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SATAN’S INVISIBLE WORLD DISPLAYED
SATAN’S INVISIBLE WORLD DISPLAYED
THE CITY HALL, NEW YORK. SATAN’S INVISIBLE WORLD DISPLAYED OR, Despairing Democracy. A STUDY OF GREATER NEW YORK. BY W. T. STEAD, AUTHOR OF “IF CHRIST CAME TO CHICAGO!” “Inasmuch as no government can endure in which corrupt greed not only makes the laws but decides who shall construe them, many of our best citizens are beginning to despair of the Republic.”— Ex-Governor Altgeld , Labour Day , 1897. The “Review of Reviews” Annual, 1898. EDITORIAL OFFICES: MOWBRAY HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, LONDON
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
For the past four years I have devoted the Annual of the Review of Reviews to a romance based upon the leading social or political event of the year. This year I intermit the publication of the Series of Contemporary History in Fiction in order to publish a study of the most interesting and significant of all the political and municipal problems of our time. To those who may object to the substitution of a companion volume to my Chicago book for their usual annual quantum of political romance, I
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD. The entrance to the harbour of New York is not unworthy its position as the gateway—the ever open gateway—of the New World. And the colossal monument raised by the genius of Bartholdi at the threshold of the gateway is no inapt emblem of the sentiments with which millions have hailed the sight of the American continent. The harbour, though guarded by great guns against hostile intruder, and infested by the myrmidons of the Customs, is nevertheless an appropriate a
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND CITY IN THE WORLD. A pandemonium of type-writing machines—of gigantic type-writing machines driven by demons who never tire—in some vast hall of Eblis. The clank of the type, the swish of the machine, the quick nervous ring of the bell, all indefinitely multiplied and magnified, fill the vast space with a reverberating clangour. This clangour continuously increases until its very vibrations seem to become clotted and fill the air with a sound that can be felt in every pore. It is like
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
ST. TAMMANY AND THE DEVIL. Hitherto, the city government of New York has not been a credit to the Republic; otherwise I should not be publishing a survey of the way in which New York has been governed as “Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.” The title, of course, is an adaptation, not an invention. The original holder of the copyright was one Hopkins, of the seventeenth century, who, having had much experience in the discovery of witches, deemed himself an expert qualified to describe the inner h
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LEXOW SEARCHLIGHT. Mr. Lowell good-humouredly chaffed John Bull when he declared that He detests the same faults in himself he neglected, When he sees them again in his child’s glass reflected, and we only need to glance at current English criticisms upon American affairs to justify the poet’s remark. Especially is this the case with a vice which of all others is regarded as distinctively English. John Bull has plenty of faults, but of those which render him odious to his neighbours there is
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
THE POLICE BANDITS OF NEW YORK. The Lexow Committee experienced great difficulty in procuring evidence owing to the Reign of Terror which was established in New York by the police. The story reads more like a description of an Indian province terrorized by a band of Thugs than a statement of how New York was governed. When unwilling witnesses—and the vast majority of witnesses were most unwilling—were placed on the stand, they were thus addressed by the Chairman:— Any testimony you give now, und
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
THE POWERS AND THE IMPOTENCE OF THE POLICE. One of the most pathetic of human fallacies is the assumption that you have only to pass a law in order to extirpate an evil. The touching faith of English-speaking men in the efficacy of statute-made law is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the great cities of the United States. The fact that a statute is only so much good paper inked by a printing-press does not seem to occur to the citizens, even after the repeated demonstrations of its im
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
PROMOTION BY PULL AND PROMOTION BY PURCHASE. The New York Police Department as it existed in 1894 was like the Scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel. It was like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness. Hardly a single thing that was proved to exist could have existed if the laws, rules and regulations had been faithfully enforced. Therefore until the searchlight of the Lexow inquiry was turned on, it was the cor
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A POLICE CAPTAIN. The following narrative of the career of a police captain of the City of New York is taken for the most part textually from the evidence tendered on oath by Captain Max F. Schmittberger, then in command of the Nineteenth Precinct. The police of New York were four thousand strong, divided for purposes of administration—and of plunder—into thirty-eight Precincts. Schmittberger was Captain of the Nineteenth. He gave his evidence almost at the close of the inqu
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
“THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES.” “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” The familiar passage needs to be interpreted in a different sense if it is to describe the treatment of the stranger by the police of New York. In the evidence of the men who practise the confidence trick, the curious fact came out that the police expressly abandoned strangers to the tender mercies of the Bunco Steerer and Green Goods dealer. These thieves were forbidden to practise their arts upon the resident population of
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES OF THE POLICE. Said Mr. Goff at one of the sittings of the Lexow Committee:— We have, Mr. Chairman, called attention heretofore to what may be justly termed “slaughter-houses,” known as police-stations, where prisoners in custody of the officers of the law, and under the law’s protection, have been brutally kicked and maltreated, almost within view of the judge presiding in the Court.—Vol. iv., p. 3,598. Slaughter-houses is not a bad term. The cases in which witnesses swore
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
KING MCNALLY AND HIS POLICE. The Confidence Trick is perhaps the form of crime that would most naturally commend itself to the police banditti of New York. For the force was engaged all day long in playing a gigantic Confidence Trick upon the citizens. The gold brick which the swindlers sold to the credulous countryman was hardly more mythical than the enforcement of the law which was supposed to be secured by the organisation of the City police. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PANTATA OF THE POLICY SHOP AND POOL-ROOM. Among its other achievements, the Lexow Committee enriched the vocabulary of our language by the word Pantata. It is a mysterious word of Bohemian origin. What it precisely meant none of the witnesses could explain. It had no exact equivalent in the English language, but there was no difficulty about understanding how it was applied in New York. Pantata, in its origin, the interpreters explain, meant father-in-law. The term was used in households to
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
FARMERS-GENERAL OF THE WAGES OF SIN. If the Police Captain was the Pantata of the Gambler, he was the Farmer-General of the Houses of Ill-fame in his Precinct. His duty, as defined by the law which he had sworn to enforce, was clear. He was bound to close every disorderly house in his jurisdiction. His practice was to let them all run—for a consideration. The Strange Woman, that pathetic and tragic figure in the streets of all great cities, whose house from of old was said to be the Way of Hell,
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
“ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN.” “After all,” some readers will say, “what does it matter? These people are all outlaws; they deserve what they get, whatever it is.” But the net of the New York police was exceeding wide, and the mesh was exceeding fine, and no class of the community escaped. As the sun riseth upon the evil and the just, so the blackmailer of the Police Department marked as his prey the honest and virtuous as well as the vicious and criminal. The Lexow Committee report:— The ev
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
BELIAL ON THE JUDGMENT SEAT. The effect of law, not law written in the Statute Book, but law practically enforced among the people, is to evolve a conscience. Not without deep true meaning was it said of old time “the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” For it is the law, by its pains and penalties, which educates the individual as to the obligations of morality and the duty of well-doing. But in New York the universal practice of permitting all manner of abominations to run, provided
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
THE WORST TREASON OF ALL. It will be remarked, somewhat impatiently I fear, by the reader of this long and dismal series of stories of the way in which the municipal Thugs did their deadly work, But where were the citizens? The good honest citizens, we are told, are always in a majority. They proved that they were able to elect their own City Government. Why did they not do it? What is the use of talking about “the land of liberty,” “the Great Republic,” and the Democratic principle, if the rich
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
DESPAIRING DEMOCRACY. Despair is a strong word, nor can the citizens be rightly said to despair of the Republic while they are still engaged in making energetic efforts for its salvation. In the strict sense of the word, therefore, it is absurd to speak of a despairing democracy, which is still struggling to avert its threatened doom. But for democracy in the English sense of the word there is no longer any struggle in the City of New York. The ablest and the most hopeful Americans have given it
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
THE TSAR-MAYOR. The parallel which instinctively occurs to the mind of the observer is one of somewhat evil omen for the future of the American Commonwealth. The Roman Republic evolved the Empire very much in the same way that the Tsar Mayoralty of Greater New York has been evolved from the institutions which preceded it. The Roman Empire was not based upon a plébiscite of the citizens, but equally with the New York Mayoralty it ignored the principle of hereditary right. Occasionally the Imperia
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHARTER OF GREATER NEW YORK. The Charter of Greater New York is the last, or rather the latest, of a long series of Charters granted by the State Legislature of New York for the government of the city. There were eleven distinct Charters granted between 1846 and 1890, so that the average life of a Charter is only four years. The Charter preceding this was regarded by Mr. Godkin as the best because it reduced the elective element almost to vanishing point:— No community as heterogeneous as ou
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
GOVERNMENT BY NEWSPAPER. Twelve years ago I employed part of the leisure I enjoyed in the safe retreat of Holloway Gaol in writing an essay on “Government by Journalism.” In that essay, which was published after my release in the Contemporary Review , and subsequently republished under the title “A Journalist on Journalism,” I expounded a theory as to the natural and inevitable emergence of the journalist as the ultimate depository of power in modern democracy. One passage I may be permitted to
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
WHY NOT TRY THE INQUISITION? “Never prescribe until you are called in,” is an excellent maxim, which like that other more pithy saying, “Mind your own business,” has one somewhat serious drawback. If they were construed literally and obeyed in spirit as well as in letter, what would become of the journalist’s business? For the chief business of the journalist is to look after other people’s business. To chronicle it in the first place; to comment upon it in the second. It is the privilege of the
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PLÉBISCITE FOR A CÆSAR. The contest for the mayoralty of Greater New York, which was fought out at the polls on the 2nd of November, has been one of the most famous elections ever fought. To begin with, never before have half a million electors voted in the same day for the election of a chief magistrate. Greater New York contains more that 3,000,000 inhabitants, and 567,000 registered electors. The constituency is not more vast than the powers of the mayor are unlimited. As no chief magistr
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FIRST MAYOR OF GREATER NEW YORK. Edgar A. Whitney, examined by Chairman Lexow: I was in the gaming-house when the door opened, and Mr. Glennon, the police wardman, gave the word and said, “Is Mr. Pease in?” I said, “No, sir; I am taking care of the game while he is at his supper.” He said, “Come to one side:” he said, “That captain wants this game closed up until after election time; that if the Tammany Hall ticket is elected,” he says, “we will protect you for anything from a poker game to
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APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
MAYOR VAN WYCK’S PROGRAMME. Mayor Van Wyck’s Letter of Acceptance in reply to the Democratic City Convention, which invited him to stand as candidate for the Mayoralty, was published a fortnight before the polling day. In the New York Journal of October 24th, Mr. Van Wyck, in the course of an interview with Alfred Henry Lewis, a representative of the paper, said:—“There need be no doubt or mistiness concerning my attitude on all questions now craving reply. I wish most heartily that every citize
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