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Page 46
If we recollect further that the franchise-seeking companies pay
respectful heed to the applicants backed by the alderman, the question
of voting for the successful man becomes as much an industrial one as a
political one. An Italian laborer wants a "job" more than anything else,
and quite simply votes for the man who promises him one. It is not so
different from his relation to the padrone, and, indeed, the two
strengthen each other.
The alderman may himself be quite sincere in his acts of kindness, for
an office seeker may begin with the simple desire to alleviate
suffering, and this may gradually change into the desire to put his
constituents under obligations to him; but the action of such an
individual becomes a demoralizing element in the community when kindly
impulse is made a cloak for the satisfaction of personal ambition, and
when the plastic morals of his constituents gradually conform to his own
undeveloped standards.
The alderman gives presents at weddings and christenings. He seizes
these days of family festivities for making friends. It is easiest to
reach them in the holiday mood of expansive good-will, but on their side
it seems natural and kindly that he should do it. The alderman procures
passes from the railroads when his constituents wish to visit friends or
attend the funerals of distant relatives; he buys tickets galore for
benefit entertainments given for a widow or a consumptive in peculiar
distress; he contributes to prizes which are awarded to the handsomest
lady or the most popular man. At a church bazaar, for instance, the
alderman finds the stage all set for his dramatic performance. When
others are spending pennies, he is spending dollars. When anxious
relatives are canvassing to secure votes for the two most beautiful
children who are being voted upon, he recklessly buys votes from both
sides, and laughingly declines to say which one he likes best, buying
off the young lady who is persistently determined to find out, with five
dollars for the flower bazaar, the posies, of course, to be sent to the
sick of the parish. The moral atmosphere of a bazaar suits him exactly.
He murmurs many times, "Never mind, the money all goes to the poor; it
is all straight enough if the church gets it, the poor won't ask too
many questions." The oftener he can put such sentiments into the minds
of his constituents, the better he is pleased. Nothing so rapidly
prepares them to take his view of money getting and money spending. We
see again the process disregarded, because the end itself is considered
so praiseworthy.
There is something archaic in a community of simple people in their
attitude toward death and burial. There is nothing so easy to collect
money for as a funeral, and one involuntarily remembers that the early
religious tithes were paid to ward off death and ghosts. At times one
encounters almost the Greek feeling in regard to burial. If the alderman
seizes upon times of festivities for expressions of his good-will, much
more does he seize upon periods of sorrow. At a funeral he has the
double advantage of ministering to a genuine craving for comfort and
solace, and at the same time of assisting a bereaved constituent to
express that curious feeling of remorse, which is ever an accompaniment
of quick sorrow, that desire to "make up" for past delinquencies, to
show the world how much he loved the person who has just died, which is
as natural as it is universal.
In addition to this, there is, among the poor, who have few social
occasions, a great desire for a well-arranged funeral, the grade of
which almost determines their social standing in the neighborhood. The
alderman saves the very poorest of his constituents from that awful
horror of burial by the county; he provides carriages for the poor, who
otherwise could not have them. It may be too much to say that all the
relatives and friends who ride in the carriages provided by the
alderman's bounty vote for him, but they are certainly influenced by his
kindness, and talk of his virtues during the long hours of the ride back
and forth from the suburban cemetery. A man who would ask at such a time
where all the money thus spent comes from would be considered sinister.
The tendency to speak lightly of the faults of the dead and to judge
them gently is transferred to the living, and many a man at such a time
has formulated a lenient judgment of political corruption, and has heard
kindly speeches which he has remembered on election day. "Ah, well, he
has a big Irish heart. He is good to the widow and the fatherless." "He
knows the poor better than the big guns who are always talking about
civil service and reform."
Indeed, what headway can the notion of civic purity, of honesty of
administration make against this big manifestation of human
friendliness, this stalking survival of village kindness? The notions of
the civic reformer are negative and impotent before it. Such an alderman
will keep a standing account with an undertaker, and telephone every
week, and sometimes more than once, the kind of funeral he wishes
provided for a bereaved constituent, until the sum may roll up into
"hundreds a year." He understands what the people want, and ministers
just as truly to a great human need as the musician or the artist. An
attempt to substitute what we might call a later standard was made at
one time when a delicate little child was deserted in the Hull-House
nursery. An investigation showed that it had been born ten days
previously in the Cook County hospital, but no trace could be found of
the unfortunate mother. The little child lived for several weeks, and
then, in spite of every care, died. It was decided to have it buried by
the county authorities, and the wagon was to arrive at eleven o'clock;
about nine o'clock in the morning the rumor of this awful deed reached
the neighbors. A half dozen of them came, in a very excited state of
mind, to protest. They took up a collection out of their poverty with
which to defray a funeral. The residents of Hull-House were then
comparatively new in the neighborhood and did not realize that they were
really shocking a genuine moral sentiment of the community. In their
crudeness they instanced the care and tenderness which had been expended
upon the little creature while it was alive; that it had had every
attention from a skilled physician and a trained nurse, and even
intimated that the excited members of the group had not taken part in
this, and that it now lay with the nursery to decide that it should be
buried as it had been born, at the county's expense. It is doubtful if
Hull-House has ever done anything which injured it so deeply in the
minds of some of its neighbors. It was only forgiven by the most
indulgent on the ground that the residents were spinsters, and could not
know a mother's heart. No one born and reared in the community could
possibly have made a mistake like that. No one who had studied the
ethical standards with any care could have bungled so completely.
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