344 THE INWARDNESS OF THE GALVESTON PLAN. election of aldermen by wards and place all power, executive, legislative and judicial in the keeping of a commission elected at large is intolerable among freemen. Even under our present order, mayor and council representing citizens, individuals being discharged from the quickening and educating duties of the townmeeting is, says Hosmer, "almost a complete abnegation of practical democracy." He further adds: "In the past of our race as the towns have grown into cities, exchanging the borough-moot for the board meetings of the mayor and aldermen, the people have become indifferent to freedom." Will this indifference end in our abrogating even the very form of republican government and then going backwards to the barbarism of the Chinese and Russian polity? That danger stares us in the face. And who are responsible for this? I denounce the responsible parties to this wrong as enemies of the freedom provided for us by the constitution of the American Union and procured and kept alive by the blood of our liberty-loving fathers and brothers shed on the many battle fields from Lexington to Appomattox. The danger is momentous. Shall we, by our indifference to liberty touch a match to the grand edifice and start a conflagration that shall consume the temple of American liberty, as Alexander the Great, burned the palace of the King of Persia which, after all, was his own-the match lighted at Galveston by ex-confederates-men who would dance with glee to reach the gratification of their revenge against the north-the accomplishment of a worse end for us than would have been the destruction of the Union? Shall Des Moines be buncoed into doing this-Des Moines that did so grand a part in defense of the Union-Des Moines the home of Crocker, Weeks, Doty and the more than ninety others of her sons who gave up their lives— died that we might possess the freedom we now enjoy. God Forbid! Let this great evil not descend upon us in my day with my consent! Nor will you, reader in your right mind, give your consent at the ballot box for this evil to come upon us in your time. YE 261ST LESSON. The Inwardness of the Galveston Plan. The desgination, "Common people," is not American in origin, but British. We have had hitherto but one class-the "People." Every reform has started with the people. Now we have two classes in the cities-laborers and employers-those who live by wages and those who live by incomes. And so we may say that wage earners are wholly urban. The number of men and women hired to work on farms in this day is hardly recognizable, excepting on western ranches owned by capitalists. Farm hands in Iowa board with the family of the employer and have monthly pay. But the city is the home of the hired laborers. They board themselves and are pariahs in so far as the employer is concerned about them. He has no interest in them but to exact from them the fruits of their labor. "His first care," says a distinguished German author, Max Nordau, "is to pay his employees as little as possible; and he bends all his energies to making a hundred or even more per cent, on the capital employed. The worker is worse off than the slave of ancient times, oppressed the same, dependent in the same way upon master and overseer, he yet gets nothing in return for the loss of his freedom, not even the food and shelter given to a domestic animal." The condition of labor even in Des Moines is unbearably bad as a rule right now. One extensive firm (for example of the most,) employing hundreds of women and girls, requires them to do piecework. At times they are furnished work so that they make fair wages. At other times the women and * * * THE MENACE TO LIBERTY OF THE "300" CLUB. 345 girls sit at their machines and earn no more than twenty-five, thirty or forty cents a day and this for weeks at a time; and, in many instances, women workers are widows with dependent children and an aged parent to support. And a great majority of the heads of families of the city of Des Moines are of this dependent class with the black cloud of starvation and eviction hanging over their heads. It is in the cities that the capitalistic class has begun an audacious effort to place the "Common People" (the designation is patent now in cities of America as in all Europe) still deeper and deeper in the mire of dependence and poverty. It has been the situation hitherto that men employed to work directly for the cities have a short hour day and fair wages; but this condition is to be put in jeopardy, at least, and in one commissioned-governed city (Houston, Texas) it has been destroyed. The very first act of the commission there was to increase the hours of labor from eight per day to ten and reduce the wages of the toilers from $2.00 per day to $1.75. This "Commission" form of city government, unrepublican, undemocratic, it is purposed and planned and by means of falsehood and chicane and through organized clubs of capitalists controlling the daily press, to be brought in to supersede the old republican or democratic order-the "Commissioners" exercising the power of a czar, though tools or rather lickspits of a "300" club. Under the Galveston plan the right of the people to elect by ballot the most important officials of the city, that is to say, treasurer, clerk, assessor, police judge, city attorney, park commissioners, etc., etc., is taken away from the people and those officers are appointed by the autocrats, the appointments dictated by the "300" clubthe autocrats (Commission) removing them from office at will and paying them while in office what they see fit and lowering or increasing their salaries ad libitum, so that no appointive official can have any self-respect that takes office under them, being reduced to the dependence of dogs or swine. This, too, extends to all whom the city may employ in any line of work whether done by graduates of colleges keeping books or working as civil engineers, or by grimy toilers digging in sewers. It is a movement to degrade, humiliate and make more dependent laborers of all classes and destroy trades unionism. The Galveston plan of tyranny has been hatched out in the brains of aristocrats with the positive purpose in view to disfranchise and reduce to the lowest degree of enslavement the majority of the people, destroying all selfrespect in their minds, submitting as they must to the dependent condition of domestic brutes. This movement, if successful, will end in the overthrow of popular government and of free institutions everywhere. Exchanging the ancient "borough-moot" (ward) for centralized tyranny, we Russianize, as to cities, America and these coming to dominate the nation, there will be only absolute tyranny and hopeless wage slavery left as an inheritance to our posterity, the blood of our fathers in three wars for freedom and the equality of men, having been shed in vain. I, for one, shall never consent to it. Rather would I willingly give my life to prevent it. YE 262D LESSON. The Menace to Liberty of the "300" Club. "A few of the leading citizens of Galveston organized what is known as 'The City Club,' the same kind of an organization also being perfected in Houston. The City Club made it their business to secure able men to run for mayor and commissioners."—From the report of the Topeka committee. 346 THE MENACE TO LIBERTY OF THE "300" CLUB. Hardly Did the Galveston and Houston City Clubs disband after having completed the task for which they came into existence, which was "to secure able men to run for mayor and commissioners?" SO. An agent sent by the Trades Assembly of Des Moines to Galveston and Houston to procure direct information in regard to the workings of the commission plan of government reports to his comrades here that the City Clubs still live and move and have a being, and are doing a very consequential work. Not satisfied with having selected mayor and commissioners, they have selected and still do select all the appointive officers of those cities. And, in addition, they and their attorneys take the initiative in deciding what ordinances shall pass and they engross and present them for passage by the commissioners, who meet and vote "aye" as the club of "leading citizens" would have them do for the measures and appointees presented by the City Club for endorsement. He gives examples of how the commission "does things:" (1) One member of the Houston commission is by trade a blacksmith and an ex-member of the Trades-Union. It was he who made the motion that led to the lengthening of the hours of labor from eight to ten daily, of the workers for the city, and the lessening of their pay from two dollars per day to one dollar and seventy-five cents. When asked by his former brothers of the Union why he did so, he said, "I had to or lose my place and salary as a member of the commission." (2) Another member of the commission said that he had in mind, when the commission first met, to recommend for appointment to an office an honest man he knew, when lo! a slate was handed in filled by the "City Club" with the names of the club's nominees. These the commission elected. (3) The clerk at each meeting reads a chapter of ordinances prepared by the City Club to be passed by the commission, and a list of names of appointees selected by the Club; and without a word uttered, except the "motion to adopt," the usual formality is gone through of voting "aye" by the commissioners. So do these "able men" perform their high functions, earning their large salaries. The power behind the throne in both Galveston and Houston is the Southern Pacific railroad. Is this, too, the "Des Moines plan?" Let us see: Following the examples of Galveston and Houston, "leading citizens of Des Moines" organized the "300" club. Now, who are "leading citizens of Des Moines" included in the club's membership and hence pre-eminently fitted to lead? May we count among them the stalwart men seen lifting, with greater strength than was Samson's, the mighty steel girders at the corner of Sixth avenue and Walnut street? And among "leading citizens of Des Moines" numbered in the ranks of the "300" club may we name directors of moving engines and railroad men generally, and, too, the sons of Vulcan that forge the steel rails and their brothers that place them on the tracks, or bricklayers and carpenters, makers of pavements and diggers of sewers, blacksmiths and workers in mines, stone-masons and bridge builders, etc., etc.,-all strong men physically and mentally, graduates of America's common schools, patriots whose nod is, like Jupiter's, "the flat of a god?"are these counted among the "300" club classed as "leading citizens of Des Moines," for whom plates are set at 50 cents apiece? Oh no, no, no. The "leading citizens" of Des Moines, members of the "300" club. are owners and stockholders of trolley lines, waterworks, gas and electric light plants, etc.,--special-privileged gentlemen and their highly salaried attorneys and others, "men of the cloth," their dependents. Let the "Des Moines plan" be installed, and the "300" club of "leading citizens" will do as the Galveston and Houston clubs have done-live on and on, and, like their prototypes of the ex-confederate BUREAUCRACY EXPOSED. 347 state of Texas, they will nominate all the appointive officers of our city and formulate every ordinance (their attorneys behind the curtain to prompt) and govern Des Moines as absolutely as do the City Clubs of "leading citizens" govern Galveston and Houston in the ex-rebel state of Texas, the commission of five "able men" voting "aye" on whatever the "300" club orders and drawing promptly their yearly salaries of $3,000 and $3,500. He that boasts that he can prove this contention false is challenged and dared to come forward, roll up his sleeves and begin. It cannot be done. But it is as true as that "there is a God that rules over the destinies of men and nations,", as the venerable Franklin declared. Remove from her people the control of this fair city, the metropolis and capital of Iowa, which the "Galveston plan," if adopted, will do; then will the governing power of the city be centered in the hands of the privileged corporations of Des Moines and of the state and nation, represented by the "300" club, a plutocratic governing body, a House of Lords, that will live on and on and on, the commission of five "able men" being only a figurehead, which, manifestly, is the design. Will the voters of Des Moines, uttering the demoniacal cry, "We can't make it worse," leap from the frying-pan into the fire—yea, plunge like Lucifer, son of the morning, from the high tower of Heaven into the seething abyss of Hell? YE 263D LESSON. Bureaucracy Exposed. The insuperable objection to the Galveston plan of city government is that it is a tyranny. Those pushing it on and falsely interpreting the popular will, admit that it is not republican, that it is bureaucratic. In the hands of five men is lodged the law-making power, and in the same hands the executive power. Three of the men (too few) make the laws; the five (too many) execute the laws. A fiveheaded executive-a hydra-and a three-headed house and senate, and no tribune to say "veto-I forbid." That is the "Des Moines plan." Such a plan is blood-poison to freedom-to government of the people, by the people, for the people. There is no valid excuse for its introduction. It cannot be justified. But we are to have the "recall," "initiative," "referendum" and "imperative mandate." I say it is a lie. We cannot gather grapes from thorns. Tie the stinking carcass of a dead man on the back of a living man, and compel him to bear it about with him! What will result? No good to the living person surely. The men behind this movement have great audacity, and not statesmanship. If America were conquered by Russia then might we expect such a system of city administration to follow. But we are yet free. True the press is not free. True the people have no forum-no place of meeting in Des Moines without passing the hat to raise a large sum to pay for a hall. And this oligarchic plan of tyranny may be forced to a vote with no more than ten days' notice to the voters-the daily press howling like wolves for the change. Now this howl has been kept up for a year-the purpose has been to create public opinion in favor of the so-called "Galveston plan," which was set down upon by the legislature the winter of 1904-5. There has been no end of false statements about our present city administration. We have a more economical government and a better governed city than any under the "commission" plan. What is wanted? Of course there may be some defects in our present charter. We need two aldermen for 348 AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF DES MOINES. each ward and as many elected at large as there are wards-these to pass ordinances and enforce the referendum, recall, etc., proposed. The appointive power of officials should not be permitted to mayor or committee or the city council. A board of public works of five members, as proposed in the "Des Moines plan" should be elected at large by the people and all other city officers-treasurer, clerk, police judge, policemen, firemen, etc., should be elected by the people. All employees of the city should work under civil service rules and none be dismissed without cause, and if dismissed have the right of appeal to a competent tribunal. But the "Des Moines plan" presumes all working men to be dogs to be sicked on to their work at the will of men endowed with kingly power-arbitrary autocrats-given what compensation the tyrants see fit-increased or lessened at their whim and kicked out at the will of the kings-an accursed tyranny. Let every one that works for the city be paid union wages and work an eight hour day. Let respect be shown the workers. We must not take a backward step against our democratic order. It will be fatal to American freedom. But the Russian order proposed by the corporation and franchise retained lawyers and franchise stock-owners-"business men" of Des Moines, presumes every man that holds a city office or does any work for the city to be a scoundrel, except the five who "can do no wrong." "O, you see, if they do not walk straight we will turn them out by the recall the disciples of the Russian Czar say. Turn them out! Who will do this? The people of England turned Charles I. out and the people of France Louis XVI. But they had to chop their heads off to get rid of them. We will about as easily get rid of the triumvirate when once placed on the throne of power. A freedom-loving people will tolerate no other than a republican form of government for cities as for the nation and states. They will not give to three men or five the making of the laws and their execution-the whole power of the people. "Section 7. The council shall have and possess, and the council and its members shall exercise, all executive, legislative and judicial powers and duties now had, possessed and exercised by the mayor, city council, board of public works, park commissioners, board of police and fire commissioners, board of waterworks trustees, board of library trustees, solicitor, assessor, treasurer, aduitor, city engineer and other executive and administrative officers in cities of the first class." The majority of this "council" is three-three men to hold and possess and exercise such autocratic power in America in the twentieth century in a "city of the first class!" May I not live to see such a tyranny set up anywhere outside of the ex-southern confederacy in America! YE 264TH LESSON. An Open Letter to the People of Des Moines. Fellow Citizens: The commission plan of city government is unsuited to Des Moines. Here is a commonwealth covering fifty-four square miles of territory, and what may be predicated of a small town like Galveston, Tex., covering six and one-half square miles, does not fit Des Moines. It is hardly correct to say that "all the citizens of Des Moines are equally interested in the welfare of the whole city." We have West Des Moines and East Des Moines, North Des Moines and South Des Moines, and also Highland Park, all under one government. Can it be truly said that the property owners of those several divisions of the city are all alike interested in the welfare (or rather, realty values) of all the other parts? Not by any means. West Des Moines' realty speculators would have East Des Moines as dead as |