregated 15,324, nearly 
 as many as the combined arrivals at Baltimore, Boston, 
 New Orleans, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. This 
 fact showed better than any other how closely interested 
 all the people of the country were in the shipping busi- 
 ness of the city. When in addition to the vast harbor 
 activity of the city, there was added for contemplation 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 191 
 
 the connection of the 80,000 miles of railway that had 
 terminals along the river, there could be no doubt that 
 the nation had a better reason for caring for this interior 
 harbor than it possessed for the guardianship of any sim- 
 ilar length of water frontage in its whole domain. 
 
 The river had a dockage front of 214,296 feet, and 
 the people of Chicago had themselves expended in dredg- 
 ing this national waterway $979,000. The request now 
 was that the Government take hold of this invaluable 
 arm of commerce and put it into such modern shape as 
 would enable it to do what nature had so evidently 
 intended it to perform — regulate favorably for all the 
 people of the country the cost of their meat and their 
 bread, by making it easier and cheaper to concentrate 
 the elements of that food in the place best fitted to pre- 
 pare them for consumption, and easier and cheaper after- 
 wards to distribute it thence to all who needed it. 
 
 The effect of the speeches, and especially that deliv- 
 ered by Mr. Madden, was so great that Chairman 
 Hooker, of the Rivers and Harbors Committee of the 
 House, at once declared that the Chicago proposition was 
 entirely meritorious and would be acceded to. It had 
 been arranged t6 have appearances before the War and 
 other departments concerned in the question, but Mr. 
 Hooker's assurance made further agitation unnecessary. 
 The $700,000 appropriation asked for was granted. Then 
 began the work of making the interior waterways of 
 Chicago a harbor of the depth required for modern 
 marine commerce. The improvement is still going on, 
 and when completed, as it soon will be, it will give the 
 city a twenty- six-foot depth of navigable water along a 
 course, including the Drainage Canal, of nearly a hundred 
 miles through the very middle of the whole city. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 FIRST REPUBLICAN MANAGER TO DECLARE FOR GOLD — UNDER- 
 TAKES TO GET WORD IN PLATFORM. 
 
 GOLD" was the most important word in the platform 
 adopted by the Republican party at St. Louis in 
 1896. It was put there by the men who attended from 
 Illinois. All except one of the forty-eight state delegates 
 voted for it. 
 
 But for the skillful and determined action of these 
 men the Republican financial plank of that year would 
 have been a "straddle." In that event, Mr. McKinley 
 would not have had the support of the Sound Money men 
 from the Democratic party, nor could he have obtained 
 that marvelous and enthusiastic electioneering by the 
 banking and commercial interests of the North which 
 made the campaign so like a battle for the preservation 
 of American honor and integrity. The Gold Democrats 
 would have acted by themselves, and the great mass of 
 Silver men in the Republican ranks would have probably 
 gone over in a body to Mr. Bryan after his convention 
 unequivocally declared for Silver, as they would not 
 have had the deterring arguments the Democrats 
 afforded when they became allies. 
 
 When the word "Gold" was forced, as it was forced, 
 into the Republican platform, the majority of the party 
 managers were strongly averse to declaring for the yel- 
 low metal. The attitude of the only candidate for the 
 
 192 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 193 
 
 Presidential nomination was in doubt. He had never 
 made a public declaration for Gold, and had furnished 
 many arguments that were being quoted for the cause of 
 Silver. His managers at the time believed that the tariff 
 question would be the main issue in the campaign, and 
 did not think it necessary to inject the financial question 
 into the argument. They correctly represented the 
 sentiment of the Eastern States, and, from the point of 
 view of their territory, took a wise and politic stand. 
 Besides, at that time there was no apparent probability 
 that Mr. Bryan would obtain absolute control of the 
 Democratic organization seventeen days later, have him- 
 self selected as its standard bearer, compel his party to 
 declare unequivocally for Free Silver, and drive the 
 Jeffersonians out of the fold. Few delegates, except 
 those from the Middle West, knew who Mr. Bryan was, 
 or had any suspicion that in the core of the country the 
 Nebraskan was known to be the most dangerous man 
 living to Republican prospects, and that his financial 
 ideas were the political bread and meat of a constituency 
 frenzied with zeal in their propagation. 
 
 The country had grown so vast that ordinary men 
 seemed unable longer to maintain comprehensive knowl- 
 edge of all its conditions and to realize what interests 
 might have predominant elements over those really local. 
 
 Under all the circumstances, it is marvelous that the 
 Illinois men were able to understand as correctly as they 
 did the true conditions at the time, and it is no less 
 extraordinary that they were able to carry their point. 
 
 The history of the United States cannot be correctly 
 written for future readers, that is, mankind, without just 
 pages carefully devoted to the saving work performed by 
 
 13 
 
194 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 the Illinois men in this critical period of the nation's 
 formative growth. All through the story there will be 
 manifest the insight, the correct judgment, the skill in 
 argument, the persuasive power of speech, as well as the 
 inspiring patriotism, tireless energy and moral force of 
 character of one young man. His parents had trained 
 him so that whatever was right to do had for him 
 allurement to endeavor. They were made of patriotic 
 mould, and in public life he could not help reasoning 
 that what was best for the nation was best for the state, 
 best for the county, best for the locality, and best for the 
 individual. 
 
 All through these six volcanic months he pushed 
 straight through for the greatest good to the greatest 
 number, just as he had done during the previous six 
 years, whilst financing the most tumultuous municipal 
 growth of modern times, as Chairman of the Finance 
 Committee of the Council of the City of Chicago. 
 
 The Silver movement, as it appeared in the political 
 agitation of 1896, may correctly be said to have had its 
 origin in Chicago. All the scattered elements of it that 
 had previously existed were collected and focused by 
 Harvey about two years before. He was singularly 
 single-minded and sincere. His genius was prodigiously 
 sympathetic to parallelism, to the impressions which 
 Aristotle described as those of the sequence-consequence 
 kind. To Harvey a sequence was always a consequence. 
 When he saw an effect, his logic invariably perceived 
 the cause of it in the thing that most immediately pre- 
 ceded it. He would have convicted Joseph of the alleged 
 theft of the silver cup simply because it was found in the 
 young man's sack; and if a physician, he would have 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 195 
 
 prescribed rhubarb for a patient who had swallowed 
 tacks if he had subsequently eaten cheese. 
 
 Harvey saw distress general in the country. Millions 
 of workers were idle, tramps abounded, farmers could 
 not get living prices for products. Money in actual circu- 
 lation was scarce. It was, he thought, dear because it 
 was scarce. Being dear, employers could not afford to 
 pay former wages, and eaters could not afford to give so 
 much of it for food; hence, farmers had to give more 
 grain for a dollar and laborers more work. Why was 
 money scarce? There was now only one standard money 
 — gold. Formerly there had been two standard moneys 
 — silver and gold. There was as much of one metal as of 
 the other in the world. Therefore, when both metals 
 were coined into standard money, there must have been 
 twice as much money in circulation, and at that time 
 farmers and laborers must have been able to obtain twice 
 as much for their grain and labor. When was silver 
 discarded as standard money? In 1873. Who were in 
 power then? The Republicans. How much silver and 
 gold then? $4,000,000,000 of each — $8,000,000,000 alto- 
 gether. By confining the standard to gold, $4,000,000,000 
 of silver was dropped from use as money, and gold was 
 given the monopoly of money work. Having twice as 
 much now to do as formerly, there being a doubled 
 demand for it, gold had multiplied in value, and the 
 laborer now had to give correspondingly more work for a 
 gold dollar, and the farmer more grain. Where formerly 
 the one got a dollar a day, he must now work for fifty 
 cents; and where the other got a hundred cents a bushel 
 for his wheat, l\e now had to sell for half a dollar. ■ The 
 act of 1873 was, therefore, a conspiracy against labor 
 
196 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 and agriculture by the gold, or money, power, which 
 was aiming to enslave the world by reducing the condi- 
 tions of labor and agriculture to those of mere existence 
 and consequent servitude. The Republican party was 
 responsible for this and should be kept from power. The 
 Democratic party would restore the standard value again 
 to silver and would double the wages of labor and raise 
 the price of wheat. 
 
 Harvey devoted all his energy to the task of search- 
 ing for sequences and then used all his sophistical skill 
 in marshaling them into array. The result was the 
 book, "Coin at School." This was beyond comparison 
 the most effective campaign document ever circulated in 
 the United States up to that time. The unrelated char- 
 acter of its parallels was exceedingly difficult to discover 
 by any but trained minds, and, when noticed, was of 
 such a nature that it was almost impossible to clearly 
 expose it in any terse and lucid way. "Coin" sold 
 by the hundred thousand, and its philosophy was so 
 captivating that scores of Republican newspapers through- 
 out the West devoted their energies to circulating it 
 either by continued quotations or open free distribution. 
 Mine owners organized lyceums and defrayed the whole 
 expense of keeping the ablest orators employed lecturing 
 or debating on the topics of the book. So great was the 
 effect that when the National parties began the work of 
 electing delegates to the nominating conventions of 1896 
 it is fair to say the financial question was the liveliest 
 that had ever agitated the West; and it cannot be denied 
 that at this time practically all the people with Demo- 
 cratic leanings in the region between Ohiq^and the Pacific 
 were Free Silverites, and that a powerful minority of 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 197 
 
 their Republican neighbors shared the same financial 
 views with them. In some of the states both parties 
 raced to get ahead of each other in proclaiming for Free 
 Silver. In California al] the four parties in existence in 
 that commonwealth, including the Republican, officially 
 declared in their platforms for the free and unlimited 
 coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one. 
 
 The Republican delegates from Chicago were elected 
 in February, 1896. Mr. Madden was at the time the 
 party leader in the city. At the first conclave the finan- 
 cial question came up, and he was asked for an expres- 
 sion of his views. He promptly said he was in favor of 
 having the party declare itself against th*e free and unlim- 
 ited coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one, and 
 of putting the word Gold in the financial plank. 
 
 This was the first declaration of the kind that had 
 been made in the West by any man prominent in the 
 management of Republican political affairs. It created 
 consternation among the majority of hearers. It seemed 
 like a flight in the face of fate. Men asked Mr. Madden 
 if he was going to insist on having the party commit 
 hara-kiri. It was pointed out to him that all the legisla- 
 tion respecting silver was Republican -legislation ; that 
 the majority of the party were friends of silver; that the 
 Opposition in the West were solidly and aggressively for 
 it, and that to proclaim for gold would not only make it 
 impossible for the Republican party to win the acces- 
 sions it needed for victory from the opposite ranks, but 
 would drive over to them half the voters it had; in fact, 
 it would simply make it impossible to carry on a cam- 
 paign with any hope at all. 
 
 Mr. Madden to this said that the silver movement 
 
198 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 was wrong and mischievous and ought to be defeated ; 
 the country was on a gold basis and ought to be kept 
 there; the gold basis was the only safe one for the 
 nation's financial affairs; the Republican party was the 
 only party that could keep the nation where it was; the 
 silver sentiment was a delusion, and the voters could, by 
 intelligent effort, be convinced of that; the gold standard 
 was the best for all the people as well as for the Govern- 
 ment; this could be proved to the voters by campaign 
 work, and that the only way to do was to declare for 
 Gold and then set to work to bring the electors to that 
 standard. In his opinion, there could be no doubt of 
 success if the Republicans were straightforward enough 
 to declare their real convictions; but every doubt if they 
 resorted to evasion or indirection. 
 
 The meeting ended without harmony. It was man- 
 ifest that there would be dissension in the state delega- 
 tion over the wording of the financial plank. Able men 
 predicted that it would be impossible to bring the mem- 
 bers into accord on the subject, and even advised against 
 attempts to procure it, lest bitterness, rupture and scan- 
 dal might result. u While it was hoped that the majority 
 of the state delegates might be gold men at heart, it was 
 also feared that their districts would be so strongly for 
 silver as to make it practically impossible for the repre- 
 sentatives to declare for a gold plank. 
 
 The whole state was entitled to forty-eight delegates, 
 of which number Chicago's share was sixteen, including 
 two delegates-at-large. When all the district delegates 
 were elected a careful poll disclosed that but sixteen 
 were personally in favor of a gold plank, and many of 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 199 
 
 these doubted the expediency of mak:' lg any declaration 
 on the subject. 
 
 The general opinion was that the best thing to do 
 would be to reaffirm the plank in the platform of 1892, 
 pledging the party to maintain all kinds of United States 
 money at par, and there let the matter rest. 
 
 Mr Madden had studied the question profoundly, and 
 the more he investigated the political conditions of the 
 country the more firmly convinced he became that the 
 time had come to establish the gold standard by law as it 
 was established in fact, and that the Republican party 
 could not win the election unless it openly committed 
 itself to the task. He saw clearly that a declaration for 
 Gold was the only thing that in 1896 would draw out the 
 full business vote of the country, and that this would go 
 to the party making the declaration. He also reasoned 
 that if the Democrats declared for Silver, their party 
 would divide and that the gold wing would help the 
 Republicans establish the gold standard. These two 
 gains would far more than offset any defection of Silver 
 Republicans which a Democratic silver declaration 
 might bring about. He knew that the old line Demo- 
 crats were uncompromisingly for gold, while the Silver 
 Republicans entertained for the white metal a sentiment 
 only and that that was not so strong as their feeling for 
 Protection. The Opposition would certainly declare for 
 Free Trade and that would keep the great majority of 
 the Republicans at home just as surely as the pronounce- 
 ment on the other side for soft money would drive the 
 evicted Jacksonians over for shelter. 
 
 He undertook the task of securing unity among his 
 colleagues in favor of his view. By the time the State 
 
200 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Convention met at Springfield in April to nominate a 
 Gubernatorial tic 1 it, the fourteen Cook County district 
 delegates were in favor of declaring for Gold. Proselyt- 
 ing was zealously carried on at the State Convention, 
 and when it adjourned thirty-six of the delegates to 
 St. Louis favored a declaration for Sound Money. 
 
 At the State Convention Mr. R. W. Patterson, man- 
 ager of the Chicago Tribune, and Mr. William Penn 
 Nixon, editor of the Inter-Ocean, were elected delegates- 
 at-large to St. Louis. The Tribune had all along been 
 the uncompromising foe of the Silver movement, while 
 the Inter- Ocean had permitted the Silver Republicans to 
 argue their cause in its columns. It was a master-stroke 
 by Mr. Madden to get these gentlemen on the delega- 
 tion. H. H. Kohlsaat, proprietor of the Chicago Even- 
 ing Post 'and morning Times-Herald, and a close personal 
 friend of Mr. McKinley and Mr. Hanna, became inter- 
 ested in the Illinois movement, and gave it all the assist- 
 ance in his power. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ILLINOIS FORCES "GOLD INTO ST. LOUIS PLATFORM—THE ARGU- 
 MENT THAT WON. 
 
 AT this time, what was evident to the Eastern people, 
 who lived in the manufacturing section of the 
 country, was the depression in manufacture. The mills 
 were either idle or running on reduced time. It was in 
 that region plain that the Wilson Bill, by reducing the 
 tariff on goods made here as well as in Europe, had pre- 
 sented the amount of the reduction to the foreign man- 
 ufacturers, that they were using this bonus to undersell 
 the Americans by the amount of it, and that this advan- 
 tage had transferred employment from the United States 
 to Europe, and was keeping its mills open and ours shut. 
 It is no wonder, then, that the Eastern delegates went 
 to St. Louis thoroughly convinced that there could be 
 but one issue in the campaign — the restoration of Protec- 
 tion. To them there was no money question to be dis- 
 cussed. Money had had nothing to do, they argued, 
 with the closing of the factories. It is noteworthy that 
 no Eastern man during the campaign of that year, pro- 
 duced any of the vote-making arguments on the money 
 question — they all originated in the West, the majority 
 in Illinois, and the most effective in Chicago. 
 
 In the Middle West, on the other hand, agriculture is 
 the principal occupation of the people, although in 1896 
 there was enough manufacturing carried on among them 
 
 ?,01 
 
202 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 to familiarize them with its advantages as a producer of 
 home markets and with the main arguments in favor of 
 protective tariffs. But they did not see with their own 
 eyes the kind of idleness, want and general paralysis 
 witnessed in the East. What they saw was the scarcity 
 of money; the difficulty of getting any; their country 
 overrun by tramps; unparalleled depression in prices for 
 their products, and the difficulty of finding markets at 
 any price. Their country was yet new, and most of its 
 people were still mortgaged for their homesteads. For 
 the solvent it was difficult to get money to pay the regu- 
 larly recurring demands of interest, and thousands of the 
 newly- started were bankrupt, with foreclosure staring at 
 them, or entirely dispossessed. The vast majority of 
 these nation builders were patriotic to the heart and 
 attached to the party of Lincoln. They were looking 
 forward with hope to St. Louis. They were praying 
 that there the right remedy for the ills of their section 
 would be decided on. To them that was the rehabilita- 
 tion of silver by a restoration of its free and unlimited 
 coinage at the old ratio of sixteen to one. This, they 
 believed, would make money again plentiful, so that 
 they could get fair enough prices for their products to 
 save their homes and maintain themselves upon their feet. 
 It was apparent that these people wanted silver legisla- 
 tion and were indifferent to the tariff question; and it 
 was equally plain that if they did not receive satisfactory 
 assurance of it at St. Louis they might seek it at Chicago 
 and join the party that gave it to them. 
 
 When the Illinois delegation reached St. Louis the 
 members from Cook County were practically united in 
 favor of demanding a party declaration for Gold, and 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 203 
 
 twenty-two of the country delegates were individually 
 supporters of the movement to secure such a pronounce- 
 ment. 
 
 Nearly every one of the state and territorial delega- 
 tions was accompanied by large bodies of citizens 
 intensely interested in having the Convention do the best 
 thing possible for curing the country of the awful ills 
 afflicting it. It would be a moderate statement to say 
 that 20 ooo American citizens, representing every inter- 
 est and section in the whole country, each one intensely 
 concerned in the outcome, went with the delegates to St. 
 Louis to actively advise, assist and otherwise take part 
 in the proceedings. When all had arrived and the differ- 
 ent delegations had reported and quartered, there was a 
 rush to a general mix-up and exchange of views for the 
 purpose of arranging forces in the coming contest No 
 one but an American who has seen the spectacle can 
 form anything like a correct idea of the confused but 
 overwhelming appearance of the power exhibited by one 
 of these mix-ups. Forty-five states and seven territories 
 on the ground with 2,000 picked mental gladiators, 
 attended by 20,000 backers, every man the best his home 
 can produce, about to engage in a battle for the safety 
 of a country, for which each would cheerfully give all 
 his blood, in a mingle for advice as how best to line-up — 
 it is the superbest contest of brains the whole world can 
 now afford. In that great crowd of all strong men, each 
 picked at home as the fittest there, they only surmount 
 to final control who possess ability indeed supreme. 
 
 The Illinois delegates went in thirty-six for gold, came 
 out forty-seven to one for it. When the whole mix-up 
 was ended, it was found that the state's men had pulled 
 
m MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 over to their proposed alignment so many other dele- 
 gates that the commonwealth was perforce accorded the 
 preparation of the financial plank. The Committee on 
 Resolutions accepted it as the Illinois men made it, and 
 such a party majority of votes was at last brought over 
 that when the platform was finally read in the Conven- 
 tion the declaration for the gold standard was applauded 
 as by thunder. 
 
 And what was the argument that prevailed? It was 
 the one Madden and his Chicago colleagues had been 
 spreading for five months; the same that started at 
 Chicago in February with one delegate, then was used by 
 fourteen, then, Springfield, had thirty-six missionaries, 
 and reached St. Louis with forty-seven zealots, and there 
 captured the whole Convention. This is the way it 
 ran: 
 
 The East wanted Protection ; its labor was idle, with- 
 out market. The West wanted money, its crops not 
 paying for the raising, the markets being too low. The 
 East manufactured for the West and the West fed the 
 East. When Eastern men were all employed at good 
 wages, as they had been before the passage of the Wilson 
 Bill in 1892, they spent the greater part of their income 
 every week for food, for the cereals and the meat the 
 West raised. 
 
 With full employment American labor bought 94 per 
 cent, of all the farmer had to sell. The rest of the 
 world bought only 6 per cent. When American labor 
 was idle, the foreign market did not buy any more than 
 its usual 6 per cent, but the home market took less 
 than the usual 94 per cent., leaving the difference on the 
 farmer's hands. That lowered prices and made money 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 205 
 
 in the West scarce by reducing the farmer's receipts for 
 his crops. The idleness of American workingmen dur- 
 ing the past four years had resulted in such food econ- 
 omies that in flour alone they consumed 180,000,000 
 bushels of wheat less during the year just gone than they 
 ate in the average twelve months before the Wilson Bill 
 was passed. That bill had, therefore, cost the American 
 farmer a market that formerly took every year 180,000,- 
 000 bushels of his wheat, to say nothing of the corre- 
 sponding amount of his other products. No foreign mar- 
 ket took so much as that market lost had taken. This 
 180,000,000 bushels of wheat was left unsold on the farm- 
 er's hands. It reduced the price of all his wheat, cur- 
 tailing his money receipts, and, unless fed to stock, was 
 almost a dead loss. How came this loss? The Wilson 
 Bill, being a free trade measure, reduced the protection 
 on American manufactures below the safeguarding line. 
 Every cent of the reduction was a bonus to the foreign 
 manufacturer, given to induce him to come in and take 
 our home market. He had used the gift to undersell our 
 manufacturers by the whole amount of the bonus. That 
 underselling had closed our factories, thrown our laborers 
 out of work, made them poor, and rendered them unable 
 to spend as much money for food as they formerly had 
 spent and would again spend if they had work with 
 which to get it. 
 
 The amount of wages these men formerly paid out for 
 food over and above the amount they now spent, was the 
 sum the Wilson Bill had caused to be withdrawn from 
 circulation, principally in the West and there almost 
 entirely among the farmers. There was just as much 
 money now in the country as there had been before the 
 
206 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 passage of the Wilson Bill, but that act had locked it up 
 from the wage earners of the country, and, as a conse- 
 quence, from the farmers. There were at present over 
 4,000,000 men in the country entirely or partially without 
 employment at wages, who had had steady work at high 
 wages before 1892. Including themselves they supported 
 on an average five human souls each. That made over 
 20,000,000 people. All these in 1891 had money to buy 
 all the food they wanted every week. Few of them at 
 the present time could buy more than the merest neces- 
 sities of life. This condition was the real source of the 
 hard times, of the scarcity of money in circulation, and 
 of the depression in Western agriculture. The cause of 
 it was the Wilson Bill. The remedy was the repeal of 
 the act. That would restore the conditions existing up 
 to 1892. The factories would be re-opened, the idle be 
 re-employed, wages again be earned and spent every 
 week, money again get into full circulation, the home 
 consumption of food once more reach 94 per cent, of the 
 domestic production, the farmer be relieved of the sur- 
 plus that now weighed down his market, and he would 
 get prices that would yield him a surplus of cash instead 
 of a surplus of products. 
 
 No uncommon intelligence is needed to realize how 
 completely such an argument, duly amplified, cleared the 
 situation and accomplished harmonious action. The 
 question of standard was argued as one of policy justified 
 by rightfulness. The country was on a gold basis. It 
 had been placed there by the Democratic party in 1834 
 and simply left there by the Republicans in their legis- 
 lation of 1873, when they declared for a resumption of 
 specie payments to begin in 1879. At the time the 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 207 
 
 amount of silver in a silver dollar was worth more than 
 the amount of gold in a gold dollar. It would have been 
 foolish, as well as futile, to then legislate for the free 
 and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the ratio of 
 sixteen to one, because silver was worth more than that 
 ratio and would not have gone to the mint to be coined 
 for less than its value. The laws passed afterwards, when 
 silver, through overproduction, fell below gold in value 
 at the ratio of sixteen to one, and continued to fall, and 
 came to the mint, vastly increased the money in circula- 
 tion by artificially maintaining silver money at the value 
 of that in gold. To then legalize the free coinage of both 
 metals at the ratio would have driven gold out of circula- 
 tion, lessened the currency and compelled creditors to set- 
 tle for less than was due them. The restricted coinage of 
 silver increased the amount of it used as money by about 
 sixty-six times as much as had been coined during the 
 entire period of the eighty odd years of free coinage, and 
 kept all the gold that came to the mint in circulation 
 besides. By this system whatever profit there was in 
 buying silver at the market value and coining it at gold 
 value, fell to the Government or whole people back of 
 the guaranty, and the Government always had gold with 
 which to transact its business with the world, which was 
 on a gojd basis. Under free and unlimited coinage of sil- 
 ver at the ratio of sixteen to one gold would not go to the 
 mint to be coined for less than its value and would 
 retreat from circulation, diminishing it, and any person 
 having silver, no matter what it cost, could compel the 
 Government to coin it for him, stamping fifty cents worth 
 of it a dollar worth ioo cents, and then make creditors 
 take it at the stamped value, with no guaranty of any 
 
208 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 value. To realize the enormotis criminality of this prop- 
 osition one needed to Contemplate only the result to the 
 millions of people in the country who had wages due or 
 money out at interest, either in banks, insurance com- 
 panies, building and loan associations, mortgages, notes, 
 due bills, or accounts, the vast majority of our people 
 being creditors, the banks, insurance companies, rail- 
 road companies, etc., being the debtors. In the single 
 state of New York at the time 1,700,000 depositors had 
 $600,000,000 in the savings banks of that state, outnum- 
 bering the electors in the commonwealth by 500,000. 
 
 It was safe to calculate that if the Republican party 
 declared for adhesion to the Gold Standard, and the 
 Opposition should oppose it and advocate that of Silver, 
 the discussions of the campaign would rally to the 
 Republican ranks the labor, the business and the finan- 
 cial interests of the country. Each of these desired the 
 best money in the world. Gold was that, because it was 
 invariable in value, everywhere receivable without dis- 
 count, while silver was variable in worth, with a constant 
 downward tendency. The laborer knew the difference 
 just as well as the business man did, and he was even 
 more particular about the quality of the money he 
 received, as he was less able to afford risk. 
 
 If the declaration honestly and manfully used the 
 word Gold unequivocally, and the Opposition declared 
 for Silver, the result would be that the old line Demo- 
 crats would come over in a body to assist to keep the 
 nation permanently on the basis whereon their party had 
 originally placed it. 
 
 Looking back, after five years' discussion of the money 
 question, it may now be difficult to realize how original, 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 209 
 
 powerful and far-seeing this argument, given here only 
 in the most abbreviatd form without any of the brilliant 
 and interesting illustrations that accompanied it, then 
 was. Educated, prominent men there were at the Con- 
 vention who admitted that before hearing the Illinois 
 argument, they had not known what sixteen to one meant, 
 or the difference between a gold or silver certificate and 
 an ordinary national bank note, supposing them all to be 
 Government bills. 
 
 It was the action of the Illinois delegates at the 
 Springfield Convention, where they instructed for McKin- 
 ley, that decided his nomination at St. Louis by assuring 
 to him the needed votes there ; and it was the work of the 
 same delegates at St. Louis which made his election cer- 
 tain by inducing the party to make the platform declara- 
 tion that drew the majority of real Democrats in the 
 country to his support 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 COOK COUNTY REPUBLICANS MISREPRESENTED — MADDENS SACRI- 
 FICE IN THEIR BEHALF— MARVELOUS 
 PERSONAL VICTORY. 
 
 AFTER the Cook County delegation was chosen to 
 represent the Republican party at the nominating 
 Convention to be held at St. Louis, it took action at its 
 first assembly that has ever since been misunderstood 
 and misrepresented. The false conception of what these 
 men did was spread and denounced and came near dis- 
 rupting the party in the state. 
 
 The center of population had moved to a point in 
 Indiana close to Chicago, and it was believed throughout 
 the country that the action of Illinois would not only 
 decide both Presidential nominations but determine the 
 result of the election. It was largely owing to these 
 considerations that both parties selected places near the 
 center of population for holding their nominating con- 
 venings, the Democratic at Chicago and the Republican 
 at St. Louis. The contest for delegates was keen and 
 thorough, each political organization doing all possible 
 to have able and representative men selected. Cook 
 County was especially fortunate in the character of the 
 delegates both parties obtained. The selection of the 
 Republican deputies was completed in February, 1896. 
 They were all able and strong men, reliably reflecting 
 the political opinions and wishes of their respective con- 
 
 210 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 211 
 
 stituencies. After they met and organized for work the 
 question came up of aligning for the party nominee. An 
 exchange of views revealed that the Republicans of the 
 city, when the delegates were selected, had had no uni- 
 fied sentiment as to the personality of the Presidential 
 candidate, and had left the choice open to the judgment 
 of the delegates. The revelation of this fact brought 
 about discussion as to the best policy to adopt. These 
 were strong men, and after a long argument, they con- 
 cluded to not then commit the delegation to any nominee, 
 and in all matters to act as a unit. A ballot to that 
 effect pledged the members to adhere to the unit rule in 
 casting the vote of Cook County. 
 
 Mr. Madden, in the controversy preceding the adop- 
 tion of the unit rule, proposed that the whole vote of the 
 county be pledged to the nomination of Mr. McKinley. 
 The delegates, he pointed out, had absolute discretion 
 in the matter, and to exercise it in the way he proposed 
 would produce two results: first, it would have a decisive 
 effect on the nomination, and, by giving the county and 
 state the prestige of having settled the question, would 
 assure both proper recognition in public affairs in the 
 event of Mr. McKinley's election. Secondly, it would 
 help the city and state in popular esteem, as, in his opin- 
 ion, taking the country as a whole, the great majority of 
 Republicans desired the Ohio man's nomination. This 
 was quite evident from all the indications of the popular 
 desire freely manifested during the past few months, 
 although it might not appear in the election of the nomi- 
 ating delegates so far chosen. 
 
 Many constituencies favoring Mr. McKinley's nomi- 
 nation beyond that of any other man so far deemed avail- 
 
212 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 able, had no doubt refrained from instructing their dele- 
 gates for the reason that it was better to let them be free 
 to take advantage of events that might occur under all 
 the conditions possible during the many months before 
 the final selection. No one who knew Chicago could 
 doubt that the Republicans of several *of the districts 
 were practically unanimous for McKinley, although they 
 had preferred to elect their delegates uninstructed. 
 
 It did not seem to him possible that any other candi- 
 date would appear in the next five months possessing 
 McKinley's availability. He had studied the whole situ- 
 ation as thoroughly as he could, and all things Republi- 
 can had an ever-increasing tendency towards the nomina- 
 tion of the man who in the public mind most certainly 
 assured the restoration of Protection. The financial 
 question then agitating all the people of the West had 
 only an indifferent and academic interest in the East. 
 There the tariff question was the main topic of political 
 controversy among the voters, among the people who 
 made decisions at the polls. The great majority of men 
 who earned their living in the Eastern States did it by 
 work connected in some form with manufacturing. They 
 were mostly idle or scantily employed and had been so 
 for nearly four years. They knew why. Under the 
 McKinley Bill they had had as much work as they could 
 do at the best wages ever paid. Their idleness and pov- 
 erty had come after the repeal of that bill, and, they 
 knew, came as a result of that repeal. What these men 
 and those depending on them for either support or 
 business patronage wanted was a restoration of employ- 
 ment. They knew the one way to get this was by 
 re-establishing the protection of the McKinley Bill. They 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 2i:i 
 
 all knew McKinley as the Legislator for Laoor — the 
 Protectionist. They all identified McKinley with Pro- 
 tection. All possible human effort could not succeed in 
 identifying any. other man in the Republican party with 
 the cause of Protection in the minds of the working- 
 men as he was identified. He alone could draw from 
 the Democratic party the tens, of thousands of voters who 
 were suffering from its free trade and longing for the 
 days of the McKinley Bill. Without the aid of these 
 Democratic votes the Republican party could not hope to 
 carry the election. McKinley 's nomination would assure 
 success in the East; no other could. That being so, Cook 
 County, which could settle the question, should not hesi- 
 tate to make the decision. Such action would start the 
 campaign immediately in the East and have success so 
 assured there by the time the Convention met and rati- 
 fied the action of Chicago, that thereafter effort could be 
 confined to the West. There would be an immense 
 advantage in that. 
 
 But the West did not care about the tariff question, 
 it was replied; it wanted the money question settled; 
 how was McKinley identified with that? 
 
 To this Mr. Madden responded that the West was as 
 much interested as the East was in the restoration of 
 Protection. While this did not appear to be the case 
 just then, it nevertheless was the fact. The tariff ques- 
 tion would grow in importance in the West as the cam- 
 paign went on and might before election be the deter- 
 mining issue even with the farmers. They were, it was 
 true, just then absorbed in the financial controversy, 
 but they would gradually lose interest in it. They could 
 be convinced that their best customers were the workers 
 
214 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 of the East, and that the best way to restore prosperity 
 to the farms was to restore employment to their penniless 
 customers, through the tariff. The farmers would real- 
 ize long before election that the money question had had 
 nothing to do in causing the hard times, while the 
 change in the tariff law had had everything to do in 
 bringing them on ; that the money of the country was 
 precisely the same as it had always been; there had been 
 no change at all in that, but there had been a disastrous 
 change in the tariff. McKinley was as good a friend of 
 silver as any public man was, and it could be made plain 
 that the Republican party would do whatever could be 
 done for silver, if there was any help for it at all, and 
 that the Populists could not be trusted, either at home 
 or abroad, to help any cause they advocated. The main 
 thing was that McKinley was the most desired, the most 
 available and the most attractive candidate in the 
 Republican party, the one possessing the most enduring 
 qualities for a nominee. With Cook County's delegates 
 pledged to him, his nomination would be assured. He 
 would get the nomination anyhow, in all probability, as 
 the people were for him; but Cook County had it in its 
 power to assure it to him then, and there was so much 
 advantage, general and local, to be gained by doing it 
 that wisdom urged the doing of it. 
 
 This reasoning was done some time before the Ohio 
 movement for McKinley had established official head- 
 quarters in Chicago. All the Cook County men were 
 McKinley men. History shows this to be a fact, not- 
 withstanding all opinion to the contrary. The misun- 
 derstanding was caused by the very loyalty of the men 
 to one another and the sincerity of their efforts on the 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 215 
 
 party's behalf. They had agreed to act as a unit. There 
 was not a man among them dishonorable enough to vio- 
 late that compact, or even to try to. As time went on it 
 became more and more evident that Illinois would decide 
 the nomination. It likewise became manifest that the 
 overwhelming sentiment of the party in the state was 
 for McKinley. 
 
 The Cook County men understood popular feeling as 
 well as any politicians in the state; they were all experts 
 at the work of reading public sentiment. But these men 
 knew, what many novices did not, that Illinois had more 
 than once been betrayed in National Conventions; had 
 several times delivered the deciding votes, the votes that 
 either alone made the result or that, pledged, induced 
 enough additions to make it, and had subsequently not 
 received even the smallest reward of virtue — recogni- 
 tion. The Chicago men had been made wary by their 
 experience of Eastern party managers. They had 
 become conservative. They saw no reason why if the 
 party in Illinois had the power of nominating or defeat- 
 ing the nomination of a Presidential candidate, it should 
 not before delivering the votes obtain absolute assurance 
 that in the successful candidate's administration it would 
 have the representation due it, and not have its service 
 credited to outsiders. Hence, it appeared better to have 
 it known that the Illinois Republican delegates would at 
 St. Louis be for McKinley without doubt, but would not 
 deliver the party's vote in advance by a pledge that 
 would shear the state's representation of power in the 
 Convention. It would be better to deliver at St. Louis 
 than at Springfield. At St. Louis the delivery could be 
 made to the Republican party of the United States; at 
 
216 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Springfield it could not. At the latter place there might 
 be some question of who delivered ; at St. Louis there 
 could not be. 
 
 This was the position taken by the Cook County men. 
 Many of them did not favor taking it, for fear it would 
 be misunderstood and do the party harm. These pointed 
 out that demagogues might inflame the people with sug- 
 gestions that it was an attempt to deliver for a vulgar 
 consideration. The fact that a man like Madden was in 
 this delegation would be enough to overthrow any suspi- 
 cion regarding the absolute integrity of the body's action 
 under any ordinary circumstances; but circumstances 
 were not ordinary, and the Republicans of the state were 
 beginning to get excited. Mr. Madden did all in his 
 power to induce the delegation to refrain from taking 
 this attitude and to come out flat-footed for McKinley, 
 but in vain. The majority were against him. As the 
 delegates were not instructed and were free, they had a 
 perfect right to do as they did. The whole question was 
 purely a political one of expediency. The majority voted 
 against pledging for any but a state candidate and the 
 unit rule bound all the members of the delegation to 
 abide by the decision of the majority. 
 
 Some time after the delegation had decided its atti- 
 tude, the Eastern managers of Mr. McKinley's campaign 
 invited Mr. Madden to a conference. He attended. 
 They requested a comprehensive opinion of the party 
 sentiment in Illinois. He told them it was practically 
 unanimous for their candidate, but not organized. They 
 asked him to undertake the work of organization. He 
 told them he could not do so because of his obligation to 
 his fellow members of the Cook County delegation and 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 217 
 
 then explained the situation in Chicago, with which the 
 managers had been unacquainted. A long talk ensued. 
 The Alderman made it plain that the Republicans of 
 Illinois were for McKinley, that he would get the vote of 
 its delegation at St. Louis, but that the Cook County 
 members were united against pledging and under the 
 unit rule agreed to he was bound to act with them and 
 would do so. He saw clearly what he was offered and 
 what he was refusing, but declined to act except with his 
 delegation so long as it held to the unit rule, to which he 
 had agreed. When asked if the decision of the Chicago 
 men might not be changed — the managers wanted a cer- 
 tainty before reaching St. Louis — Mr. Madden frankly 
 replied that he hoped so, and would do all in his power 
 to have it altered, as he had all along done ; but that 
 until it was he would not be free to undertake the task 
 of securing pledged delegates from the state for Mr. 
 McKinley and would Work in perfect accord with his 
 delegation. 
 
 No one acquainted with him would have for a moment 
 thought that Mr. Madden would do anything else than 
 he here did. His position was clearly defined and there 
 was left no doubt about it. However, it alarmed the 
 McKinley managers with dread that their candidate's 
 prospects in Illinois were unsafe. A campaign was at 
 once set on foot to arouse the country districts to over- 
 whelm the Chicago delegates with public sentiment. A 
 furor resulted which produced the intensest struggle for 
 instructions that ever stirred the Republicans of the 
 state. It immensely increased the McKinley sentiment, 
 but did not break the solidity of the Cook phalanx — it 
 rather compacted that. The more it became manifest 
 
218 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 that the country was a unit for McKinley's nomination, 
 the more certain the majority of the Chicagoans grew 
 that it would be a mistake to throw the party advantage 
 away by pledging the vote ahead of delivery time. 
 When the Springfield Convention met to decide on action 
 at St. Louis the country delegates were in a fever of 
 excitement lest the failure to pledge might endanger 
 McKinley's chances at St. Louis by making it appear the 
 party in the state of Illinois was not for him. They did 
 not seem to know how solidly it was. Their uncertainty 
 prevented them from organizing and as a mass unhesi- 
 tatingly using the power they really had — it was suffi- 
 cient to brush everything out of their way. ' The men 
 from Chicago knew exactly how every delegate in the 
 Convention would finally vote and were aware the other 
 side had not sure knowledge on this point and x:ould not, 
 therefore, act with decision. They were solid themselves 
 and sure of the state. So they threw themselves alto- 
 gether and at once into the work of controlling the pro- 
 ceedings, and, amidst the greatest excitement, to which 
 they were used, kept the meeting busy with unessential 
 actions, winning on every vote until they had almost 
 convinced the majority that it was the minority in that 
 assemblage; and were actually on the point of complete 
 victory when a tactical error disclosed their strength. 
 Then in a single clash they went down and pledging 
 triumphed. 
 
 In a flash, however, it was seen that all were equally 
 good McKinley men, differing only on the one point of 
 how best to place the party where it rightly belonged in 
 national affairs. 
 
 The greatest individual victory obtained was on the 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT £19 
 
 motion made by Mr. Madden to place the name of 
 William Penn Nixon, editor of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, 
 on the list of delegates-at-large in the place of the 
 majority's candidate, who was an undoubted Gold man. 
 The majority of the delegates were Gold men, and 
 Mr. Nixon was known to be a Silver Republican. 
 Mr. Madden was the very champion of Gold. But 
 he had gone down with the minority, and when 
 he stood up to make his argument he had to 
 face fearful odds — the apparent desire of a triumphant 
 majority to punish him for compelling it to fight for 
 its life and the apparent inconsistency of the attitude 
 he was taking. He had uttered but a sentence when 
 every one present desired to hear all he wished to 
 say. Without the waste of a word, going at once to the 
 marrow, he uttered such a speech as none but those- there 
 that day ever heard in a State Convention. Its steady fire 
 burned ugly opposition away; its manly breadth capti- 
 vated the house; the clearness of the argument and the 
 eloquence of the plea aroused such feelings of justice 
 that the audience turned clear about and gave the orator, 
 whom when he rose it threatened to crush, when he sat 
 down a larger majority than it had cast for instructions. 
 For the latter the Convention had cast 755 votes, a major- 
 ity of 175 ; for the orator's motion the house gave 840 styes. 
 When the life of this delegate is written the speech he 
 delivered on that day will be read and placed alongside 
 one delivered on a greater occasion by a Virginian 
 named Patrick Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 USES BLAINE'S RECIPROCITY ARGUMENT-— MAKES NOVEL APPLICA- 
 TION—EFFECT ON SILVER MEN. 
 
 11 ANY of the arguments used by the Illinois delegates 
 / T I upon those from other states were singularly Clevel- 
 and statesmanlike. Some of them have never been sur- 
 passed for real excellence. A number of the best have 
 never been equaled in financial discussions. 
 
 How wise was the platform declaration that the party 
 would do all in its power to yet bring about an inter- 
 national agreement in favor of the rehabilitation of 
 Silver and its free and unlimited coinage at some fair 
 ratio to be agreed upon, coupled with that other pro- 
 nouncement in favor of a restoration of Protection and 
 Blaine's Reciprocity Pol icy, is now plain to every observer. 
 . The wisdom of taking such action was equally well seen 
 then by the moving spirits in the Illinois delegation. 
 Mr. Madden all along urged that although the Gold men 
 had no faith at all that the nations would agree to again 
 make silver standard money, still it was the duty of this 
 Government to use every effort it could honorably make 
 toward inducing them to do so while there was a possi- 
 bility of obtaining their consent. He himself did not 
 believe that this country alone could by any means in its 
 power maintain the double standard, nor did he think it 
 could be supported by the combined action of all the 
 nations. Still, there was a large number of Americans 
 
 220 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 221 
 
 who thought otherwise, and they were entitled to just as 
 much consideration as the citizens who agreed with him, 
 so long as the opinion the latter held was not com- 
 pletely demonstrated to be correct. While, therefore, 
 any honest attempt to bring about the desired interna- 
 tional agreement remained untried, the Government, he 
 thought, was in duty bound to make it. The weapon of 
 Reciprocity, he pointed out, had not yet been used. The 
 friends of Silver were entitled to have it tried in their 
 interest. If the Republicans won the election the old 
 McKinley Law would be re-enacted, with such modifica- 
 tions as the changed conditions called for, and it would 
 contain the Blaine proposals. These were based on the 
 sound principle that in business matters neither men nor 
 nations will in all cases be fair toward one another vol- 
 untarily, or unless induced or compelled to be. Mr. 
 Blaine had seen, while acting as Secretary of State, that 
 many American products were unfairly barred out of the 
 markets of foreign nations whose people desired the 
 goods. As a remedy, he conceived the law that empow- 
 ered the President, by the quick and simple process of 
 issuing a personal proclamation, to stop the sale in the 
 United States of any product offered here from a country 
 which unreasonably closed its doors to any branch of 
 American trade. With this law in his hands it did not 
 take Mr. Blaine very long to convince Germany that 
 trichinae in American pork, and France that tuberculosis 
 in American beef, were political diseases only, and 
 unworthy of notice so long as these nations desired to 
 sell sour wine and red water in the United States. The 
 Reciprocity Law gave the American hog a ticket of gen- 
 eral admission to Germany, and the American cow the 
 
222 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 right of excursion to France. Now, silver was an 
 American product, and the same Blaine process might 
 similarly help it. The friends of the metal were entitled 
 to at least an experiment. 
 
 When Silver Republicans read the declaration they 
 generally stayed where they were, feeling that, after all, 
 if there was any hope for their metal it lay in Protection 
 and remembering that the Free Trade of the other party 
 had deprived Uncle Sam of the only weapon he had had 
 with which he could in any wise help silver. The 
 Democrats, who had taken away this instrument, would 
 not restore it, but the Republicans would. When Mr. 
 Bryan was nominated this feeling was intensified by the 
 fact that he was an out-and-out Free Trader and the recol- 
 lection that as a member of the Congressional Ways and 
 Means Committee he had been prominently instrumental 
 in the work of repealing the McKinley Law. 
 
 The wide influence of the Illinois argument which 
 procured in the St. Louis platform the promise respect- 
 ing silver, may be appreciated by a consideration of 
 some of its immediate effects. Senator E. O. Wolcott, 
 of Colorado, the strongest prominent Silver man in the 
 Republican party, at once decided to remain in the 
 ranks. He represented in the Senate the principal soft 
 money state. All his investments were in silver proper- 
 ties and all his constituents were for the white metal. 
 He took the ground that the success of Democracy, with 
 Free Trade, would destroy the last hope of the Silver 
 movement, while the election of the Republican ticket 
 and the consequent restoration of Protection, would 
 assure the cause the full operation of the only chance it 
 had left. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 223 
 
 When Wolcott refused to bolt the action of the Con* 
 vention and proclaimed adherence to the party on the 
 platform adopted, "There," said Madden to his col- 
 leagues, i4 is a splendid justification of Mr. McKinley's 
 silence on the financial question while he was a candi- 
 date for the nomination. His refusal to officially attempt 
 to influence the proceedings here has increased the 
 party's confidence that he will, irrespective of his per- 
 sonal views, honestly endeavor to carry out its expressed 
 wishes. He will uphold the Gold standard adopted and 
 he will do all that yet remains to be done for Silver. Wol- 
 cott knows this and his action foretells what the majority 
 of the Silver Republicans will do. They will remain in 
 the party with the Colorado senator. ' ' 
 
 McKinley's subsequent action in appointing a com- 
 mission to sound the European governments on the ques- 
 tion of restoring silver to standard coinage, and Wol- 
 cott's appointment and service as a member of that body, 
 were demonstrations complete not only of the party's 
 sincerity, but of the President's loyalty to its instruc- 
 tions. 
 
 At a critical juncture in the campaign, Mr. Hanna 
 selected two especially qualified men to place the Chi- 
 cago argument before the people of California, where the 
 Bryanese propaganda were sweeping everything away 
 from Republicanism. These gentlemen attended to 
 their business, and toward the end of October a halt 
 came in the Golden State. The people saw that with 
 Bryan President and Free Trade continued and increased 
 there was not as much likelihood for international action 
 favorable to Silver as there would be with McKinley and 
 Protection. The Californians wanted both Silver and 
 
224 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Protection, but Protection more than Silver. With 
 Bryan they might get Silver, but not Protection; with 
 McKinley they were as likely to get Silver, but, as they 
 said, "dead sure to get Protection." So they "played 
 for the double" and the state went Republican by about 
 2,700 majority. At one of the meetings in that state, 
 when the Republican argument, then first put forth in 
 that part of the country, was finished, 180 of the auditors 
 went forward, pulled the Silver buttons from their lapels 
 and threw them upon the stage. 
 
 All along, while engaged in the wofk of creating 
 opinion among the delegates, Mr. Madden had urged the 
 dissemination of this argument as the one that would not 
 only hold the Silver Republicans, but eventually make of 
 them, as the campaign progressed, the most effective 
 orators against the straight-out Silver movement. Time, 
 that reveals everything in its own season, has shown that 
 he was right and that for the country it was fortunate he 
 and men like him were right so early. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 BRYAN S NOMINATION A SURPRISE— FORCES CHANGE IN REPUBLI- 
 CAN PLAN — THE EFFECT. 
 
 WHEN the St. Louis Convention adjourned and the 
 general exchange of views on the work done, 
 which follows after such an assemblage, had taken 
 place, two prevailing opinions were found to exist. One 
 was that the platform afforded sufficient ground for the 
 Gold Democrats to stand upon and that they might be 
 expected to occupy it if their party fell under the control 
 of the Populists at Chicago. The other was that the 
 declaration of principles was unqualifiedly for Gold and 
 tentatively only for Silver. * This left the Silver men as 
 a body out of consideration, at least until it could be seen 
 what the Democratic Convention at Chicago would do. 
 
 The result was the most bitter struggle ever witnessed 
 in American political affairs for control of a nominating 
 Convention. The old liners from the East attended in 
 their fullest strength. The Populists came like an ava- 
 lanche from the Far and Middle West. The struggle in 
 the hotels, streets and Coliseum lobbies was unprece- 
 dented, and when finally transferred concrete to the 
 Auditorium was Babel megaphoned. The East, with its 
 trained Convention leaders, its speakers of well-earned 
 world-wide repute, and its master-hands at effective floor 
 management, for a long time held the struggle well in 
 their grasp. But when Bryan at last arose and in sublime 
 
 16 225 
 
226 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 elocution phrased the popular suffering, discontent and 
 despair; in language that inflamed put the blame for it 
 all upon Eastern management of public affairs, and 
 then, with the diction of a crusader and the passion of 
 justice aroused, lifted clearly into view the country's one 
 sole hope — Western party dominance — the bursting flood 
 of Populism forced the gates and the deluge came. 
 When it had spent its passion there was left visible 
 hardly a fragment of the wreck of the old Democratic 
 party, and a Populist orator was in its name nominated 
 for the Presidency of the United States. 
 
 "That nomination, " exclaimed Madden, who was 
 present when it was made, "is proof that the days of 
 oratory are not passed, and that the printed word is not 
 yet so effective as the spoken. Mr. Bryan came to the 
 Convention on a newspaper correspondent's pass, and 
 entered this hall as a contesting delegate, fighting for a 
 seat. He leaves the Convention the Presidential nominee 
 of the Democratic party. A single oration did it all. 
 His address in type would hardly have won him a dele- 
 gate: from his tongue it captured the Convention and 
 brought him the Presidential nomination. Never before 
 did oratory by a single effort accomplish anything com- 
 parable to this achievement. It was done, too, in the 
 most enlightened nation the world has yet had and 
 among a people who are the greatest readers that have 
 ever lived. The whole force of the Republican party, 
 and the entire energy of the business, labor and property 
 interests of the United States, will now have to be 
 exerted to the fullest degree to overcome the effect of 
 the oratory of one man. Contrast that use of. the tongue 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 227 
 
 with any conceivable use of the pen. It will be a cam- 
 paign of oratory." 
 
 It was. The Republican party at one time during it, 
 had more than 6,000 public speakers at work on the stump. 
 
 After that the issue was quickly joined between Pop- 
 ulism and Order, repudiation and wreckage and honor 
 and patriotism. The Chicago Republicans made a canvass 
 and found that hundreds of Democrats among the citi- 
 zens and scores of the Convention attendants had 
 renounced their party immediately after the platform was 
 adopted. Their renunciation was open and irrevocable. 
 Many of them unhesitatingly proclaimed their intention 
 of supporting the Republican ticket. It was ascertained 
 on closer inquiry that these, while naming Gold as the 
 magnet, admitted that Protection was equally attractive, 
 and, in many cases, more. The Cleveland management 
 had opened their eyes to the viciousness of Free Trade. 
 The press of the whole country reflected the general situ- 
 ation the same as it appeared in Chicago. Great news- 
 papers like the New York Sun, which took the lead, 
 openly abandoned the Democratic party and -advised 
 their readers to support McKinley. 
 
 It did not take the Chicago Republican leaders long 
 to decide upon a course. The main issue was to be the 
 money question with Protection its running mate. Men 
 like Madden saw that up to that time their calculations 
 had proven correct — the St. Louis platform had divided 
 the Democratic party and would attract the Gold wing. 
 But the Democratic movement towards Republicanism 
 was so manifestly an Eastern movement, so palpably 
 what Bryan would point to as a "Wall Street Octopus" 
 combination, that it endangered the chances of maintain- 
 
228 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ing, let alone increasing, the cordial relations between 
 the real Silver Republicans and the McKinley party in 
 the West. In fact, for a while the open attitude of the 
 great money interests threatened to alienate these men 
 and more than offset the hard money gain. 
 
 In addition to this difficulty, it was found practically 
 impossible to poll the Gold Democrats. Politically, the 
 Republican workers had no acquaintance with them like 
 that with members of their own creed. The Gold Dem- 
 ocrats did not attend Republican meetings, join proces- 
 sions, or place themselves where they could be counted. 
 They succeeded through the press in spreading the con- 
 viction that about. all of them would support the Repub- 
 lican candidate, but so long as they would not be 
 counted, the McKinley workers felt as if the gain was 
 all on paper. On the other hand, these managers per- 
 sonally knew the Silver Republicans and could count 
 them when absentees, either as deserters or on the fence. 
 The situation was one in which the gain seemed conjec- 
 tural, while the loss was accurately figurable. It was not 
 encouraging, and it remained so for a long time. For 
 weeks it looked as if every farmer in the Middle West 
 was for Silver and Bryan. 
 
 What made the situation more perplexing was the 
 condition of the campaign literature. Mr. Madden had 
 been for six years Chairman of the City Central Repub- 
 lican Committee. In that capacity, with his accustomed 
 energy, he had traversed every district in the county and 
 most of those in the state. He knew the situation thor- 
 oughly, as well as the people of the commonwealth, and 
 realized completely the nature of what was to be done. 
 The Republican party's state headquarters had been 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 229 
 
 kept open in Chicago for twelve months. In this time 
 thousands of visitors from all parts of the West had 
 called and thousands of letters arrived, all making 
 enquiries on the money question. Such of these as 
 were worthy of answer or capable of affording a sugges- 
 tion had been preserved and annotated. Early in the 
 spring political economists had been engaged to inspect 
 this mass of interrogatories and prepare replies or 
 answers. It was Mr. Madden's view that in this way 
 campaign literature might be produced in the most 
 effective way, as it would meet the actual conditions 
 which the enquiries disclosed. A great deal of sound 
 and valuable campaign literature was the result. There 
 had been no expectation that such a man as Mr. Bryan 
 would be the Democratic nominee, and nothing had been 
 prepared that fully met {he condition his leadership pre- 
 cipitated. Much of the literature had to be destroyed 
 or left unused, and most of that used had to be revised. 
 The work was rushed and the Illinois Committee was 
 enabled to cover the whole ground with its own argu- 
 ments, devised to exactly meet requirements, weeks 
 before the National Committee opened its doors for work. 
 The condition in the state was so similar to that in the 
 whole surrounding country that after the National Com- 
 mittee began the task of issuing free books, pamphlets 
 and leaflets, the Campaign Committees of seventeen states 
 continued to get their supply from Illinois and to pay for 
 it, all pooling the expense, because most of the National 
 body's productions had been prepared in the East, and 
 did not at all supply what was needed in the West, while 
 those furnished by the Illinois Committee did so com- 
 pletely. The Chairman of the Illinois State Republican 
 
230 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Committee, Mr. Hitch, in a letter to the Republicans in 
 New Jersey, and the Hon. John R. Tanner, the Repub- 
 lican candidate for Governor of Illinois, in a communica- 
 tion to the Chairman of the Pennsylvania State Republi- 
 can Committee, both affirmed that the arguments framed 
 and used by the Illinois managers had been so well 
 adjusted to actual conditions that they had arrested the 
 Free Silver tidal wave, turned it back, and secured the 
 state, and most of its neighbors, in safety. Both letters 
 were written early in August and both claimed that at 
 that time Illinois would give at least 150,000 Republican 
 majority. Mr. Hitch thought the figure might go much 
 higher. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ON THE STUMP — MANY NEW ARGUMENTS — THEIR HISTORICAL 
 VALUE. 
 
 BESIDES all his other work, Mr. Madden stumped the 
 state, making sixty set speeches and innumerable 
 private and small talks. His great invention in argument, 
 clearness in statement, and moral power in convincing 
 and persuading changed votes wherever he spoke. 
 The editors of the Republican literature, the members 
 of the State Committee, the Chairmen of the local party 
 organizations and electors everywhere throughout the 
 state all testified that he furnished brains, arguments, 
 motives, in every effort he made that year for the 
 Republican cause. His premeditated statements were 
 always new and vote-making. His rejoinders to inter- 
 rogatories, his personal colloquys with friends or strang- 
 ers, on trains, in hotels, everywhere he went, were 
 replete with original information and logic. They con- 
 vinced, were remembered, gave auditors pleasure in 
 repetition, and became current. It is doubtful if any 
 one man ever added so much stock to good argument in 
 any political campaign in this country. 
 
 It seems almost preposterous to claim that anyone 
 could add a thing new to the arguments for Protection, a 
 subject discussed by Hamilton, Greeley and Blaine. Yet 
 Mr. Madden has said many effective things on the tariff 
 never uttered or hinted at by either Blaine, Greeley or 
 
 231 
 
232 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Hamilton, and some of them are more original and con- 
 vincing than anything either of the three ever said or 
 wrote on the subject. After Sherman, McCleary, and 
 other authorities, had apparently exhausted all the good 
 arguments in favor of the Gold standard, and left to 
 others the mere task of repetition, Mr. Madden entered 
 the discussion and put into it keener ideas, better illus- 
 trations, more lucid explanations and clearer history than 
 had ever been used before, besides many entirely new 
 arguments. 
 
 His mental make-up, and the method he had used in 
 educating himself, enabled him to easily and naturally 
 lead in the work of that campaign scores of men who 
 were decidedly his inferiors in everything but national 
 reputations based on a mere fraction of his merit. Earn- 
 ing his own living by day work at ten years of age and 
 attending night school; laboring with his hands in youth 
 and studying at evening colleges; graduating as the 
 best engineer of his age in the city, and completing the 
 study of law, while running a stone quarry employing 
 scores of men; receiving private instruction from expert 
 tutors for years while managing great business enter- 
 prises; surrounding himself by careful readers of stand- 
 ard literature and current publications during the time 
 he was building up the vast business of the Western Stone 
 Company; all his life attractive to educated and scholarly 
 men because of his skillful queries and correct comment; 
 business manager for great capital; Chairman of many 
 Boards of Directors in the most rapidly growing com- 
 mercial city in the world; bank director; trustee of 
 estates; representative of trade organizations in National 
 conclaves; special deputy to Congress on Federal ques- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 233 
 
 tions affecting the transportation interests of Chicago ; 
 municipal correspondent of the corporation with the 
 thousands of mayors in the United States to induce 
 them to make a Mayors' Day at the Columbian Exposi- 
 tion; Chairman of the Committee to entertain distin- 
 guished foreigners attending the Fair; employer of 2,000 
 men; arbiter of labor disputes in the City of vStrikes; 
 Finance Minister of Chicago during the five years of 
 colossal annexation and assimilation, each year finding 
 ways and means to raise upwards of $20,000,000, and 
 then seeing that that vast amount was correctly spent: — 
 how many statesmen has the country ever had who pos- 
 sessed at forty- one years of age so valuable an education 
 for public life as Martin B. Madden possessed during the 
 campaign of 1896? With a voice so pleasing that men 
 would stop to listen to it for its sound alone, a figure like 
 that of a Greek athlete, a head splendidly set, carrying 
 a clean white face with nearly perfect features, and a 
 covering like a first frost; with an established reputation 
 for unassailable morality, absolute truthfulness, unques- 
 tionable accuracy of statement; and known to be beyond 
 most men in perception, wit, faculty of expression, 
 abundance of exact knowledge, humanity, and affection 
 for the public welfare: — it is not wonderful that large 
 audiences assembled to listen to him, newspapers sought 
 and published his views as campaign documents, party 
 managers accepted his solutions of difficulties, friends 
 took his guidance, acquaintances spread his opinions 
 and electors asked him how to vote. 
 
 Madden's speech is better and "quicker" than John- 
 son's was, and if he had a Boswell posterity would pos- 
 sess a better mine of mental nuggets. His brain seems 
 
234 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 an expression jewel factory. The gems come out com- 
 pletely reduced and finished. He has put into circulation 
 statements of public affairs that will live because of 
 their unsurpassable compactness and completeness. His 
 mental store is so inexhaustible that he doesn't tag its 
 output, and it becomes common property. 
 
 When asked what a Protective tariff was, he said it 
 was the peddler's license collected at the Custom House. 
 What a convincing argument there was in that. The 
 peddler is not allowed to vend his wares in competition 
 with the merchants of the town, who have similar things 
 to sell and who by taxation maintain the walks, streets, 
 lights, police, schools and courts of the place, unless he 
 also pays taxes into the corporation's treasury. The 
 sum he pays he does not add to the price of his wares. 
 To sell them he must take the market price prevailing 
 among the merchants against whom he is going to com- 
 pete. He must sacrifice the sum of his license from the 
 profits of his sales in that town and sell at a profit dimin- 
 ished by that amount. The money he pays goes into 
 the town treasury and diminishes by its amount the 
 taxes paid by the citizens. The peddler pays the license 
 and the customers get their taxes reduced ; not much if 
 but one peddler come, but a great deal if many do. 
 Surely, foreigners who sell competing articles in this 
 country do the same kind of business the peddler does. 
 They pay the license or tariff, subtract it from their 
 profits, sell at the market at a profit diminished by the 
 sum of the tariff, and reduce the taxation collected from 
 the citizens by the amount the tariff puts into the Fed- 
 eral treasury. 
 
 When an orator paraphrased Lincoln's argument that 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 235 
 
 if we bought a ton of iron from England, we had the 
 iron and England had the money; but if we bought a 
 ton of iron made in our own country we had both the 
 iron and the money, Madden added: "Yes, and we can 
 then borrow the money at home." 
 
 He favored Reciprocity that reciprocated. If but one 
 country furnished an article our people desired and 
 could not produce, he would let that in free; but if two 
 or more countries produced such things, he would let 
 them in free from those countries only that would admit 
 an equivalent amount of our products free. He opposed 
 a tariff so high as to induce foreigners to move their 
 plants here while the owners remained abroad, because 
 that would create a drain similar to the foreign landlord 
 drain on Ireland. He would not remove the tariff on 
 manufactures no longer needing it. That would be like 
 destroying the cradle after the first baby had learned to 
 walk. Every penny you took off a tariff on competing 
 products was, in his opinion, a penny bonus given to the 
 foreign competitor. He would use it to undersell you. 
 Underselling you by the amount of the reduction might 
 be disastrous to you, but it would cost the foreigner 
 nothing. No protective tariff had ever^been given in 
 this country in the interest of capital ; it had always been 
 levied to protect labor. It had generally been fixed at 
 the supposed difference between the cost of labor here 
 and in Europe. It had seldom been put so high as that 
 difference, and as a result manufacturers here had been 
 obliged to carry on business at a profit less than that of 
 their. European rivals by an amount exceeding the tariff. 
 In nearly every case the difference between the cost of 
 the American labor engaged in the manufacture of a 
 
236 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 thing and that of the foreign workmen employed in mak- 
 ing the same thing exceeded the amount of the duty on 
 that thing. This was easily demonstrated and showed 
 that in all competing manufactures the American artisan 
 got in his wages more than all the tariff. If this were 
 made plain to all American worfeingmen they would all 
 be Protectionists. In all cases where Protection, by 
 increasing competition, reduced prices, the consumers 
 got more benefits than the manufacturers could possibly 
 retain. Steel rails, when England had a monopoly of 
 their manufacture, cost as high in this country as $167 a 
 ton. The ad-valorem duty of about $47 a ton, which 
 enabled our manufacturers to compete, had resulted in 
 competition and improvement in processes that had 
 brought the price below $30 a ton. The difference of 
 $137 per ton, upon the two or more million tons used in 
 this country every year, had gone to the public in 
 improved, railroad service, reduced fares and lessened 
 freight charges. The sum total given to the public 
 through the tariff on steel rails was so enormous as to 
 make the profits still retained by the manufacturers look 
 ridiculous in comparison. A protective tariff seldom, if 
 ever, raised the cost of a competing article. As a rule it 
 lowered it and improved the quality: first, by increasing 
 the competition; second, by stimulating improvement in 
 the methods of manufacture to reduce their cost as com- 
 pensation for loss of price. 
 
 The Harvey statement that the Act of 1873 had 
 stopped the coinage of silver and by doubling the 
 work of gold had made of the gold dollar a two-dollar 
 dollar, was disproved by this ingenious retort from Mad- 
 den; "Have you a silver dollar? If you have, look at 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 237 
 
 the date upon it. You will find that that date is of some 
 year since 1873, the time Harvey says we stopped coin- 
 ing silver. Every person in this audience who has a sil- 
 ver dollar has in his possession a proof that what the 
 Silverites say is not true, that the coinage of silver was 
 stopped by conspiracy in 1873, for every one of these 
 dollars which you have, or can get, was coined in some 
 year since 1873. I will give $5 apiece to any of you for 
 every silver dollar you may bring to me that was coined 
 before that year. These dollars in your possession are 
 proofs that all the silver dollars now in circulation have 
 been coined since the time the Silverites say we stopped 
 coining silver, and you cannot produce a single silver 
 dollar coined before that time, not one minted during 
 what Harvey calls the period of free and unlimited coin- 
 age. The fact is, that all the silver in circulation has 
 been coined since 1873, and that during these twenty- 
 three years, in which Harvey says silver coinage has 
 been stopped, there have been put into circulation about 
 560,000,000 silver dollars against the 10,000,000 minted 
 during the eighty-one years of free and unlimited coin- 
 age before. 
 
 4 * Bryan says the gold dollar has doubled in value and 
 is now a two-dollar dollar. Here are 100 pennies. We 
 began coining gold and silver in 1792, 104 years ago. 
 During every one of these 104 years these 100 pennies 
 would buy all the gold there is in a gold dollar. At no 
 time in all these years would the gold in a gold dollar pur- 
 chase more than 100 pennies, nor would less pennies buy 
 the gold. The 100 pennies will to-day buy a gold dollar. 
 So, the gold dollar is a dollar dollar, and not a 200-cent 
 dollar, as Bryan says, and it has not varied a penny in 
 
238 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 value for 104 years. The unchangeable value of gold is 
 the quality that makes it the best money for everybody, 
 the laborer as well as the capitalist. Twenty-three years 
 ago these 100 pennies would not buy the silver in a sil- 
 ver dollar; it took 104 pennies at that time to buy that 
 much silver. Since then so much silver has been found 
 and mined that the metal has fallen in value because too 
 plentiful. To-day the amount of silver in a dollar will 
 not buy 104 cents, the amount it was worth in 1873. 
 It will only bring 47 cents. So silver has fallen 53 per 
 cent, in twenty-three years, while gold has not varied one 
 per cent, in value in 104 years. That is why every civ- 
 ilized nation has discarded silver as standard money ; it 
 lacks all stability in value and is the worst money in the 
 world for both the people who must work for wages and 
 those who handle any kind of capital. " 
 
 "What will you say," Madden was asked, "to the 
 contention that silver was demonetized in 1873?" 
 
 "That it was not. In that year we were still paying in 
 paper promises. These had been at a discount because 
 of the world's disbelief in our ability to redeem them in 
 specie. When our ability to redeem approached par we 
 decided to resume specie payments at a fixed date ahead. 
 This decision constituted the Act of 1873, which set the 
 date at 1879 and named gold as the kind of specie we 
 would pay in. We had the right to elect either kind of 
 specie — silver or gold. Both were American products, 
 but the latter we had in greater abundance, and with us 
 it was the cheaper. The amount of gold in a dollar was 
 obtainable for less than the silver in a dollar. Besides, 
 gold had become the standard money of the civilized 
 world because of its invariability in value and its 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 239 
 
 universal acceptability. The Act of 1873 had been before 
 Congress for three years and had been fairly, fully and 
 publicly discussed before it was passed. At that time it 
 was probable that we could get to the mint all the gold 
 we needed for resumption, and it was probable that we 
 could not get enough silver. The legal ratio between 
 the metals for coinage purposes was sixteen to one. 
 That is, the law said that at the mint gold was worth 
 sixteen times its weight in silver. The truth was that 
 silver was worth more than a sixteenth of its weight in 
 gold ; it was worth about one and a half fifteenths. The 
 disparity between the commercial value of silver and the 
 legal ratio had existed ever since the Democratic party 
 had fixed the legal ratio at sixteen to one in 1834, and 
 during all that time had practically kept the silver dollar 
 out of general circulation and the country on a gold basis. 
 During this period the owners of silver refused to have 
 it coined into dollars for circulation because the law 
 called for more bullion in the dollar than the dollar was 
 worth. The amount of silver it took to make a dollar 
 was during these forty- three years often worth 104 cents, 
 and the only silver owners that would, as a rule, give 
 104 cents' worth of silver bullion to the mint for silver 
 dollars worth 100 cents were the jewelers without smelt- 
 ers who wanted their metal turned into sterling for plate 
 and were willing to pay that premium to the Government 
 for doing the smelting. Silver dollars obtained this way 
 sometimes escaped the melting pot and got into circula- 
 tion, but they were practically the only ones that did. 
 During the eighty odd years of 'free and unlimited' coin- 
 age of silver hardly 10,000,000 silver dollars were 
 coined. The silver dollar had retreated from circulation 
 
240 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 and could not be induced back unless we paid for it more 
 than it was worth according to law. The gold dollar 
 could be had for ioo cents. It was accepted for the work 
 of redemption. It would have been unwise to do any- 
 thing but what we did in 1873. W e did not then demon- 
 etize the silver dollar. That was done in 1834. We 
 simply exercised the option we had of resuming specie 
 payments in gold dollars worth par or silver dollars 
 worth a premium, and decided on the par dollars." 
 
 44 I'm for Bryan," said an Irish Republican, 44 because 
 when he's in I'll get sixteen for one." 
 
 "That's not as much as you're getting now, Pat," 
 retorted Mr. Madden. 
 
 "Oh, it's sixteen times more." 
 
 "No, it isn't, Patrick, You now get thirty-two for 
 one. Bryan's sixteen for one is only half of your thirty- 
 two for one." 
 
 44 How do you argue that, riow?" 
 
 44 It is the gold and silver ratio question. If you work, 
 and get, we'll say, an ounce of gold, you can take that 
 ounce of gold and sell it anywhere in the world for 
 thirty -two ounces of silver, because everywhere gold is 
 worth thirty-two times its weight in silver. That is what 
 is meant by thirty-two to one. Now, if Bryan should be 
 elected he'll be for only sixteen to one. His scheme is 
 to make gold worth only sixteen times its weight in 
 silver instead of thirty-two times as it is now. So, 
 Patrick, if Bryan wins you will only get sixteen ounces 
 of silver for your ounce of gold instead of the thirty-two 
 you can get now. You will then get only half as much 
 as you can get now." 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 241 
 
 "That looks like a bunco game, Mr. Madden, on me. 
 I'll not be for it." 
 
 The cleverest rejoinder made in the whole campaign 
 to one of Bryan's sophistries was the following: "You 
 ask me to vote for Bryan because if he be elected he will 
 establish the ratio of sixteen to one as the ratio of value 
 between gold and silver. The ratio is at present thirty-' 
 two to one. I can now take my gold anywhere and get 
 for it thirty-two times its weight in silver. Under 
 Bryan's plan 1 would get only sixteen ounces of silver for 
 my ounce of gold. That is but half of what I can now get. 
 How would I gain by Bryan's election? It seems to me 
 I would lose exactly half the present value of my gold. 
 You say that if Bryan be elected his policy will increase 
 the value of silver until sixteen ounces of it will be 
 worth as much as thirty-two are now. I am at thirty- 
 two now. If I go to sixteen, as Bryan wishes, what 
 guarantee have I that he will be able to bring me back to 
 thirty-two. Even if he can do what he says and double 
 the value of silver, it would be better for me to remain 
 where I am, for that would make my thirty-two ounces 
 worth sixty-four, whereas if I went to sixteen I would 
 only be back to thirty- two, where I started." This 
 juggle never failed during the campaign to dislodge any 
 Bryanite who had to encounter it, and it usually con- 
 vinced an audience that the sixteen to one argument was 
 evidence of brain ailment. 
 
 When the non-committal attitude of Mr. McKinley 
 on the question of the money standard was pointed out 
 to Mr. Madden at St. Louis before the Convention 
 assembled, he replied: "Mr. McKinley's genius lies 
 
 16 
 
242 MARTIN B. MADDEtf 
 
 in the representativeness of his character. In this he 
 surpasses any man who has been named for the Presi- 
 dency in the past forty years. He has personal views of 
 great value on all public questions, but he is too honest, 
 so long as the public regard him as a national represent- 
 ative of Republican sentiment, to put his views forward 
 until they are the views of his party. Absolute political 
 integrity demands just such conduct on the part of rep- 
 resentative party men. Party sentiment is the composite 
 result of the pooling of the views of all its members. 
 When a man is chosen either by election or selection to 
 represent the views of his party and he assents to the 
 task, he is in honor bound to refrain from making public 
 political statements at variance with the expressed atti- 
 tude of his party. The Republican party has not yet 
 declared for either gold or silver. When it does declare 
 its position, you will find that Mr. McKinley will have 
 enough to say.; and you will also find that all he shall 
 say will correctly reflect the sentiment of his party. So 
 long as he remains a public representative of the Repub- 
 lican party, he will represent it with strict accuracy; he 
 will not try to lead it or to push it. If he be elected 
 President by the American people, he will correctly 
 ascertain their wishes, and then carry them out. In 
 neither case will he attempt individuality. He will be 
 exclusively representative. He is too honest to accept 
 any representative position for the purpose of exploiting 
 either his personal views or his personal ambitions, or 
 doing anything else than carrying out the known wishes 
 of those who trust him in a representative way." 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 URGED TO ACCEPT SENATORSHIP FROM ILLINOIS — REASONS THERE- 
 FOR—NECESSARY VOTES SECURED. 
 
 THE national election in 1896 made Illinois Republi- 
 can by over 150,000 majority. The Legislature 
 elected that fall assured the choice in January, 1897, of 
 a Republican to represent the state in the United States 
 Senate in the place of the Hon. John M. Palmer, Dem- 
 ocrat, whose term expired on the 4th of March following. 
 The party organization was thorough and retained its 
 headquarters in Chicago, where it had performed won- 
 derful work in the McKinley campaign. The leaders 
 started out to obtain the best possible candidate to act as 
 colleague to Senator Shelby M. Cullom. After a critical 
 survey of the situation they asked Mr. Madden to permit 
 his name to go before the Legislature for the place. He 
 had accomplished so much creditable work at the St. 
 Louis Convention and on the stump during the canvass, 
 that there was a general expression among party men in 
 all parts of the state in favor of his candidacy. He was 
 sent for and invited to a conference, where the organiza- 
 tion's desire was made known to him. He hesitated a 
 long time. He was weary from overwork in the City 
 Council and had large financial interests intrusted to his 
 care. One of these, the Western Stone Company, of which 
 he was President, had, through its Board of Directors, 
 requested him to abandon public life and devote his 
 
 243 
 
244 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 efforts to the further development of the stone trade. 
 This concern was paying him a large salary, one of the 
 largest received by any Western business manager, and 
 was entitled to first consideration. To accept the party's 
 proposition involved the abandonment of this and other 
 incomes, amounting to many tens of thousands of dollars 
 a year — a great sacrifice for a man not yet forty-two 
 years old. He asked if some other equally suitable can- 
 didate could not be found whose acceptance would not be 
 at such a great personal loss as he was asked to incur. 
 To this the managers replied that the Republican organ- 
 ization desired to send to the assistance of President 
 McKinley in the terrible ordeal he was about to go 
 through the most efficient man the state could yield 
 through the party. The new Senator, it was pointed 
 out,' should be young and able to withstand great labor. 
 He should be experienced and capable in legislative and 
 committee work; able in speech and with the pen; pos- 
 sess talent for stating with power and effect the argu- 
 ments the Republicans of Illinois believed should influ- 
 ence impending congressional action; be thoroughly 
 acquainted with the people of Illinois and of Chicago, 
 and with their views on the public questions pressing for 
 settlement; entirely reliable as an exponent of the 
 wishes of the people of the state; able financially to go 
 as the commonwealth's representative at Washington, 
 and known to all the people as a public servant tested and 
 found competent and trustworthy. The state and county 
 and city committees had gone all over the subject and 
 decided upon him, and the request to seek the nomina- 
 tion was put to him as a matter of public duty. 
 
 Still hesitating, Mr. Madden asked if he was the 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT . 245 
 
 first choice of the organization. He was assured he was. 
 Then he asked if there was any other choice. There 
 was not, he was answered. 
 
 "One other question," he persisted; "is there a sec- 
 ond choice?" 
 
 "Why do you ask that?" the spokesman for the party 
 managers rejoined. 
 
 "Because," the Alderman said, "a second choice may 
 be a first choice under cover." 
 
 Assurance was given to him that there was no second 
 choice, nor any other choice but himself — he was the sole 
 choice, and he was urged to accept the task of seeking 
 the election as a matter of duty. He consented. 
 
 His canvass of Cook County showed him that the assur- 
 ances given to him by the managers were sound — all the 
 twenty-one members of the county in the Legislature 
 readily pledged their votes to him. A tour of the state 
 was then made. It resulted in securing the pledged 
 votes of fifty-one more members of the Legislature. Mr. 
 Madden now had seventy-two votes. It required sixty- 
 three only to get the party caucus nomination and as a 
 result the election. 
 
 Matters remained in this shape until the Legislature 
 met. When it convened the Alderman went to Spring- 
 field and found the seventy-two votes awaiting him and 
 ready to be cast for him as soon as the task of electing, 
 the United States Senator should be reached. 
 
 The work he had done in making the canvass for these 
 votes was very difficult and wearisome. It was accom- 
 plished with so little fuss and its result was so complete 
 that it should not excite wonder if there were men who 
 
246 . MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 imagined they could also have performed it, or could 
 even undo it in their own interest. 
 
 It was not long before tale-bearers began to carry 
 suspicions to Mr. Madden. The purport of most of 
 these was that some of the party managers were so 
 pleased at the practical unanimity among the Republican 
 members of the Legislature that they saw a lessening of 
 the necessity for the making of such a sacrifice as going 
 to Washington would entail on the President of the 
 Western Stone Company; and that the financial interests 
 in Mr. Madden's care could not afford to lose his services 
 at the time. To all this gossip the Alderman turned a 
 deaf ear. "Have you no suspicions?" he was asked by a 
 friend. "None whatever," was the response; "they are 
 unhealthy and I am immune from them." 
 
 Before the day of the balloting some of the managers 
 requested the Alderman to attend a conference. At this 
 he was told that an investigation of the pledge list 
 showed that he had lost voters enough to endanger his 
 chances. Demanding to know how many had proved 
 recalcitrant, he was informed twelve had, and their names 
 were furnished. He went out and reinstated his list. 
 More than once he did similar reinstatement work. The 
 senatorship was a great prize and many powerful men 
 were straining after it. Madden expected this. The 
 office was not his. It belonged to the people of Illinois, 
 who were about to bestow it through the Republican 
 party. It would go to the man who could induce the 
 party to give it to him. 
 
 At length the managers informed the Alderman that 
 it had been decided after much controversy on the 
 ground that a new candidate was desirable for party 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 247 
 
 expediency — to adjust differences that otherwise might 
 prove disruptive — and he was asked to release the votes 
 pledged to him. When the matter was put to him in 
 that way he did not haggle ; he yielded as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 The release at once scattered the Cook County mem- 
 bers. The result was a scramble. It became impossible 
 for the managers to reconcentrate the votes necessary to 
 elect. The Cook County members would unite for any 
 other candidate the managers should designate, but the 
 country members under no circumstances would. The 
 majority of the seventy-two were, however, in favor of a 
 Chicago candidate, the country having a representative in 
 Mr. Cullom, whose home was in Springfield. 
 
 The disorder continued, Mr. Madden having practi- 
 cally retired as a candidate. The Chicago delegation, 
 having gone away from him, with his permission, 
 remained pledged to their second choice. He was unable 
 to induce his followers from the country to go in a body 
 to any other candidate, although they all favored the 
 election of a Chicago man. A majority of them were 
 willing to vote for Mr. William E. Mason, but for no 
 other Cook County man, except Mr. Madden. As 
 Mason could be elected with these votes, and no other 
 candidate could get them or be elected without them, 
 they were permitted to go to him, and he was elected. 
 
 It is well known that Mr. Madden has made it a rule 
 never to indulge in any kind of gossip; never to reply to 
 criticism upon his personal conduct; and never to impugn 
 the motives of an acquaintance, especially a friend. He 
 has always seemed to regard his failure to be elected 
 Senator in 1897 with indifference. But he discusses it 
 
248 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 with complete frankness. He says that the gentlemen 
 who induced him to become a candidate were all friends, 
 and are still. 
 
 When they secured his consent to be a candidate he 
 was absolutely their only choice. He never ceased to be 
 their personal choice. Even when they asked him to 
 step aside for another candidate they would have pre- 
 ferred him as Senator. What they then attempted was 
 tried for the party's welfare, and as an expedient 
 thought necessary. The tactics might have been a mis- 
 take; it was no more, even if that. His friends, he 
 claims, were acting for the best interests of the party, as 
 he was, and he spurns all suggestion that there was any 
 lack of either good faith or loyalty on their part towards 
 him in any part of the proceeding. 
 
 The Republicans of the state were keenly disappointed 
 over the retirement of Mr. Madden. He was looked 
 upon as an ideal man to represent Illinois in the United 
 States Senate in the period of American commercial 
 development then felt to be imminent and which has 
 since come. It was taken for granted that he would 
 from the first rank as one of the greatest committeemen 
 and staters of public questions ever sent to the Senate. 
 But there could be no criticism of his attitude: "I am 
 for the man the people of Illinois want, whether that be 
 myself or some other. I stood for the place only while 
 I had official assurance that I was the candidate the peo- 
 ple desired ; I retired the moment I was made aware the 
 people wished somebody else. " 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 GOES TO PHILADELPHIA CONVENTION— REPRESENTS ILLINOIS ON 
 PLATFORM COMMITTEE. 
 
 ONE of the most remarkable instances in American 
 political history of the influence of a single state 
 delegation on the conduct of a national party, occurred 
 through the action of the Illinois men who represented 
 their state in the Republican Convention at Philadelphia 
 in June, i^oo. Although the act was of world-wide 
 importance, although it conserved the friendship of one 
 of the great nations for this country and saved the dom- 
 inant party from committing a political blunder as well 
 as an international offense, it was done so quietly and 
 effectively as to escape the observation of all but the 
 very few who of necessity were cognizant of the sanc- 
 tuary proceedings. 
 
 Illinois had been the battleground of the campaign 
 of 1896. Everyone well informed respecting public 
 affairs realized that the state would again be the chief 
 theater of the struggle in 1900. She is the heart of the 
 great Middle West, and her pulsations affect decisively 
 the political health and activity of all those great sur- 
 rounding commonwealths, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, 
 Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. 
 
 The Illinois men went to Philadelphia with full intelli- 
 gence of the popular feeling of this immense region on 
 
 249 
 
250 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 all living public questions, and determined on having 
 this feeling secure adequate influence in the policy of the 
 Republican party. 
 
 When the delegates from all the states and territories 
 had arrived and exchanged views preparatory to conven- 
 ing for official work, it was found that, outside of the 
 Middle West, there existed a dangerous sureness of vic- 
 tory and a corresponding indisposition to work out any 
 detailed and comprehensive plan of campaign. The 
 drift was towards a cut-and-dried programme. In fact, 
 most of the delegates seemed disposed to treat the Con- 
 vention as a sort of re-union, and to expect to simply 
 ratify, without investigation or criticism, any policy pre- 
 sented by those in official charge of the proceedings. 
 The situation was dangerous politically, for no matter 
 how careful and conscientious the members of an Admin- 
 istration may be, it is simply impossible for them alone 
 to draft a statement of a policy for national party action 
 which will be as comprehensive and popular as a plat- 
 form that is the outcome of the exchanged thought of the 
 delegates representing every part of the country and all 
 its needs and aspirations. 
 
 The most serious peril that threatened the party in 
 power, however, was the uncertain attitude of the old 
 line Democrats. Any just analysis of the vote cast in 
 1896 showed that Mr. McKinley's election was mainly, if 
 not wholly, due to the support of the Jeffersonians and 
 Jacksonians. These patriotic men were unwavering 
 believers in the principle of the Gold Standard, in the 
 policy of expansion, and in the duty of upholding the 
 integrity of the Federal Courts. Their faith was a mat- 
 ter of fiber in their mental make-up: a matter of political 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 251 
 
 heredity developed through several generations. They 
 claimed, and rightly, that Jefferson made it possible for 
 the country to grow with its requirements when he intro- 
 duced the policy of Expansion into American affairs by 
 the Louisiana Purchase; that Jackson had put the 
 Republic on the gold basis; and that the Federal Judi- 
 ciary was the very child of Democracy and the apple of its 
 eye. When the crowd without political ancestry obtained 
 control of the party organization at Chicago, in 1896, 
 nominated Mr. Bryan as a Democrat, and proclaimed 
 the platform attacking all their cherished political prin- 
 ciples, these Jefferson and Jackson men abandoned the 
 organization in a body. They would have formed a 
 great third party but for their conviction that it was their 
 duty to stamp Populism out of political affairs by the 
 most available means at hand. When they realized that 
 the Republicans were sincerely advocating real Demo- 
 cratic principles, especially those of Sound Money, 
 Expansion and Conservation of the powers of the Federal 
 Courts, they gradually, but without effort at recognition, 
 went over to the Republican ranks and gave them the 
 numerical strength needed for victory. 
 
 It cannot be denied, however, that in 1900 the Dem- 
 ocrats had not been satisfied entirely with Republican 
 management. The conviction had grown among them 
 that it would be better to reorganize the old party. A 
 powerful general movement towards this had com- 
 menced. It had been materially helped by the Corbin- 
 Miles affair, in which, the Democrats believed, the man- 
 agement of the Spanish War had been taken away from 
 the competent commanding general and placed in the 
 hands of a bureau chief as an act of personal favoritism; 
 
252 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 by the Alger matter, by the Porto Rican tariff tangle, 
 the management in Cuba, the protracted fighting in the 
 Philippines, and the continually recurring controversy 
 over the Sampson-Schley dispute. A conviction had spread 
 that the Republicans, instead of appreciating the value of 
 Democratic aid, were averse to permitting any Democrat 
 to obtain a career or achieve popular distinction. 
 
 It is now apparent that if the Democrats had got 
 together again and put up an old line man of character 
 and ability at Kansas City, the result of the election in 
 1900 might have been different. It seems now as if the 
 Republican party could not have successfully withstood 
 the defection. This, at least, was the prevailing belief 
 among the Democrats throughout the South, East and 
 Middle West. How strong this belief was, and what a 
 powerful inspiration it afforded, was shown when at 
 Kansas City it appeared for a while possible to nominate 
 David B. Hill instead of Bryan. The Convention simply 
 went wild with delirious hope; the cheers for the New 
 Yorker at one of his appearances lasted in full volume 
 for fifteen minutes. ; If that nomination had gone to 
 Hill, the Republicans would not have been able to use 
 any of the arguments which made" them so strong before 
 the people in the following campaign. The Democrats 
 would have had the arguments, and the Republicans 
 would have been on the defensive from start to finish, 
 with master hands keeping them explaining. 
 
 Many students of public affairs contend that if Tam- 
 many Hall had supported Hill at Kansas City he would 
 have been nominated. Mr. Croker, while entertaining 
 in London a friend of the writer, a short time before the 
 Kansas City Convention, freely discussed the political 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 253 
 
 prospects. He seemed to entertain the belief then that 
 his party could win in the fall of 1900 if it could nomi- 
 nate a Democrat "and at the same time make the plat- 
 form Democratic. " Otherwise, he preferred to have the 
 Republicans retain the management of the Government, 
 rather than have the Populists get it. He was asked what 
 his policy would be in case he found at Kansas City 
 that it would not be possible to secure a Democratic plat- 
 form. His reply indicated that in that event Tammany 
 would prevent the nomination and sacrifice of a real 
 Democrat, and welcome a defeat so disastrous that it 
 would result in the total elimination of Mr. Bryan from 
 Democratic politics. He added: M The best thing then 
 would be to let them make a platform as bad as possible; 
 the worse the better." 
 
 The Illinois men had thoroughly informed themselves 
 about the trend of affairs in the Democratic party and 
 were amazed at the lack of knowledge respecting it 
 among many of the Eastern, Southern and Western dele- 
 gates. They set themselves to the task of arousing their 
 colleagues to proper appreciation of the real condition and 
 to the work of correcting it so far as lay in their power. 
 
 With characteristic energy they quickly formed a sort 
 of "steering committee." This was composed of such 
 men as Mr. Cannon, member from the Dansville district 
 and Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, 
 Congressman Reeves, of La Salle, and men like th£se, 
 who had been especially active in all the congressional 
 detail work appertaining to the conduct of the Spanish 
 War, and knew the needs of the Middle West. These 
 gentlemen, as Mr. Cannon expressed it, "went on a cate- 
 chising expedition," for the purpose of finding a dele- 
 
254 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 gate "well-up" on the questions of the day, especially on 
 those respecting the Inter-Oceanic Canal, Labor, and 
 Currency, to act for the Middle West on the Committee 
 on Resolutions. The inquisitors put many a strong man 
 through what the Appropriations Chairman described as 
 a "course of sprouts. " Finally, they applied the cate- 
 chism to Mr. Madden, who was one of the Chicago dele- 
 gates. "He is our man," said Cannon, "he knows more 
 than any other man we've met about the whole situation. 
 Where he ever learned it all, I can't even guess. But 
 he has the knowledge. What's more, he possesses the 
 faculty of irresistible statement. What's even better yet, 
 he has the energy and force of character to accomplish. 
 He knows things; can get at things; can do things. He 
 is our man." 
 
 The result was that Mr. Madden was unanimously 
 deputed by the Illinois delegates to represent their state 
 in the Committee on Resolutions. He accepted the 
 task, realizing fully what he was expected to do. 
 
 At the very first session of the committee it was 
 ascertained that the party managers, having failed to 
 induce any specialized action on the part of any of the 
 leading delegates, had prepared a programme and had 
 done the best in their power. But, as good as was their 
 work, it was not of the representative and comprehensive 
 character which the Illinois delegate thought the situa- 
 tion demanded. It took but a few words to impress this 
 upon all the members of the committee, and they went 
 to work and framed a fresh platform covering the whole 
 ground anew, each member phrasing the part his espe- 
 cial ability qualified him the best to indite. The result 
 was what is by many conceded to be the best platform 
 ever enunciated by the Republican party, 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 WRITING THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM FOR I9OO— INSERTS THE 
 WORD ISTHMIAN — SECURES FAIR PLAY FOR FRANCE. 
 
 THE Inter-Oceanic Canal question was the one the Mid- 
 dle West was most interested in. If matters had 
 been allowed to drift as they were going at first, the party 
 would have been committed in its declaration of prin- 
 ciples to a specific route, as a rich company of Americans 
 interested in that route had been skillfully exploiting it. 
 Mr. Madden had all along been opposed to this as a 
 National policy, and he had done all in his power, while 
 engaged in the work of forming public opinion, to pre- 
 vent it. 
 
 His argument was substantially as follows: 
 He was in favor of the better route of the two.. If 
 other routes should be discovered he would be in favor 
 of the best. The main thing was to get a canal across 
 the Isthmus. It would expedite American international 
 trade, keep down transportation charges across the coun- 
 try, and give us the use of our entire navy for the pro- 
 tection of either of our coasts. Hitherto, our navy had 
 been considered mainly an Eastern defense. Now that 
 the Chinese territorial and trade questions were being 
 pressed upon the world, our Pacific coast was becoming 
 equal in importance to our Atlantic in the matters of use 
 and necessity of defense. The canal problem had ceased 
 to be solely one of trade — of shortening distance to and 
 
 255 
 
256 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 from markets, and regulating and lessening transporta- 
 tion charges. It was now chiefly a question of national 
 boundary. 
 
 The Nicaragua line might be the best. The Amer- 
 ican syndicate exploiting it insisted it was. We natur- 
 ally hoped our men were right. A commission was now 
 on the ground examining into that phase of the question. 
 
 The science of French engineering, on the other hand, 
 had decided that the Panama route was better. The 
 French route was shorter, and, with ample means, might 
 afford a waterway without locks, and wholly on tide 
 level. This, the Nicaragua could not do. The latter, 
 besides, was said to be subject to volcanic tipheavals. 
 These occurred sometimes in Lake Nicaragua. They 
 would be a menace to the channel, and might make it 
 impassable to our ships during a foreign war, rendering 
 the whole canal useless in a crisis. 
 
 He did not say he took stock in these or any other 
 arguments against the Nicaragua route. He simply 
 stated them as they were made. If the Republican party 
 should be tied to the project of the Nicaragua route and 
 then should elect its ticket, and in carrying out the 
 party's pledge the second Administration of Mr. McKinley 
 should construct the canal across Nicaragua, what would 
 the country say if events should prove the instability of 
 the route? Especially if France should have gone on and 
 finished the Panama Canal? 
 
 No one could doubt that the French would build the 
 Panama Canal if we did not. They would do so even if 
 we should construct a waterway across Nicaragua. They 
 would do this because they were committed to the task, 
 had faith in the route as the best and had invested a 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 257 
 
 couple of hundred millions in the work. They were cer- 
 tain that if both canals should be completed, the Panama 
 would be more used by the world than the Nicaragua, 
 because shorter, cheaper and safer. 
 
 If we committed ourselves to the Nicaragua, the 
 French would not retreat from the Panama. Our action 
 would then simply bring about the construction of two 
 canals, as the Panama would unquestionably be built. 
 In that event, the Isthmus of Panama would always be a 
 theater of international rivalry, misunderstanding and 
 complication. 
 
 With two Isthmian canals in operation, the United 
 States would possess no advantage not possessed by our 
 rivals and even by our enemies. With but one canal, our 
 proper dominance on this continent would remain unim- 
 paired and tmimperiled. 
 
 France simply insisted that a canal be built across the 
 Isthmus along the best way, which she claimed was the 
 Panama route. She would rather have the United States 
 build it than have any other power do it, even herself. 
 She stood ready to yield her place and all her rights in 
 the Panama Canal enterprise to the United States. Her 
 position was friendly and above suspicion. 
 
 It would not do to say that this was "not business, it 
 is sentiment." The French were both "business" and 
 "sentimental."' They were lovable because they were 
 sentimental. Lafayette was sentimental in our Revolu- 
 tion; so were all his countrymen. There was no "busi- 
 ness" at all in what they then did for us; it was all "sen- 
 timent." 
 
 The most that could be justly urged against France's 
 proposition was that she might be mistaken about the 
 
 17 
 
258 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 Panama being the best route. But suppose, after we 
 had built the Nicaragua Canal and France had completed 
 the Panama, we should find that we had made a mistake 
 and that France was right! The error would then be 
 irremediable. 
 
 France was our friend. She had always been. She 
 had been as good a friend when we were in need of sol- 
 diers and sailors as she had been in our most envied 
 - prosperity. It would not be fair to our friend, France, 
 to decide against her proposition before we got through 
 with our investigation of all the possible routes for a 
 canal across the Isthmus. To decide in favor of .any one 
 route against the French before we had completely 
 investigated all the routes, would be to affront a friendly 
 people without any reason at all, and be doing a very 
 foolish thing anyway. 
 
 It was contended by some of the best engineers in the 
 world that the only advantage the Nicaragua route had 
 over the Panama route lay in the matter of expense ; 
 that is, that we could build a canal by Lake Nicaragua 
 for less money than it would cost us to buy out the 
 French claim and finish the Panama ditch. The conten- 
 tion was not at all reasonable, because the French had 
 not yet made to us their last offer. 
 
 Any suggestion of haggling on our part with France 
 would be painful to most Americans. They would 
 resent it as ungracious and insist on having France 
 treated as a welcome negotiator, at the very least. She 
 was so anxious to have what she deemed the best route 
 used that it was more than probable that if Jionest 
 investigation should show that the Panama route was as 
 good as that of Nicaragua in all matters but that of 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 259 
 
 expense, she would offer to sell out to us at any loss tfrat 
 might induce us to take and complete her undertaking. 
 
 He was not arguing for the French route, nor for the 
 Nicaragua route. He was simply for a canal between 
 the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by the best route across 
 the Isthmus. 
 
 Which was the best route had not yet been ascertained. 
 Until it was ascertained he objected to having the 
 Republican party committed to any route. 
 
 He wished and urged to have the party pledged irre- 
 vocably to the work of constructing a canal across the 
 Isthmus by the best route that could be found. 
 
 Until it could be decided which was the best route, 
 and until the route offered to us by our friends, the 
 French, was decided not the best, he protested against 
 having the Republican party committed to the injustice 
 of barring the French proffer from the negotiations. 
 
 He recommended that the plank on the canal question 
 should simply pledge the party, in the event of success 
 in the coming election, to build an Isthmian canal, leav- 
 ing the question of route entirely open, to be settled as 
 the facts to be yet developed warranted. 
 
 The Committee on Resolutions requested Mr. Mad- 
 den to prepare a plank on the canal question. While he 
 was doing this, other members composed planks on the 
 same subject. When they were finished and handed in, 
 on the motion of Senators Foraker and Cushman Davis, 
 the plank prepared by the Illinois man was unanimously 
 adopted and it was ordered inserted in the platform as 
 the official expression of the attitude of the Republican 
 party on the question. The plank is as follows: 
 
 4fc We favor the Construction, Ownership and Protec- 
 
260 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 tion of an Istnmian Canal by the Government of tne 
 United States. New markets are necessary for the 
 increasing surplus of our farm products. Every effort 
 should be made to open and obtain new markets, espe- 
 cially in the Orient, and the Administration is warmly to 
 be commended for its successful effort to commit all 
 trading and colonizing nations to the policy of the Open 
 Door in China." 
 
 When the text of the platform was given to the 
 press, a rough storm was raised over the word " Isth- 
 mian* * in the Canal plank. The great majority of the 
 newspapers had committed themselves to the Nica- 
 raguan route so unreservedly as to seem astounded at the 
 mention of the possibility of any other. It was not long 
 before some papers attempted to "get away from their 
 mistake" by raising the cries of "fraud*' and "bribery." 
 
 These cries soon became general and concerted, and 
 at last were directed unmistakably at ex-Congressman 
 Lemuel Quigg, of New York. He had acted as Secretary 
 of the Committee on Resolutions, and it had been his 
 business to take the resolutions as they were passed, 
 arrange them in their proper order, and attend to the 
 printing of them. Soon the story was whispered about 
 that opponents of the Nicaragua line had paid Quigg a 
 large sum of money for the insertion of the word "Isth- 
 mian" instead of the word "Nicaraguan" in the Canal 
 plank after the platform had been reported by the Com- 
 mittee on Resolutions to the Convention of delegates as 
 a whole and had been by the Convention read, approved 
 and ordered published, and when correction was impos- 
 sible. 
 
 This detailed story was readily believed and was hav- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 261 
 
 ingf a bad effect. It was telegraphed all over the 
 country. When it reached Kansas City, where the Pop- 
 ulists were assembling to nominate Mr. Bryan as the 
 Democratic candidate for the Presidency, it had such a 
 virtuous effect on their political rectitude that they ran 
 the party they had got control of straight into the grasp 
 of the Eastern syndicate, ' k by fixing their Canal plank 
 unalterably for the Nicaragua route. 
 
 In Washington, New York and Philadelphia political 
 excitement over the Quigg story was in no wise allayed 
 by all the denials made by members of the Committee 
 on Resolutions. The Opposition party papers realized 
 that if the scandal was well founded it was a thing to be 
 44 worked for all it was worth," and their correspondents 
 covering the Convention were instructed to keep at the 
 probe and exposure. W. E. Curtis at length agreed to 
 accommodate a syndicate of these writers by using his 
 personal acquaintance with various members of the com- 
 mittee to ascertain the real truth. "There is one man 
 on the committee," said Curtis, "whose word, one way 
 or the other, will settle the thing forever. He is never 
 in any 'deal,-' never in the dark, never in any kind of 
 4 mix-up,' and is always fixed to tell a newspaperman 
 the exact truth. I'll go to him. " He went, and, put- 
 ting the Committeeman on his honor and stating the 
 case, said, 44 Is the story true?" 
 
 44 There is not a word of truth in it," was the reply. 
 44 1 myself wrote the Canal plank. I put the word 'Isth- 
 mian' in it. The plank as published is exactly as I wrote 
 it, word for word, comma for comma, period for period." 
 
 44 There is nothing in it, gentlemen," answered Curtis, 
 to the expectant and excited group of reporters awaiting 
 
262 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 him. "M. B. Madden says he wrote the plank, 'Isth- 
 mian' and all, and that the committee and the Convention 
 adopted it exactly as it is published. That settles it. 
 There is no more to say. " 
 
 Less enlightened journalists elsewhere, however, kept 
 the scandal up. When the delegates had all gone home 
 a prominent Republican newspaper in Chicago revived 
 the story with large headlines* in a first column article. 
 In this Quigg was circumstantially accused of having 
 accepted $5,000 in cash for erasing the word "Nicara- 
 gua. " Mr. Madden was home at the time, and 
 'phoned the editor the truth and some light on the whole 
 subject. The reparation Mr. Quigg received was a sub- 
 sequent editorial in which it was argued that "even if the 
 gentleman did receive $5,000 for putting the word 'Isth- 
 mian' in the Canal plank, he has performed a very meri- 
 torious service for the country ; and for an exceedingly 
 trivial sum has kept the Republican party out of a very 
 deep and a very dangerous hole." 
 
 Statesmen are fond of pointing out the influence of 
 single words in determining the popular vote in our 
 Republic. The accidental, or the calculated, use of the 
 words "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" by the Rev. 
 Dr. Burchard, while describing the Democratic opposi- 
 tion to Mr. Blaine, during an address of welcome to him 
 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, defeated for 
 the Presidency the greatest Protectionist this country 
 ever had and elected the greatest Free Trader. The 
 insertion of the word "Gold" in the financial plank of 
 the St. Louis platform in 1896 probably drew more .votes 
 away from the Democratic party to the organization 
 which by the use of that word dared show its real convic- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 263 
 
 tions than all the other efforts in that campaign com- 
 bined. It was not easy to obtain the substitution of the 
 word "Isthmian" for that of "Nicaraguan" in the Canal 
 plank of the Philadelphia platform, and it was difficult to 
 get the word "Gold" adopted at St. Louis. The plat- 
 form use of the former word has had a great effect on 
 public affairs; as had the platform use of the latter, 
 although in a different way. 
 
 It is an extraordinary fact that both the words 
 "Gold" and "Isthmian" were got into the Republican 
 platforms by Illinois men, and that in the case of each 
 word the same man was conspicuous in the task of alter- 
 ation. 
 
 When consideration is given to the great change in 
 public sentiment on the Inter-Oceanic Canal question 
 during the few months elapsed since the Philadelphia 
 Convention, the adoption of the word "Isthmian" there 
 reveals political insight almost approaching prophecy. 
 The United States, as matters now look, may take 
 France's place on the Isthmus, and thus vastly augment 
 the amity between the two Republics, instead of becom- 
 ing a losing rival and sacrificing one of the two most 
 valuable friendships this nation has ever had among the 
 powers of the world. 
 
 Many of the chief managers of the Republican party 
 have said to the writer that they "never could be thank- 
 ful enough for the salvation effected by that little word 
 'Isthmian. ' " 
 
 The Illinois delegate who secured this "salvation, " 
 when asked how he enjoyed the reward of his virtue, mod- 
 estly turned the subject aside by replying: "Illinois 
 desired the word in the platform. I was the representa- 
 
264 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 tive of the state delegated to procure the adoption of the 
 word. I simply did what I was entrusted to do. What 
 is the representative of a state to do but try to carry out 
 the known wishes of his state? He cannot properly do 
 anything else." 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 SAVES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FROM COMMITTING A BLUNDER— A 
 WITTY SPEECH. 
 
 THE attendance at the Philadelphia Convention was 
 greater than that at any of the previous assem- 
 blages of the Republican party. When it became gener- 
 ally known that the Committee on Resolutions had settled 
 down to the work of framing a declaration of principles 
 it was at once beset with delegations representing every 
 conceivable sort of interest, pleading for hearings. Most 
 of these bodies were sent by commercial organizations to 
 secure declarations favoring modifications in the Spanish 
 War taxes affecting their commodities. All of them were 
 well equipped with arguments to show that if the taxes 
 were not removed or reduced, business would be pros- 
 trated and the responsible party swept from power. 
 
 The richest and most powerful organization of this 
 kind that was able to compel a hearing was the United 
 States Brewers' Association. This represented practi- 
 cally all the beer making establishments in the United 
 States, employing several hundred thousand voters and 
 possessing several hundred million dollars in capital; 
 besides the allied interests, such as those of barley rais- 
 ing, hop culture, corn and rice growing, barrel making, 
 retail selling, etc. The Association had held a general 
 congress in Philadelphia in the April preceding the Con- 
 vention, had had several committees before Congress, 
 
 265 
 
266 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 and at the Treasury and Internal Revenue Departments, 
 and had had its case powerfully presented in a full- 
 page article in Postmaster-General Smith's paper, the 
 Philadelphia Press, about the time the delegates began 
 to arrive to attend the Convention. 
 
 The brewers made a most powerful argument. The 
 beer industry during the Civil War had submitted cheer- 
 fully to the imposition of a tax of one dollar a barrel. 
 When nearly all the other Civil War taxes were removed, 
 the beer tax was left untouched and it still was collected. 
 The brewers had not only always cheerfully paid it, but 
 had so assisted the Government by various ingenious 
 devices for collection as to practically make impossible 
 any frauds on the beer revenue. When taxes were assessed 
 for the expenses of the war against Spain, an additional 
 dollar per barrel was laid on beer, while two-thirds of 
 the articles that had yielded war revenue during the 
 Rebellion were left untaxed. The profit to the manufac- 
 turer on a barrel of beer was only eight) 7 cents. The 
 new tax compelled the brewers to make beer for noth- 
 ing, and besides pay the Government twenty cents a 
 barrel for the privilege of doing business, unless .they 
 found a way to induce the retailers to be satisfied with 
 less in each barrel, and the consumers with less in each 
 glass. The brewers were patriotic and had consented to 
 the tax to help the Government out in its difficulty with 
 Spain. The Government had assured them that the 
 additional tax was for war purposes only and would not 
 be collected after the extra financial demands caused by 
 the war should cease. The war against Spain had been 
 ended now eighteen months, and the tax was still col- 
 lected. It was unfair to the beer industry, which was 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 267 
 
 being crippled by the excessive burden. It had already 
 paid $7 1,000,000 of the war expenditures and was entitled 
 to relief. Notwithstanding the great prosperity attend- 
 ing every other business in the country there was general 
 impending bankruptcy in that of brewing beer because , 
 of the long continuance of the excessive war revenue 
 tax, and during the preceding year the output had fallen 
 off more than one million barrels. 
 
 The argument was cogent and was well received, and 
 the brewers received assurance that the Republican 
 party would protect their interest by a fair reduction of 
 taxation as soon as the expenses occasioned by the war 
 should warrant it. 
 
 Then a movement was started by some ill-advised 
 persons to have the Brewers' Association attempt to 
 compel the Resolutions Committee to insert in the plat- 
 form a special plank in favor of cheaper beer. Strange 
 as it may seem, this movement became absolutely power- 
 ful and was advocated by some of the most prominent 
 men in the country. The crisis in this crusade came one 
 day when a celebrated advocate, arguing in favor of the 
 party declaring officially for cheaper beer, pushed his 
 thunder into the region of threat. He said beer was the 
 liquid bread of millions of Americans. Other millions of 
 people in this country earned their living in raising or 
 producing the materials that went into the composition of 
 beer. There were other millions still that made their liv- 
 ing by selling beer by the glass, to say nothing of the 
 millions who drank it to quench thirst. The continu- 
 ance of the tax was an oppression of all these people, 
 and they would punish at the polls the party responsible 
 for it. Beer drinking promoted temperance, as the 
 
268 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 people who consumed it let intoxicating drinks alone. 
 The continuance of the extra tax was hurting the cause 
 of temperance, as was shown by the fact that in the year 
 just past, because of the tax, the people of the country 
 had drunk one million barrels less than they had used 
 during the year before. Gladstone had been thrown out 
 of power in 1885 because to get money to pay the expenses 
 of the Egyptian War he had raised the tax on beer a few 
 pence per barrel. The present government in Great 
 Britain, with a far more expensive war on their hands 
 than ours with Spain, did not dare to increase the beer 
 tax more than a few pennies on the barrel. The present 
 Administration had increased the tax on beer one dollar 
 per barrel. That tax was retained eighteen months 
 after the Spaniards had ceased to fight. It was making 
 the liquid bread of the American people dearer; it was 
 making the poor man's beverage more costly; it was 
 hurting the cause of temperance. If the party in power 
 did not in its platform declare for cheaper beer and the 
 abolition of the extra dollar a barrel, the $650,000,000 
 invested in the brewing trade in the United States, the 
 900,000 men employed in the breweries, and the entire 
 German vote in the forty-five states would be thrown 
 against the Republican party in the coming election, and 
 it would be cast out of power as the people's enemy. 
 
 The delegate from Illinois could stand this no longer. 
 He was entertained, he said, by the argument that the 
 more beer people drank the more temperate they 
 became, and he was grieved to learn that the 250,000 
 soldiers who had gone to the war used when home four 
 barrels of beer each every twelve months, their absence 
 diminishing the total consumption one million barrels a 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 269 
 
 year. Nevertheless, the logic did not convince him that 
 to remedy the situation the Republican party should take 
 the proposed beer stand on its platform. The party 
 would reduce all the war taxes, including that on beer, 
 as soon as it could, and as much as it could. 
 
 He had no misgivings about the German vote ; the 
 party would no doubt be able to give this vote sufficient 
 reasons for continued adherence. There was one 
 important question he would like to ask the orator: was 
 he in favor of a secret alliance between the United 
 States and England? 
 
 Having Irish blood in his veins, the speaker replied, 
 hotly: "No, sir; anything else but that." 
 
 "Would any of the gentlemen in your party be in 
 favor of such an alliance?" 
 
 "No; they are all Germans." 
 
 "Would you or they favor committing the Republican 
 party in the coming campaign to a secret alliance with 
 England?"" 
 
 "No; such a thing would drive the Republican party 
 out of existence." 
 
 "How would it do that?" 
 
 "Why, it would stir every Irishman and every Ger- 
 man in the United States to come out and vote against 
 the party on next election day." 
 
 "Why do you include the Germans?" 
 
 "Because to a man they are opposed to any secret 
 alliance .between this country and England. On that 
 question they are as bitter as the Irish against Eng- 
 land." 
 
 "Well, then, that being so, why are you here urging 
 tjiis committee to affirm in its platform that the Repub-- 
 
270 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 lican party is committed to a secret alliance between the 
 White House and the Palace of St. James?" 
 
 4 'Great heavens! We're not here for that — we are 
 trying to get the party to officially declare for cheap 
 beer, for an abolition of the extra dollar a barrel tax, 
 for " 
 
 44 Just vSo; you are trying to get this committee to 
 affirm before the world that there is a sort of secret alli- 
 ance between the American Government, as it is carried 
 on by the ' Republican party, and England. You are 
 aware that our political enemies are cultivating a suspi- 
 cion that such an alliance exists. You know that this 
 suspicion, which has no just foundation, is injurious to 
 the Republican party. And yet you come here and ask 
 us to increase the injury by making an official declaration 
 which will be everywhere construed as an affirmation 
 that the suspicion is well founded. 
 
 44 The English, according to your own argument, are 
 now paying the greater part of the Spanish War taxes. 
 You ask the Republican party to commit itself to the 
 abolition of those taxes the English are paying so that 
 the world may believe there is an alliance which compels 
 us to give the Britons an advantage over other tax-payers 
 in American trade in return for their neutrality during 
 the war. You know that to select the beer tax for spe- 
 cial reduction would be to reduce the revenue English- 
 men are now paying toward the support of this Govern 
 ment, for nearly all the breweries are at present con- 
 trolled by syndicates owned by Englishmen. I am 
 amazed. ' ' 
 
 The orator had been unable during this series of 
 retorts to understand the gleam in Madden's eyes, but 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 271 
 
 the end of the speech struck him like a thunderbolt. He 
 had been swelling up with speechless indignation, but now 
 he suddenly collapsed, taking relief in the one word, 
 "Gawd!" and vanished, never to return. That ended 
 the argument for beer. 
 
 It is fairly claimed by Mr. Madden's intimates that 
 he is a master artist in the use of short speech. Whether 
 he can be cleverer in lucid brevity than he is in cogent 
 dalliance with persons slow to perceive may be justly 
 questioned. Whatever surpassed the above specimen of 
 "long lining?" 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 PLANS THE REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN FOR T90O— NEW SILVER 
 EXPANSION ARGUMENT. 
 
 WHEN the Illinois delegates to the Philadelphia Con- 
 vention reached home they were received with 
 enthusiasm and complimented upon the manner in which 
 they had kept the state to the fore in the national pro- 
 gramme. Mr. Madden's work in the Committee on Res- 
 olutions, especially that in which he had secured recog- 
 nition of labor, neutrality as to the canal route, and the 
 declaration favoring the establishment of small national 
 banks to afford increased circulation of money in the 
 agricultural regions of the West, was applauded as the 
 chief accomplishment in the platform. He was at once 
 singled out to indicate the line of campaign management 
 best to pursue. 
 
 He promptly advocated the discussion of three issues: 
 Expansion, Sound Money and Protective Tariff. It was 
 suggested that it might be difficult to urge anything new 
 on either the money or tariff questions. On the con- 
 trary, he answered, both issues had entirely new features 
 and were more important than ever. The tremendous 
 revival of prosperity which had followed McKinley's 
 election, owing to the restoration of confidence that 
 American money would be gold and that American 
 investments in all lines of business would be amply pro- 
 tected from unfair foreign competition, had established 
 
 272 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 273 
 
 beyond further dispute that Protection as a national pol- 
 icy was the best. In less than four years it had not only 
 set every idle man in the country to work at high wages 
 and enabled them to furnish a market and pay higher 
 prices for the farm products of the West, but had placed 
 the United States at the very head of the list of exporting 
 nations, turning the balance of trade in our favor, and 
 making of us a lending instead of a borrowing people. 
 We had now, however, to meet a new difficulty, and one 
 more serious than any we had yet encountered. That 
 was the coming Chinese competition. China was prepar- 
 ing to modernize and go into trade as a competitor 
 against Christendom for the manufacturing trade of the 
 world. The competition of Europe, which Protection had 
 enabled us to meet and overcome, was insignificant when 
 compared to the possibilities of the threatened rivalry 
 of China. The conditions in the Celestial Empire were 
 ideal for the change: inexhaustible quantities of raw 
 material, a homogeneous population of skilled laborers 
 of great intelligence, industry and frugality, and a gen- 
 eral conviction that it would pay them, numbering nearly 
 half the human race, to quit farming an over-cultivated 
 land and buy their food with money obtained by manufac- 
 turing. Until we knew just what we were to encounter 
 from Oriental competition, it would be wise to cherish 
 our Protective policy and to yield nothing of it except on 
 the lines of reciprocity, where that might help the exten- 
 sion of our trade in Europe. 
 
 Bryan's nomination was certain. That would compel 
 another discussion of the money question. In this the 
 Republicans would have all the advantage. Bryan could 
 offer nothing new, and most of what he had already 
 
 18 
 
274 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 said was contradicted by the events of the past four years. 
 Prices of agricultural products had risen without the aid 
 of free coinage of silver, which he had claimed was 
 necessary to any enhancement of values; idleness had 
 disappeared, in the face of his contention that it would 
 increase unless free coinage was restored ; and the cir- 
 culation of money had been vastly enlarged while the 
 price of it had fallen, contrary to the Populist's argument 
 that interest would rise to the enslaving point and circu- 
 lation decrease to that of bankruptcy if the Gold Standard 
 was adopted. 
 
 While Bryan would be reduced to dealing in discred- 
 ited "chestnuts," as his own tired followers were call- 
 ing his platitudes, the management of the Republican 
 party had developed a situation that made probable a 
 real solution of the silver problem. It was extraordinary, 
 too, that whilst the party in power had committed itself 
 to conditions which made the solution possible, Bryan 
 had pledged himself to a policy exactly calculated to 
 deprive silver of the best chance it had of regaining full 
 rehabilitation in value. The modernizing of China 
 depended upon the maintenance of the integrity of the 
 empire. Our acquisition of the Philippines had made 
 of us an Oriental power. We were now a neighbor of 
 China, owning "adjoining lots." Our main interest in 
 the country was that of trade, that of the open door. 
 No power as far away as Europe would think of closing 
 any Celestial door to us so long as we remained in the 
 Philippines. Our stay there meant the preservation of 
 the integrity of China, and, therefore, its modernization. 
 The Republican party had resolved to remain. 
 
 The resolution had been taken for purely patriotic 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 275 
 
 reasons and was subject to overthrow by a popular vote. 
 If the American people had been warned by any reput- 
 able statesman that war with Spain would result in 
 occupation of the Philippines, that undesired result would 
 unquestionably have prevented declaration of war. The 
 war was waged for high-minded and entirely disinter- 
 ested purposes, in none of which did the Oriental ques- 
 tion in any shape even suggest itself. When the fortune 
 of war compelled the Union to go to Manila, it trans- 
 pired there, though unthought of before, that to leave 
 might be disastrous. The flag was carried there because 
 it had to go. When there it became necessary to raise 
 it, and then no good reason could be found by those who 
 put it up for taking it down. 
 
 When China modernized, Mr. Madden went on, she 
 would require a vast amount of money, more than all the 
 rest of the world together. Her people practically dealt 
 in cash with one another. They had reduced the art of 
 living on the least possible to such a low standard that 
 for the ordinary purchases of everyday life they used 
 coins of so small a denomination that an American silver 
 dollar would in some parts of the country bring 2,500 of 
 them. The number of these little coins given in the 
 exchange represented exactly the number of parts into 
 which the people could clip the metallic dollar acceptable 
 as standard money in exchange. Gold was not suffi- 
 ciently divisible for general use as standard money in a 
 country like that. Silver was. Hence, silver was the 
 standard money now in u^e by the Chinese and probably 
 always would be. Wages would no doubt rise in that 
 country after its modernization, but it was hardly pos- 
 sible they ever would get sufficiently high to permit the 
 
276 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 general use of gold as standard money. Silver would, 
 therefore, remain the common standard coin of the 
 Chinese. When their nation should be modernized thor- 
 oughly the increased demand for standard money in that 
 country would be so enormous that it would trouble the 
 world to yield enough precious metal to meet it, and that 
 natural demand would open every silver mine capable of 
 yielding an ounce and raise the value of silver perhaps 
 even above the price of '73. 
 
 The retention of the Philippines, then, would solve 
 the Silver question, solve it forever, and solve it for the 
 American producer in a more satisfactory way than any 
 before proposed. But Bryan, who neither understood 
 the Silver question nor the question of locating the Amer- 
 ican flag, was opposed to the retention of the Philippines. 
 He was committed to their abandonment in case he got 
 to the White House as Presidential occupant. The Sil- 
 ver men of the country, Mr. Madden thought, would see 
 to it that the greatest living enemy of American silver 
 would retain his residence in Nebraska, where he would 
 be unable to interfere with the integrity of China and 
 our market there for the white metal. 
 
 Expansion, Mr. Madden contended, would be the 
 most interesting theme in the campaign. § It was a Dem- 
 ocratic policy and would be inspiring to those Democrats 
 who had helped the Republicans elect McKinley to his 
 first term. It would induce them to support him again. 
 Their conduct in 1896 had been especially high-minded 
 and patriotic. Their party was older than the Republi- 
 can, had more traditions, had put more laws on the 
 statute books, had produced a larger number of public 
 men. It had conducted the affairs of the Republic for a 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 277 
 
 longer time and had inspired a noble loyalty exceedingly 
 difficult to break away from. Yet these men, from pure 
 principle and love of the country's honor and good name, 
 had torn themselves away from old political affiliations 
 and given the Republican candidate a sufficient suffrage 
 to defeat their own nominee. This magnificent mani- 
 festation of patriotism had startled the world by exhibit- 
 ing the enduring character of American institutions and 
 had inspired McKinley's administration with breadth 
 and statesmanship. These loyal Democrats were proud 
 of their work in 1896 and anxious to repeat it, for they 
 had the satisfactory reward of seeing a Republican 
 administration carrying out Democratic policies for the 
 country's development. Thousands of Democrats who 
 had abandoned their party in 1896 but had refrained from 
 voting, would now support McKinley because he "was a 
 better Democrat than Bryan." 
 
 The argument for Expansion, as presented by the 
 Republicans, Mr. Madden pointed out, had so many 
 extraordinary phases of patriotic as well as material 
 interest for the country as a whole, and for particular 
 localities, especially for Illinois and Chicago, that Bryan's 
 opposition to it looked like an act of Providence devised 
 to arouse the American people to array themselves 
 solidly before the world on a question of international 
 justice, for future effect on mankind. This attitude 
 would produce the largest majority in favor of Expansion 
 ever given in the country for any national policy. 
 
 A consideration of some of the conditions that com- 
 pelled the Americans to remain in the Philippines after 
 they went there on a simple naval expedition would make 
 this manifest. Dewey had been ordered to overtake and 
 
278 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 destroy the Spanish fleet in the Pacific. Ascertaining 
 that it was at Manila he went there to carry out the 
 order. After he had "overtaken and destroyed," the 
 Spaniards practically surrendered to him the Archipelago. 
 Then some foreign fleets appeared. It was at first sus- 
 pected they had followed our ships for unfriendly pur- 
 poses. ; When this suspicion was found unjust, their 
 presence still remained unexplained until our Government 
 learned what had been going on in China. The Govern- 
 ment of that country some time before had discovered, 
 in an effort to take a census of its population, that it had 
 reached a point in numbers where it exceeded the ability 
 of the land longer to feed it. Then began the effort to 
 find a solution of the awful national trouble. The one 
 Li Hung Chang had determined to try was to modernize 
 the country, put it to work utilizing its vast natural min- 
 eral resources in manufacture, and buy its food instead 
 of longer attempting to obtain it from the exhausted 
 ground. What made the change more imperative was 
 the additional discovery that the rice of the country, the 
 main food of the immense population, had begun to 
 rapidly deteriorate in nutriment as a result of the long 
 continued in-breeding of centuries. The Chinese states- 
 men carrying on the paternal government of the coun- 
 try, after exhaustive study, had concluded to effect the 
 substitution of flour, and had surveyed the wheat lands 
 of the whole world, seeking a source of supply. They 
 had concluded that the lands of the United States, if all 
 brought into cultivation, would about produce sufficient 
 wheat for China's impending wants. These hard-headed 
 pagans never thought of calculating upon any other plan 
 of bringing about the substitution of flour for rice among 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 279 
 
 their famishing countrymen than the natural one of the 
 law of supply and demand. They knew that once 
 China's policy was decided upon and made known to 
 the world, lands capable of producing wheat would be 
 brought into cultivation just as rapidly as the demand 
 for thefr product called for it. The rice would not at 
 once disappear. If it should the Chinese race would dis- 
 appear from the earth, as the world could not produce 
 in a season the additional 2,800,000,000 bushels of wheat 
 it would take to keep the people of China alive. How- 
 ever rapidly the rice might fail, so long as it did not fail 
 altogether in a few seasons, flour would be produced 
 sufficiently to take its place, even if that result had to be 
 obtained by public opinion forcing the American Govern- 
 ment to use its rich treasury to quickly water the rich 
 volcanic soil in the West. 
 
 China was unobtrusive and did not take the world 
 much into confidence. But many other nations main- 
 tained agents in friendly territory, and their business was 
 to keep their home governments apprised of what was 
 going on. By such means various powers had learned 
 of the arranging revolution in China, a thing that was 
 bound to upset the whole world, dislodge all established 
 calculations and make of that territory that furnished the 
 Chinese their new food the richest land Christendom had 
 ever imagined. Then there was a scurrying to get 
 shares in the new deal. As if by concert certain powers 
 appeared on Chinese territory and there were rumors of 
 a division, of the taking of ports for the control of trade, 
 of spheres of influence, and of many other similar things. 
 
 The United States was not in the thing at all, didn't 
 seem even to know what was going on or what the fuss in 
 
280 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 China was about. When it was agreed what part of 
 Kwang-Su's empire each Christian country was to take, 
 the trespassers thought it necessary to secure bases of 
 operation near by. The Chinese might resist, other 
 nations might interfere with the plan of dismemberment 
 and occupation. Japan had secured Formosa and Eng- 
 land had Hong-Kong. No available base was left but the 
 Philippine Archipelago. That belonged to Spain. 
 Rumors began to obtain currency that negotiations had 
 been opened with Spain for the purchase of the Philip- 
 pines by one or more of the powers mixed up in the con- 
 templated spoliation of China. 
 
 Just at this critical time Dewey arrived upon the 
 scene. When he found that the fleets hovering about 
 him meant no harm to him, a search was made for the 
 reason of their presence. It gradually leaked out that the 
 powers thought America didn't want the islands. Nor did 
 it. The powers also believed Dewey would abandon them 
 and then they would be left to appropriation, Spain having 
 deserted them. It was not strange that the Administra- 
 tion at Washington took it into its head to inquire into 
 the whole matter to find out just why these powers were 
 so anxious to obtain islands that had no apparent value 
 to us. Such an inquiry did not have to be pushed far 
 before it brought its followers right into the heart of the 
 whole Chinese question, the largest one in the world. 
 Now then, when the inquirers saw that if China were 
 let alone and permitted to work out her own destiny, the 
 result would be a greater trade upon the Pacific than the 
 Atlantic ever saw; large cities on our western coast, 
 centers for a denser population there than now inhabited 
 the eastern shore; every acre of tillable land in the vast 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 281 
 
 region between the Mississippi and Puget Sound farmed 
 to raise food for China: millions of dollars invested in 
 transcontinental railroads for every thousand then — what 
 would they suggest, what would they advise? Espe- 
 cially, when it was plain that if China were torn apart, our 
 West would remain in slow development? To let the 
 Philippines go meant the latter. To hold them meant 
 the former. It seemed to be a case of special interfer- 
 ence by Providence. His yellow children in China were 
 hungry and had obeyed the Divine law of increase until 
 they now had not enough land to yield them food. His 
 white children in America had land to spare for that. The 
 President was a Christian and naturally inclined to say: 
 Providence desired the Americans to feed the Chinese. 
 Therefore He had prevented the would-be-dismemberers 
 of that empire from obtaining the base needed to carry 
 out their design and had led us into the possession of it. 
 With that feeling in his heart, what was the President's 
 duty? Well, he ordered the American flag raised over 
 the Philippines and commanded that it be kept there 
 until his countrymen should pass upon the whole ques- 
 tion 6*f retention or rejection by popular vote. The flag 
 was still up and so would remain if the majority favored 
 having the United States feed China and the West hav- 
 ing its opportunity for symmetrical development with 
 the rest of the land. It would come down, the powers 
 have the islands donated to them as a base for China's 
 dismemberment, and America remain half desert if 
 Bryan won. Mr. Madden had no doubt about what the 
 West would do on such a proposition, nor any misgiving 
 at all about the attitude Illinois would take. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 MAKES THE BEST PUBLIC STATEMENT ON TRUSTS — PROPOSES THE 
 BEST SOLUTION. 
 
 IV IO public question has arisen in American affairs dur- 
 I i ing the past ten years that has aroused so much 
 discussion as that of Trusts. It has been a porcupiny 
 subject to most of our public men, the majority of whom 
 lead professional lives and possess as a rule theoretical 
 knowledge only of trade questions. If our legislatures 
 had been composed more largely of experienced business 
 men the trust question would long ago have received 
 courageous and intelligent treatment, and perhaps now 
 be settled satisfactorily, at least so far as such a question 
 can be settled by law. 
 
 During the Presidential campaign of 1900 the people 
 in many states, and those of Illinois especially, irrespec- 
 tive of party, gave many evidences of a wish to have the 
 question of trusts discussed on the stump. WUh one 
 exception, no public speaker on either side undertook 
 to make the desired exposition. Mr. Bethea, the United 
 States District Attorney in Illinois, who had given the 
 subject -much study, urged every prominent orator who 
 filled an engagement in his territory during that cam- 
 paign to devote some time in his speech to the trust 
 problem. Not one of them complied until Mr. Madden 
 was advertised to make an address. He was a large 
 employer of labor and the President and Manager of one 
 
 282 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 283 
 
 of the greatest business combinations in the state, an 
 enterprise which at that time was operating no less than 
 twelve consolidated companies. It was thought that he 
 knew all about trusts and could thoroughly explain their 
 composition and methods, as well as indicate their dan- 
 gerous or beneficial tendencies. He did not hesitate at 
 all in accepting Mr. Bethea's invitation and agreed to 
 devote his whole speech to the subject. This agreement 
 was extensively advertised and brought in a large audi- 
 ence of interested and critical people. Mr. Madden kept 
 his word, stated the whole question clearly and com- 
 pletely, and gave, what had not yet been done and what 
 has not been done by any other public man, a rational, 
 fair and effective solution of the whole trust trouble. 
 
 Pn the beginning, Mr. Madden pointed out the con- 
 stitutional limits of legal interference with the free em- 
 ployment of capital. If a man, or a number of men, put 
 any amount of money into a private business requiring 
 and getting no public favors, they could not be restrained 
 from letting their profits be added to their capital, nor 
 from increasing it personally in any other honest way, no 
 matter how large it oecame. It was only where capital 
 operated in a corporate way, under some charter, or 
 franchise, or public permission, that the law could be 
 invoked to interfere. Then the interference would have 
 to be confined to preventing the use of the capital for any 
 other purpose than that plainly or impliedly expressed 
 in the grant of incorporation. In all such cases the 
 remedy was either by revocation of the act permitting 
 the incorporation or by other corrective local legislation 
 or litigation. No political remedy could be applied. 
 Where the legal redress, which usually was ample, was 
 
284 MAkTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 not correctively used, the fault lay in either the apathy, 
 the ignorance or the infidelity of the legislative or law 
 officers of the injured locality. The people living there 
 could by suffrage eject them from office and substitute 
 other officials to properly restrain or destroy the offend- 
 ing corporations. 
 
 The speaker was of the opinion, however, that it was 
 not these ' "reachable" corporations the people were 
 alarmed about, but that the public concern was princi- 
 pally, if not altogether, regarding the tendency toward 
 those vast combinations of capital which operated all 
 over the country with a view toward monopolizing the 
 handling of things of universal use and the control of the 
 labor necessary to both produce them and distribute them 
 after they were made. It was feared corporate control 
 of production and distribution might enslave labor as 
 well as rob the public of its independence. To that 
 phase of the problem he would devote his remarks and 
 apply the remedy he was ready to propose. 
 
 It had not become a purely party problem because no 
 alignment was possible on it that would include all the 
 Democrats on one side and all the Republicans on the 
 other by either personal or political bias or interest. 
 The trust stocks were held indiscriminately by members 
 of both parties, and had been, and were still, purchased 
 solely as business and financial investments for the pur- 
 pose of making money. They afforded about the most 
 inviting field for the risk of large capital in this country, 
 and the prospects were that they would continue to be so 
 attractive for the many years the United States had 
 before them the assured development of their enormous 
 natural advantages. These were yet in the initial stages 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 285 
 
 of utilization and sufficient altogether to put the country 
 in mastery, of the trade of the present civilized world and 
 maintain it in that supremacy for a long period, if not 
 for all time. As the world stood, the territory of the 
 American Union was the only large region that could 
 supply its own people with all necessary food and man- 
 ufactures and have surpluses of both to sell. All other 
 countries had to buy either food or manufactures; this 
 alone needed not to buy either, and could sell both. 
 After supplying its own needs, it could furnish all of 
 Europe with manufactured goods; after feeding its own 
 people, it could assure the people of Europe all the food 
 they wanted, for less than they could raise it themselves. 
 In one year after the political economists had concluded 
 that the world had reached the limit of wheat produc- 
 tion, the United States had increased their yield nearly 
 300,000,000 bushels; and did so without bringing into cul- 
 tivation more than a mere fraction of their irrigable 
 lands. 
 
 The immense increase of American trusts recently 
 noticed with alarm had followed and been stimulated by 
 the growth of the nation's foreign trade and had been 
 the principal instrumentality in its development, either 
 in the work of transporting agricultural products by land 
 and water or the handling of our iron and steel output. 
 It would, therefore, be found impossible to interfere, 
 wisely or unwisely, in the growth or management of 
 trusts without affecting favorably or injuriously the 
 growth and development of our foreign trade. On the 
 other hand, however, because of this very general oper- 
 ation of trust capital and of the national character of its 
 influence for good or evil, the question of regulation 
 
286 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 became easier, as it placed that within Federal supervision 
 and subject to popular vote. So long as a trust operated 
 within a . single state, Washington could not very well 
 interfere; but when its work became general in effect 
 upon national industry or interest, the voters could reach 
 it and the Government would be forced to regulate its 
 management. The tendency was towards general oper- 
 ation, and Federal regulation was becoming imminent. 
 This could not very well be partisan, because trust evils 
 were not of party production. The factors that would 
 control the settlement were two — the interest of labor 
 and the welfare of the consumer. 
 
 The workingmen of the country were especially intel- 
 ligent on all public matters affecting their own welfare. 
 What they most desired was steady employment at fair 
 wages. They knew that reduction in the mechanical 
 cost of production increased employment by enlarging 
 demand for the things made, and perceived plainly that 
 aggregations of capital effected this more than any other 
 instrumentality. The smaller employer often closed his 
 factory when improved machinery was beyond his means. 
 That brought idleness to his men. The richer employer, 
 who could afford to substitute the improved methods, 
 kept on and continued paying wages. The larger the 
 capital the employer had the less danger there was of 
 stoppage of work, and the better the prospect of increased 
 wages through augmented consumption. Even where the 
 question was not one of employing better methods, large 
 capital was more likely to keep a mill running than small 
 capital would be, because less disposed to hazard the loss 
 in the plant entailed by disuse. A combination, no mat- 
 ter under what name, operating many mills in different 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 287 
 
 localities, was more apt to keep them all running all the 
 time than individual ownership would be, and less prone 
 to lessen employment in dull times. In fact, the combi- 
 nation, through its ability to reduce managerial ex- 
 penses, would not require as great .profits in the aggre- 
 gate to meet dividends as would several different compa- 
 nies doing the same amount of work; and could run with 
 profit even in conditions that would be losing to the com- 
 panies. Several organizations owning separately several 
 lines of railway that, connected, would form a continuous 
 road, could not give as good through service for the same 
 price as could one corporation operating the same routes 
 as one, nor could they afford employment for as many 
 hands or keep the same number as steadily engaged, 
 because less able to reduce rates and so attract business. 
 The laboring men of the country understood all this 
 better than the general public. 
 
 In manufacturing, the ability of the country was now 
 two-fifths greater than its consumption. With all the 
 factories running, the United States would now produce 
 exactly forty per cent, more than it could consume at 
 home. If American manufacturing were limited to the 
 home market, therefore, it would have to curtail employ- 
 ment forty per cent; throw 400 men out of work of every 
 1,000 now employed. The only present possible method 
 of keeping all the men at work was to find foreign 
 markets for two-fifths of our manufactures. The labor- 
 ing men of the country had a vital interest in the reten- 
 tion and expansion of our foreign trade They knew that 
 it could be both held and increased by great aggrega- 
 tions of capital only. To sell in the Old World was an 
 entirely different thing from selling at home. There 
 
288 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 payments were much slower, and capital must be able to 
 wait for its pay. Vast amounts of goods must be kept 
 always in great storehouses awaiting orders and armies of 
 agents maintained to seek outlets for the storage. Small 
 companies could not do this, nor could any combination 
 of small concerns do it as well as the vast aggregations of 
 capital now engaged in it They alone could afford the 
 two enormous risks involved — that of money tied up in 
 goods not moving, and of selling either without profit or 
 at a loss. It was no doubt true that American goods 
 were often sold abroad for less than at home. The man- 
 ufacturers had no leaning towards trade of that kind, but 
 were often compelled to get rid of surplus stock at a loss 
 in that way. In some cases they could afford to sell their 
 surpluses abroad without profit, being ahead on the home 
 trade ; in others it might be wise for them to sell at a 
 loss, even to great diminution of their domestic divi- 
 dends. So long as they made surpluses and found 
 markets for them, they kept their factories open and 
 their men employed. This was the main fact to the 
 American workingman. It would be difficult to induce 
 him to antagonize the formation of the gigantic combina- 
 tions of capital that alone made the sales abroad possible. 
 Calling them trusts, the laboring man would say, did 
 not make the result to him any less beneficial. 
 
 The consumer, though, might naturally take a differ- 
 ent view of the matter. What he wanted was cheap 
 goods. He would resent paying more than the for- 
 eigner, no matter what argument should be brought 
 forward. It would be hard to convince him that a 
 trust was philanthropic and took the risk of finding for- 
 eign markets merely for the purpose of continuing its men 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 289 
 
 in employment. He would not even believe in the rea- 
 soning that trusts would rather meet the loss risked in 
 foreign markets than that involved in stopping work, 
 with its consequent deterioration in plant, difficulty in 
 resuming, and impossibility of at once taking good orders 
 that might suddenly develop. He would, of course, be 
 glad to have anything done that would assure constant 
 work and good wages to domestic workingmen, as the 
 whole body of them spent most of what they earned 
 immediately after receiving it, and that put money into 
 circulation and made times good. Nevertheless, the 
 consumer would object to having that done at his 
 expense, as it would seem to be so long as he could not 
 understand entirely why he paid more for what he had to 
 buy than foreigners three thousand miles away did for 
 the same things turned out of the same shops. He would 
 see in the whole business a sort of natural partnership 
 between labor and capital, the one interested in the 
 other, and both interested in high prices at home. 
 
 What would most affect his opposition to trusts would 
 be the vast amount of visible water in their stocks. 
 Upon this interest would have to be obtained by the 
 managers. They would get it by keeping up prices. 
 " Before the formation of trusts he could see that prices 
 were, as a rule, rather fairly based on the cost of pro- 
 duction. He then had no sound reason against paying 
 them. But when the cost of production had palpably 
 been reduced by consolidation of plants, elimination of 
 management expenses, and discounts on immense pur- 
 chases of raw material, he expected the whole benefit 
 himself. Instead of getting it he saw it retained in 
 dividends. The percentage of earnings on the shares 
 
 19 
 
290 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 was not increased, but their number was. The plants 
 absorbed had not grown in value with the increase in 
 shares. The additional stocks represented no more 
 worth in the properties absorbed, but were devised to 
 keep him from receiving any part of the lessened cost in 
 production. They were water. If watering stock were 
 not a part of the production of trusts, the consumer 
 would be benefited by their formation as well as the 
 capitalists and laborers. 
 
 It would be of no use to argue with the consumer that 
 when a price had been established and accepted by the 
 people, and was ungrudgingly paid, simply because the 
 thing carrying it was worth it, and a genius came along 
 and devised a method of producing that thing in a 
 cheaper way, the genius was entitled to the sum of his 
 saving, as a reward for that exercise of his talent. If you 
 should instance the highest form of this kind of work — 
 patents — the consumer would respond that the public 
 had a good deal to do with furnishing genius the field 
 necessary for the operation of its talent. He would tell 
 you that inventors were limited to a seventeen years' 
 monopoly, after which the public acquired the whole * 
 value of the. invention, and that even during the term of 
 the monopoly the public had the right, and always used 
 it, of breaking down the inventor's monopoly if he didn't 
 reduce prices, by stimulating other inventors to do it. 
 
 As his strongest argument against the formation of 
 trusts, the consumer would then tell you that they really 
 never would be formed but for the opportunity they 
 afforded of selling water at high prices. That was the 
 one inducement that drew men of commercial talent into 
 the work of organizing them. The promoters of trusts 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 291 
 
 ascertained how much each of the companies to be 
 absorbed was worth at the market; they added all these 
 sums and then arranged for that total of money with 
 which to buy. They then accurately calculated the sav- 
 ing that could be made upon the whole output of these 
 establishments when conducted under one management. 
 They capitalized the amount of the ascertained saving 
 and added this to the sum needed to purchase, and to 
 that aggregate usually put something on account of 
 monopoly. They stocked a corporation for the whole 
 amount, bought the companies out at the arranged prices, 
 sold them to the corporation for the sum of its capital, 
 taking their pay in either cash or new shares. They 
 made the difference between what they bought at and 
 what they sold at without putting anything into the new 
 company but manipulation and water. These promoters 
 seldom had any intention of identifying themselves with 
 the conduct of the business in its new form. As a rule, 
 their sole aim was to make a market for watered stock 
 and then part with it. The opportunities for such spec- 
 ulations were numerous in a rapidly growing country like 
 this, and were the principal, if not the only, cause of the 
 formation of trusts. 
 
 You would not be able to make any effective reply to 
 the consumer's argument. 
 
 The question was now reduced to this: what was the 
 best way to prevent the known evils of the trust and at 
 the same time conserve its advantages, without discour- 
 aging the consolidation of capital? 
 
 If the main inducement to unnecessary promotion 
 were eliminated it would not discourage beneficial combi- 
 nation of capital; in fact, it might encourage it byremov- 
 
292 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 ing the necessity of paying dividends on anything but 
 actual investment. Capital would then move naturally 
 into advantageous consolidations. The watering of 
 trust stocks made impossible, prices would fall as they 
 should under trust consolidation and management. The 
 consumer would be satisfied with his share of the result, 
 w*hile capital and labor would be as well off in their 
 prospects as before. 
 
 The best thing to do, Mr. Madden concluded, was to 
 apply the national bank method of supervision to all 
 trusts or other corporations formed to make or handle 
 articles of general necessity or interest, and have the 
 states adopt a similar method of overseeing those whose 
 business was local. 
 
 He then described the Federal supervision of the banks : 
 how it refused to permit organization until the Govern- 
 ment saw, counted and was satisfied with the capital put 
 up ; how it prevented the issuing of more shares than were 
 paid for in actual value; how it exercised constant watch 
 over the way the banks did business; how it protected the 
 stockholders, the customers, the depositors and the public 
 by frequent inspection of the books and compulsory 
 publicity of the actual condition of the business, ascer- 
 tained by responsible and reliable sworn examination; 
 how the whole Government action prevented speculative 
 promotion and all watering processes, without in any 
 wise interfering with perfect liberty of all honorable 
 action in the way of transacting sound business. It was 
 made plain that while the Government control of the 
 formation of national banks, and its frequent examina- 
 tion of their books, and its periodical enforcement of 
 publication of their actual condition, prevented speculat- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 293 
 
 ive promotion of banks, watering their stocks, and all 
 collusive attempts at controlling either the price of 
 money or its free use, the supervision did not restrict the 
 growth of any proper banking enterprise, but on the 
 contrary encouraged it, while reducing cost to the users 
 of money. 
 
 Mr. Bethea, and all the auditors agreed with him, 
 declared that Mr. Madden's proposed application of the 
 Federal banking methods to the business of corporations 
 handling things of general necessity and use, would not 
 only solve the trust problem, but would establish the 
 same concord between the large manufacturers and the 
 consumers as now existed between the users of money and 
 the banks that furnished it. In addition, it would vastly 
 increase American production in the same way the banks 
 had assisted in the immense increase and circulation of 
 money. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 PROPOSES AN EFFECTIVE METHOD OF ACCOMPLISHING ANNEXA- 
 TION OF CANADA. 
 
 SPEAKING on the Canadian question during the cam- 
 paign of 1900, Mr. Madden used the following inter- 
 esting argument: 
 
 "Every time I look across the St. Lawrence River 
 upon Canada, I am sorry to see that country remaining 
 foreign soil. It should be a part of this Union. The 
 manifest destiny of all North America is to be in the 
 United States. Canada should be in now, and would be 
 but for the tariff policy of the Democratic party, which 
 favors low duties or none at all. Give the Dominion 
 free trade with our country and she will never annex so 
 long as she has it. Give her low duties and she will 
 remain foreign. Put a high tariff against her and she 
 will have to join us for self-protection. Canada cannot 
 live alone without easy access to our market. The easiest 
 entry would be that of free trade. With it she would be 
 foolish to join us and would remain aloof. With a low 
 tariff against her, she could get in all she wanted to for 
 the purposes of trade, and would not come to stay and 
 be governed. But if the customs were made high along 
 our northern border, Canada would plead for the aboli- 
 tion of the boundary. 
 
 "What we Americans pay for the freedom of the 
 market in these states and territories is taxes, military 
 
 294 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 295 
 
 service and the cost of defending the country when it is 
 assailed. When the tariff is low Canada gets this market 
 for less than American citizens pay for it, because the 
 duties she pays are not as much as the taxes we pay, and 
 then we contribute besides military service, which she 
 escapes, as well as she does the other responsibilities that 
 fall on us. With free trade Canada would have our mar- 
 ket for nothing and would take out of the country a great 
 deal of money that left here would make it easier for us 
 to meet the price we always have to pay for that same 
 market. But make the tariff high, so high that it would 
 be cheaper for Canada to come in and pay the price we 
 do than pay the tariff for the market, and she would 
 come in in a hurry, for then it would be foolish to stay 
 out. 
 
 "The Democratic policy of low tariff is unpatriotic, 
 because it gives the foreigner the American market for 
 less than the American citizen has to pay for it. The 
 Republican policy of Protection, on the other hand, is 
 patriotic, because its aim is to compel the foreigner to 
 contribute towards the support of our Government a sum 
 as nearly as possible equivalent to that the citizen pays 
 for the use of this market. 
 
 44 So long as there is any probability that the Demo- 
 cratic party, especially as led by Bryan, who is a Free 
 Trader, may possess the management of American 
 affairs, just that long will Canada hold out. If there 
 could be established a certainty that the Republican 
 party would remain in Washington for an indefinitely 
 long time, an annexation movement would start among 
 the Canadians right away. 
 
 "The Democratic leaning towards free trade, that 
 
296 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 unpatriotic policy which pays Canada to remain British 
 territory, incommodes this nation in many ways. For 
 instance: it retards the construction of an inter-oceanic 
 canal by depriving England of an incentive towards 
 helping us in the project instead of placing obstacles in 
 our way. The railway across Canada along our northern 
 boundary is a subsidized road. It is an arm of the Brit- 
 ish military service. When first constructed its chief 
 value to Great Britain lay in the fact that it would enable 
 her to move an army to a part of Asia with greater 
 speed and at less expense than it could be done by any 
 other route. Why did Britain desire to be thus equipped? 
 To get at Russia to circumvent the Bear in his plans in 
 the Orient. Now, Russia is our friend, and once did us 
 the great service of preventing the dismemberment of 
 this Republic. She placed her fleet where it could do us 
 the most good at that critical juncture in our affairs. 
 The Bear did us another good turn. When we were 
 endeavoring to preserve the entire Pacific coast as Amer- 
 ican territory, in the days of the * 54-49, or fight' excite- 
 ment, he growled for us. He again helped us, and our 
 Monroe Doctrine ambition, by ceding Alaska for a bag- 
 atelle, as a sort of notice to the world that the Czar, who 
 was a nearer neighbor than any other European power, 
 thought America ought to be for the Americans. The 
 Czar must have often puzzled himself with the query: 
 'Why do my friends, the Yankees, permit my enemy to 
 come at me across American territory which they can 
 annex for nothing any time they choose by simply rais- 
 ing their tariff?' He must have thought, our Protector, 
 the Czar must, that our tariff policy was specially 
 arranged to be unfriendly to him, as well as unpatriotic 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 297 
 
 and foolish. When I think of this it puzzles me, as well 
 as it must Russia, that any Irishman should ever vote 
 with the Democratic party in this country so long as that 
 party favors free trade. 
 
 44 If Canada should join the Union, England would 
 coax us to build the Isthmian Canal. She would like to 
 have it built anyhow. It is a better way, shorter, quicker, 
 cheaper than any other from Europe to Eastern Asia. 
 Great Britain is not now concerned any more to get across 
 America to prevent the Bear from getting out of Russia. 
 He is out. While England has been fooling with the 
 Boers in South Africa, the Bear has got a highway to the 
 Pacific through China. It is all he wants. He owns it 
 and is immovably in possession. So, England would 
 like to see the canal built on general principles. But 
 she likes to bargain. So long as she has the Canadian 
 route she will continue to dicker. In her soul she would 
 cheerfully give Canada and all its belongings to have us 
 dig the canal. That would enable her to get from ocean 
 to ocean with less expense than the Dominion entails. 
 But she does not like to admit this, and does like to say, 
 Til help you in this canal business, for a consideration; 
 you see, I don't need the canal, I have the road across 
 Canada/ But if. we had Canada we'd have the canal, 
 and we'd 4 have' England. 
 
 44 The Democratic policy of free trade keeps Canada 
 out of the Union and retards the construction of the 
 canal. 
 
 4 'Chicago is going to be the greatest city in America. 
 It will have a waterway to Europe by the St. Lawrence 
 River. It cannot get this route in proper order for the 
 immense trade it is going to carry on direct with Europe 
 
298 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 without trans-shipment until the St. Lawrence is under 
 United States control. As that control is needed for 
 Chicago's purpose, Chicago will endeavor to procure it. 
 The easiest way will be to bring about annexation. As 
 that can be best accomplished through a sufficiently pro- 
 tective tariff, it stands to reason that Chicago will find a 
 way to make the Democratic unpatriotic policy of free 
 trade, which pays Canada to remain a foreign country, 
 so odious and so unpopular that Canada will find it to 
 her interest to come into the United States, where she 
 belongs, and get the American market by the best pos- 
 sible method, paying the same taxes for it that we pay. 
 "The Protective policy is so essentially American, it 
 is so beneficial in every way, and it is so patriotic, as 
 this application of it shows, that one would think the 
 opposite policy too hateful for any man living in this 
 country to espouse." 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 OPPOSES FREE CHINESE IMMIGRATION — SOME NEW AND CONVINC- 
 ING ARGUMENTS. 
 
 THE organization started in this country five years 
 ago by Wong Chin Foo, under the name of the 
 44 Chinese Equal Rights League," is, according to reports 
 from Washington, to be placed under the active super- 
 vision of the Chinese Embassy. Wong Chin Foo died in 
 Shanghai recently, while on a visit to his family, and 
 the League has since his death been rather inactive. 
 Wong had his American headquarters in Chicago, and 
 the proclaimed object of his organization was to secure 
 the right of suffrage, now denied, to Chinamen of 
 Oriental birth permanently residing in this country. 
 Under its new management the League will broaden its 
 scope and work with all its strength to create public 
 opinion in favor of doing away with the policy of exclu- 
 sion, which at present prevents Chinese labor from com- 
 ing into the United States. The Exclusion Act expires 
 within the next year, and the League hopes to be 
 able to prevent a renewal of the law. This Chinese 
 society is rich and powerful, having its membership skill- 
 fully spread all over the country and into Hawaii and 
 the Philippines. Under the direction of the astute Wu 
 Ting Fang it would prove to be a most potent factor in 
 educating the American mind towards the Chinaman's 
 side of the question. One of the arguments already put 
 
 299 
 
300 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 out by the League is that a continuance of the policy of 
 exclusion will result in such prejudice in China as to 
 imperil our chances of obtaining a fair share of the com- 
 ing vast trade of that empire. 
 
 The Manufacturers' Association of Illinois represents 
 firms employing 300,000 mechanics and laborers within 
 the state. Its Board of Directors has headquarters in 
 Chicago, and is about as alert a body as there is to-day 
 in this country in the task of studying international 
 trade conditions. The men composing this directory 
 have thoroughly perceived the reasons underlying the 
 colossal railroad combinations seeking Pacific outlets for 
 American productions; they understand the possibilities 
 of Oriental trade in their bearing on the future of Chi- 
 cago and Illinois, and are as well informed and as well 
 qualified to speak with knowledge and authority upon 
 the commercial phase of the Chinese question as any 
 business men in the United States. 
 
 For the purpose of ascertaining the opinion of Illi- 
 nois manufacturers respecting the new aspect which the 
 Chinese question is assuming in the country, a reporter 
 was sent to interview Mr. Madden, who, besides being 
 President of the Manufacturers' Association, is Presi- 
 dent and General Manager of the Western Stone Com- 
 pany, which employs 2,000 men. Being asked if he 
 favored the extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Mr. 
 Madden replied: 
 
 "The act, as I understand it, prohibits the admission 
 to the United States of Chinese laborers, but permits the 
 entry of merchants, students, travelers, and other per- 
 sons who come from China to this country for purposes 
 other than that of making a living by manual work. It 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 301 
 
 is about to expire, and the query is as to its renewal. 
 China has not asked our Government to take action in 
 the matter, and the question is not at issue yet." 
 
 But public opinion is being formed respecting the 
 question, and it is desired to know your position upon it. 
 Are you in favor of continuing the exclusion of Chinese 
 labor from the United States? 
 
 44 As the matter now stands, I am in favor of continu- 
 ing the exclusion. China does not freely admit foreign- 
 ers to her territory. For the purposes of trade, Chris- 
 tians are permitted free access to certain prescribed 
 zones in a number of what are called treaty ports. In 
 these zones Christians are freely allowed to go and come. 
 But no Christian, unless he be a missionary, may go, 
 without special permission and arrangement, anywhere 
 else in the empire — not even ambassadors. Only mis- 
 sionaries may go outside the treaty port zones. The 
 missionaries have this privilege through a special clause 
 in the Treaty of Pekin, signed after the suppression of 
 the Taiping Rebellion. The rebellion was put down by 
 Christian aid, and the Chinese have always maintained 
 that the clause permitting missionaries free access to the 
 empire was got into the treaty by unfair means. On 
 this account the Celestials have always looked upon our 
 missionaries as intruders in fact, and have resented their 
 presence by all the kinds of persecution the natives have 
 dared to use. Curzon, in 'Problems of the Far East/ 
 gives the history of the alleged secret tampering with the 
 treaty which makes a privileged class of the missionaries. 
 As China does not permit the unrestricted immigration 
 of Americans into China, why should we allow China- 
 men to freely come into the United States? It would 
 
302 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 not be even good foolishness to throw our doors open to 
 them as long as they bar their doors to us. " 
 
 But it is believed that China is about to modernize 
 and open her empire to the world. If she does and per- 
 mits free access to our people, would you be in favor of 
 giving her people the right of unrestricted immigration 
 into this country? 
 
 44 No, I would not even then, and for this reason: 
 Good authorities, like Miss Leiter's husband, the present 
 Viceroy of India, put the present population of China at 
 600,000,000. When I was a boy the geographies said 
 China had 400,000,000 people. We have 76,000,000 
 people in the United States. According to Curzon, then, 
 China has about eight times as many people as the 
 United States have, and even the school books of thirty 
 years ago gave her more than five times as many as we 
 now have. Why should the United States permit 
 600,000,000 Chinamen to have free access to this coun- 
 try for the privilege of entry to China for only 
 76,000,000 Americans? Why give eight for one — eight 
 entries for one entry? The question of immigration 
 from China is entirely different from any other immigra- 
 tion question. The labor of the United States must now 
 withstand the competition of all the labor that comes here 
 from every one of the countries in the world between 
 which and the United States there is at present free 
 immigration. The task is hard enough. To make it still 
 harder by subjecting American labor to a possible ava- 
 lanche of competition from China — an avalanche that 
 unscrupulous American contractors at any time might 
 precipitate — would be a blundering crime. The very 
 foolishness of proposing to allow Chinese labor free 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 303 
 
 admission to the United States to compete with strug- 
 gling labor here while China will not allow even an Ameri- 
 can Ambassador free admission into that empire, is a thing 
 that must appeal to the Celestial as evidence of the infe- 
 riority of the Western mind in business matters. 1 " 
 
 Will not the Chinese government resent continued 
 exclusion, and will not this resentment hurt American 
 trade in China? 
 
 "Not at all. The Chinese government has never 
 entertained any feeling of resentment towards this 
 country because of our exclusion of Chinese labor. If 
 we had put up the bars against all classes of Chinese 
 people, Pekin would not have demurred. China herself 
 set the example of exclusion, and, still believing it good, 
 cannot object to other nations following it. China has 
 been irritated at our attempts to keep out the classes we 
 agreed to let in. Our immigration agents, in their zeal 
 to protect American labor against Chinese immigration, 
 have often detained students, travelers and merchants 
 from China, who have had the right under the law to 
 come in. This has been done generally because of sus- 
 picion that the prisoners were really laborers attempting 
 under disguise to evade the law. Naturally, the Pekin 
 government would be irritated at attempts to keep out 
 of the United States any Chinaman we had agreed to let 
 in, even though willing, in the first place, to have all 
 its subjects barred out as it bars all foreigners out. 
 China's irritation has never been because of our exclu- 
 sion policy itself, but solely because of breach of contract 
 in the method of carrying out the exclusion act to which 
 she consented. 
 
 44 In my opinion China never cared a cash whether we 
 
304 MARTJN B. MADDEN 
 
 let her people in or not, and I don't think she cares now. 
 If ever China opens her empire to free immigration, 
 then she may-bring the question up. She cannot well do 
 it before that time. When the question comes up, if it 
 ever arises, China will only ask that a limited number of 
 her people be allowed to enter those countries from 
 which she will permit unrestricted immigration. The 
 size of her population will preclude her from making any 
 other demand, and her interest will be to keep her labor- 
 ers at home and to obtain immigration rights for her 
 mercantile classes. I say this because I believe that China 
 is soon to become the greatest food buyer in the world, and, 
 so far as the number of employed goes, the greatest man- 
 ufacturing country. Her condition now is like what Eng- 
 land's was when England found her population exceed- 
 ing the ability of her land to feed. She abandoned agri- 
 culture as a pursuit and went into manufacture. Since 
 doing that England has become the richest and the most 
 powerful nation in the Old World. China's population is 
 now greater than her exhausted land can feed. Her 
 only hope lies in following the example of England. 
 Her statesmen know this, and they have brought the 
 present Emperor to fully realize it. The events of the 
 recent war have rendered Kwang-Su independent of the 
 Dowager Empress. He will be firm on the throne on his 
 return to Pekin. He will quickly modernize China after 
 the example of his friend, the Mikado of Japan. Then 
 China will become a manufacturing nation and buy its 
 food. The Chinaman will never buy anything he can 
 make for himself. He will compete against the whole 
 present civilized world in manufactures, having all the 
 necessary raw material in great abundance. But he can- 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 305 
 
 not raise his food. He will have to buy that. Chinese 
 statesmen calculate that in following" the example of 
 England China will become as much more powerful and 
 as much richer than England as she outnumbers England 
 in population. That is a reasonable calculation. To us 
 it means that China will buy from us many times as 
 much food as England does. Good economists figure that 
 the trade in food to China alone will in the near future 
 equal in value our entire present foreign trade to 
 Europe. That means that every acre of land between 
 Chicago and the Pacific coast capable of yielding a cereal 
 will be coaxed into cultivation; that capital will find one 
 of its most profitable employments in furnishing irriga- 
 tion to the West; that the densest and most prosperous 
 population in the United States will be the agricultural 
 population west of the Alleghanies, and that Chicago, 
 the manufacturing and financial metropolis of this region, 
 will be the largest and the richest city in this country. 
 
 Then you don't believe, Mr. Madden, that our exclu- 
 sion policy will injure our chances in Chinese trade? 
 
 4 'In my opinion our exclusion policy will cut no figure 
 at all in our efforts to obtain trade in China. China 
 never cared, and does not now care, whether we let her 
 laborers come here or keep them out. Nor do the Chi- 
 nese people themselves care. China never lifted a finger 
 to encourage Chinese emigration to the United States. 
 Practically no Chinese have ever sought to leave China 
 to settle elsewhere. Practically no Chinamen have ever 
 come here to live from any of the eighteen provinces of 
 the empire except the coolies of Canton. Most of these 
 were coaxed over by the builders of the Pacific railroads 
 because of the scarcity of laborers in the Far West, and 
 
 20 
 
306 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 were left to shift for themselves when the roads were 
 finished. Most of these coolies have always desired to 
 get back home. Such of them as have been able to go 
 have gone. The present census shows that there are 
 17,000 less Chinamen here now than there were ten years 
 ago, when we had a few more than 100,000 in the coun- 
 try. The facts show that the Cantonese Chinamen are 
 leaving the country gradually, and that there has been 
 no desire on the part of Chinamen in any of the other 
 seventeen provinces of China to come here at all. Our 
 laws permit merchants ' and students from China to 
 enter this country. The total number of these at home 
 must be about 80,000,000. They have now the right to 
 swamp this country. But they do not do it, because of 
 the strong hereditary disposition of the Chinaman to 
 remain at home and of the filial arrangements which 
 make it almost impossible for him to expatriate himself. 
 There is a treaty between Mexico and China permitting 
 unrestricted immigration between the two countries. 
 Diaz made it to encourage Chinese labor to come to the 
 Republic, so that capital might be induced to go into the 
 country and develop it, as he believed it would do if it 
 could get good laborers, as the Chinese are, the peons 
 being of little value. So few Chinamen from China have 
 responded that Mr. George Pippey, of San Francisco, to 
 save some properties bought under the stimulus of Diaz's 
 treaty, has recently been scouring the Pacific coast to get 
 5,000 celestials to go to Mexico under very high wages to 
 dig from the earth the precious metals the native Mex- 
 ican is too indolent or inefficient to extract. It is diffi- 
 cult to produce an exodus from China, and the facts 
 show there is no present danger of one. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 307 
 
 "From all this it would appear that there is nothing 
 at all in the talk about the problem of Chinese immigra- 
 tion. There is no such problem. The Chinese don't 
 care enough about coming here to afford material for a 
 problem. Hence, there is no prejudice to encounter in 
 our efforts to secure trade in China. The Chinaman 
 will buy our food because he wants it and we have it to 
 sell. That is the reason the Englishman buys it. He 
 buys it in spite of our tariffs against everything he has 
 to sell us, in spite of two wars against him and a num- 
 ber of jolting bluffs, and does it without even the retalia- 
 tion of duties. There is no sentiment in trade, despite 
 all that free traders assert. If there were, sentiment 
 would all be on our side in China. The Chinese have 
 seen us present with an army in their country and they 
 all like us because they have seen for themselves that 
 the Americans are the fairest, the justest and the most 
 Confucian people in all the Christian world." 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 STUDY OF A PERFECT PUBLIC SERVANT — ESSENTIAL QUALITIES HE 
 MUST POSSESS. 
 
 THE boy got to the head of every class he entered, 
 either in study or at work. The youth did the 
 same. So did the man. The lad began as a water car- 
 rier and rose to be time-keeper. The youth started ,as 
 draughtsman and was superintendent before he attained 
 his majority. The man commenced as overseer and 
 went steadily to the Presidency. In every company he 
 served his progress was the same : he got to the top. He 
 did* it in the first, the Enterprise; in the second, the 
 Consolidated; in the third, the Joliet and Crescent, 
 and in the last, the Western Stone. 
 
 In political life he joined his party organization as 
 district member and became Chairman of the City Cen- 
 tral Committee. 
 
 Entering the city legislature so "green" that his party 
 in that body did not know what use to make of him, in 
 three years he was leader in the Council and the best 
 presiding officer it ever had. Commencing as city serv- 
 ant with his first sight of a law-making body in session, 
 in four years he was the town's Finance Minister, its 
 principal law-maker and the greatest constructive genius 
 in the work of city building the municipality ever had. 
 
 Going into state politics as a district delegate to a 
 National Convention, he began with one vote, his own, 
 
 308 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 309 
 
 the work of committing a Presidential nominee to the 
 declaration of a principle essential to success, and con- 
 cluded the task with his state's whole delegation demand- 
 ing the declaration and able to enforce it. Chosen by 
 his state's representatives at the Philadelphia Conven- 
 tion to see that the party in power assembled there prop- 
 erly voiced in its promised policy the wishes of Illinois 
 and the West in having the cause of Labor recognized, in 
 having agriculture relieved from Eastern financial dom- 
 inance by the establishment of small national banks with 
 local circulation, and in having the inter-oceanic canal 
 free to take the best route, he succeeded in having the 
 platform remodeled to conform to the whole purpose of 
 his mission. 
 
 V T hat enabled the boy, the youth, the man, the public 
 servant, to accomplish these things — to succeed in every 
 essay? There can be no doubt that the overthrow of 
 the all-night ordinance, the defeat of the retention of 
 illegal police, the forcing of the salvation of the Lake 
 Front, the passage of the Civil Service Reform Law, and 
 the adoption of the word Isthmian at Philadelphia, were 
 all the work of one man, Madden, alone and against odds 
 that would have dismayed any other. Nor can there be 
 any doubt that a very large part of the work that has 
 made Chicago what it is among cities; that has given 
 Illinois the place of decisive power it holds in the Repub- 
 lican organization; and that has endeared the party in 
 power to the people of the West, was also performed by 
 him. 
 
 What is the secret of such a man's power? Is it 
 brains? Many brainy men have no influence among their 
 fellow-men. Is it success? Some of the most successful 
 
310 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 people in the world are hated. Perhaps it lies in his 
 genius for management? Several of the best business 
 managers in the Union are always under bond. No: it 
 is morality. The man is moral. Every person engaged 
 in business in and about Chicago knows that Martin B. 
 Madden is a moral man. His morality is not labeled. It 
 is not professed. It is never thrust on any one. It does 
 not preach, nor assert, nor lecture, nor obtrude. It never 
 says * 4 1. " It has no personal pronoun. It simply exists. 
 But its existence is so palpable, so certain, so definite, 
 so unswervable, that people know the man can neither 
 be induced to do wrong nor dissuaded by any influence 
 from doing right. And then he has the perception, the 
 insight, the knowledge, the wisdom to see the right at 
 once. He does not have to have it pointed out to him, 
 nor to be led up to it, nor to go through any sort of 
 mental exercise or clarification to see it. When he looks 
 at all at any subject the thing he first sees is the right 
 in it. And that is the main thing. 
 
 The oldest thought in civilization is that the real prog- 
 ress of man is moral. It is held that there is latent in 
 the race a sixth sense, the full possession of which will 
 enable man to think and see and do wonderfully com- 
 pared to what he now can. Human .progress is inevitably 
 towards this superiority. It is away from grossness and 
 towards decarnalization. Every once in a while a good 
 man so purifies himself as to unclog his mind entirely. 
 His mental sight being clear, he says and sees better 
 than his fellows. In all ages it has been such men who 
 have led. Their number is steadily increasing and the 
 race goes faster towards morality. It is chat far now 
 that gross men, with unclean minds, are not sufficiently 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 311 
 
 moral to have influence like such men had in coarser 
 times. In both public and commercial life the demand 
 for virtue would now bar from success many men who 
 not long ago satisfied the public eye. It is beginning to 
 be realized that a really good man is more apt to be 
 sufficiently able than that a merely able man is likely to 
 be sufficiently good. The public has more confidence in 
 virtue than in ability. Mere ability is often dangerous: 
 virtue never is. In any crisis the American people, the 
 most advanced in the world, will be sure to show that 
 what they love most in the President and Vice-President 
 of the United States now in office is not their ability, 
 however that may develop, but the morality so marked 
 in both men. That will be found to be the quality in 
 which reposes the confidence of the greatest people in 
 the world. The able man may be right part of the time : 
 may be correct most of the time. The good man is sure 
 to be right all the time. He cannot be anything else, 
 while the other man can be, and is all the time liable to 
 be. 
 
 A line of any given length encloses the greatest area 
 possible for it to surround when it is perfectly circular. 
 If a man's mental line be equally distant at all points 
 from his moral center it will enclose for him the great- 
 est ability he is capable of. If the line be a large one 
 he will be a great man. He will have the greatest 
 possible average of qualities. If a man with equal length 
 of line have his mental circumference drawn out at the 
 end of any particular radius, it will be at the expense of 
 some other radii, which will be that much shorter. Such 
 a man v/ill be conspicuous on his long line and deficient 
 on several other lines. The greater the special develop- 
 
312 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 merit on any line the shorter will be his average on the 
 other lines. His conspicuousness may be at the expense 
 of all his other lines; it must be at that of several of 
 them. The conspicuous man is apt to attract notice in 
 ordinary times by his special talent, or development, 
 which will engage attention and distract observation 
 from his shortcomings. The round man will not attract 
 so much attention in ordinary times, because he will 
 average like many and not project. In a great emer- 
 gency the conspicuous man will fail, because his shortage 
 will prevent him from averaging sufficiently. In such 
 an emergency the round man will do better, because 
 what he will say or do will be what the majority desire 
 said or done. The round man is the great man: the 
 conspicuous man is the defective man. In ordinary life 
 neither Washington, Lincoln, nor Grant attracted con- 
 spicuous attention; they were round men, and did not 
 protrude at any special mental point. In the great 
 emergencies they were called upon to fill each completely 
 met expectations because his roundness enabled him to 
 do and say upon all occasions what the majority wanted 
 done and said. It can be seen now what a calamity it 
 would have been if a conspicuous man had been called 
 upon to take the place either of these round men so com- 
 pletely filled. 
 
 The average man is round. The majority are round. 
 The demand in commercial and public life is for round 
 men, for men who will fill the places assigned to them 
 and leave no gaps or shortages. The greatest of all 
 shortages is that on moral lines. Men defective there 
 are at this day of moral progress the greatest of misfits 
 in public or business life. 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 313 
 
 The wheel that is perfectly round, with all its spokes 
 of equal length, does its work best. It attracts the least 
 attention in ordinary circumstances, but lasts the longest 
 and goes the farthest. The 'wheel whose spokes are of 
 uneven length and whose tire is projected at any point, 
 will attract much attention and make more noise, but it 
 will not go as far, as fast, or as long. 
 
 Martin B. Madden is a round man with a large mental 
 circumference. How did he qualify himself to make his 
 morality so effective? 
 
 From his mother he acquired his decided taste for 
 sound literature and his aptitude for choice expression. 
 It was his mother also who gave direction to the course 
 of studies he has pursued all his life. Her father had 
 illustrated in his own person the value of special educa- 
 tion in any line of thought. The son early realized that 
 the quickest way to obtain complete and reliable informa- 
 tion on any subject was to get it from recognized author- 
 ities who spent all their time in gathering it. He formed 
 the habit of keeping himself constantly educated by hir- 
 ing special instructors to investigate subjects he desired 
 to be versed in and give him the results in readings, 
 writings, lectures and answers to interrogatories. He 
 has kept this up, and it accounts for his surprising mas- 
 tery of a vast range of knowledge. As he became 
 absorbed in business affairs and had his time occupied by 
 them, his liberality increased in the payments he would 
 make for special information to those competent to 
 furnish it. In this way he has always been a student. 
 His system exemplifies the truth that tutored men often 
 possess more valuable education than regular graduates, 
 because they are taught skillfully and thoroughly what 
 
314 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 they find they need to know and are interested in learn- 
 ing. Usually, the tutored seek valuable and useful 
 knowledge only, rejecting all that is valueless and use- 
 less, which forms so large a part of the education im- 
 parted to those who must take what is offered to them in 
 a regular course, prescribed on general lines. 
 
 Mrs. Madden was extremely practical. From her the 
 son undoubtedly inherited the sturdiness of his character ; 
 the disposition to depend upon himself; to ask no favors; 
 to expect nothing except what his own exertions could 
 bring; to live within his means; to save money; to 
 always have funds on hand for emergencies; to live mod- 
 erately and with regularity; to care for his health; to 
 earn his pay; to make his services profitable to those who 
 employed him; to do everything in his power to accom- 
 plish any task he was entrusted with, and " while working 
 for others, never to sell goods on his own account, or for 
 any other house than the one of his employer." It was 
 these principles, and especially the latter, that made him 
 so valuable and efficient in the many representative posi- 
 tions he has been deputed to fill in his busy career. 
 
 It is almost impossible to get into public life men who 
 will under all circumstances act solely in a representative 
 way for their constituents and refrain from using office 
 for other purposes than those they are elected to fill it 
 for. Martin Barnaby Madden never represented Mad- 
 den, or Madden's views, or Madden's friends, in any of 
 the public offices he has filled; he represented those only 
 who sent him to act for them. 
 
 In speech he has always been singularly happy. All 
 his life he has been accustomed to working for men his 
 superiors in age and means. This has given to him the 
 
PUBLIC SERVANT 315 
 
 habit of making statements without waste and straight 
 to the point. It has accustomed him to lucidity in style 
 — to clear and terse diction. In the ability to make 
 cogent statements on any question it is doubtful if he has 
 a superior living. The business men of many of the 
 principal boards of directors in Chicago believe he sur- 
 passes in the stating faculty any man ever heard in the 
 city. 
 
 The method of doing business in the United States 
 has evolved a class of men who are no doubt the cleverest 
 adepts in real oratory in the world. If results prove the 
 value of talk, then the men who have survived in the 
 competition of obtaining cash orders for every argument 
 they make, must be the greatest masters of telling 
 speech. We would say to students of oratory, if you 
 wish to study the best models of effective talk, if you 
 desire to learn how to speak for actual results, study the 
 style of the men who must make each argument produce 
 money, and who succeed in doing it every time they 
 try — study the oratory of the American Drummer. His 
 style is the best of all styles for effective speech. Think 
 of a man who can sell enough stone to pay large divi- 
 dends on $2,500,000 of capital every year. For more than 
 thirty years he has been able to sell every year more 
 stone than any other man in the country. When there 
 are added to such a talent for speech a long experience in 
 making important and responsible addresses before pow- 
 erful boards of directors; a complete training in the 
 method of discussion which calls for convincing statement 
 without the appearance of argument, and requires the 
 realizing character of inviting and persuasive language 
 without waste; and a character for probity beyond ques- 
 
316 MARTIN B. MADDEN 
 
 tion, as well as a sound developed morality, there result 
 all the elements needed to make the truly great orator. 
 
 At the worst, there are latent in every man the feel- 
 ings of justice and of right. These have probably never 
 been entirely vitiated or crushed out in any human 
 being. They remain in some form even after all other 
 correct feelings have been eliminated. They may be so 
 weak, so ver3 r dormant, as to be nearly impossible to 
 reach. But they can be reached. The true orator can 
 get at them, revive them, stir them up again to life and 
 make factors of them. 
 
 Surely, something like this was done by Madden in at 
 least one case in the Board of Aldermen during his career 
 in that body. And there can hardly be a doubt that he 
 again performed the real orator's work when he went to 
 Springfield in the latter part of March, 1895, and obtained 
 the votes needed to secure the passage of the Civil Ser- 
 vice Reform Bill. The right thing said by the wrong 
 man any time seldom carries much weight. The right 
 thing said by the right man always does. The right 
 thing said by the right man at the right time never fails 
 to decide. The right man is rare. The right man able 
 to say the right thing is rarer; the right man possessing 
 the ability to say the right thing at the right time is the 
 rarest man among human kind. He is the real orator. 
 
 And such is Martin Barnaby Madden, Public Servant. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
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