This is not a book. It is a collection of articles reprinted from McClure’s Magazine . Done as journalism, they are journalism still, and no further pretensions are set up for them in their new dress. This classification may seem pretentious enough; certainly it would if I should confess what claims I make for my profession. But no matter about that; I insist upon the journalism. And there is my justification for separating from the bound volumes of the magazine and republishing, practically wit

St. Louis, the fourth city in size in the United States, is making two announcements to the world: one that it is the worst-governed city in the land; the other that it wishes all men to come there (for the World’s Fair) and see it. It isn’t our worst-governed city; Philadelphia is that. But St. Louis is worth examining while we have it inside out. There is a man at work there, one man, working all alone, but he is the Circuit (district or State) Attorney, and he is “doing his duty.” That is wha

Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the “gangs,” “combines,” or political parties. These are but instruments by which bosses (not leaders; we Americans are not led, but driven) rule the people, and commonly sell them out. But there are at least two forms of the autocracy which has supplanted the democracy here as it has everywhere democracy has been

Tweed’s classic question, “What are you going to do about it?” is the most humiliating challenge ever delivered by the One Man to the Many. But it was pertinent. It was the question then; it is the question now. Will the people rule? That is what it means. Is democracy possible? The accounts of financial corruption in St. Louis and of police corruption in Minneapolis raised the same question. They were inquiries into American municipal democracy, and, so far as they went, they were pretty comple

Minneapolis was an example of police corruption; St. Louis of financial corruption. Pittsburg is an example of both police and financial corruption. The two other cities have found each an official who has exposed them. Pittsburg has had no such man and no exposure. The city has been described physically as “Hell with the lid off”; politically it is hell with the lid on. I am not going to lift the lid. The exposition of what the people know and stand is the purpose of these articles, not the exp

Other American cities, no matter how bad their own condition may be, all point with scorn to Philadelphia as worse—“the worst-governed city in the country.” St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburg submit with some patience to the jibes of any other community; the most friendly suggestion from Philadelphia is rejected with contempt. The Philadelphians are “supine,” “asleep”; hopelessly ring-ruled, they are “complacent.” “Politically benighted,” Philadelphia is supposed to have no light to throw upon a

While these articles on municipal corruption were appearing, readers of them were writing to the magazine asking what they, as citizens, were to do about it all. As if I knew; as if “we” knew; as if there were any one way to deal with this problem in all places under any circumstances. There isn’t, and if I had gone around with a ready-made reform scheme in the back of my head, it would have served only to keep me from seeing straight the facts that would not support my theory. The only editoria

Just about the time this article will appear, Greater New York will be holding a local election on what has come to be a national question—good government. No doubt there will be other “issues.” At this writing (September 15) the candidates were not named nor the platforms written, but the regular politicians hate the main issue, and they have a pretty trick of confusing the honest mind and splitting the honest vote by raising “local issues” which would settle themselves under prolonged honest g