My Story (32 page)

F. H. GOFF

A. B. DU PONT

After the Tayler grant was approved at the referendum election the receivers turned the property over to the old company and since March 1, 1910, it has been operated by them under the supervision of a street railway commissioner appointed by the mayor. The man appointed to this position, Gerhard Dahl, was the Republican candidate for city solicitor defeated by Mr. Baker at the last municipal election.

The cars are still operating at the initial rate of fare provided in the Tayler grant, three cents with a penny for transfers.
*
Any disposition on the part of the company to raise the fare has been promptly discouraged by the city.

The work of our quadrennial board of appraisers (the last work for the city in which I had any share) was the best of any in the State and is the beginning of a correction of one of the worst of taxation injustices. Under the law the board was compelled to complete its labors prior to July 1, 1910. Now, for the first time since we commenced the taxation fight in Cleveland in 1901, we had the machinery for a perfect performance of the task of assessing the real estate of the city, but we lacked the time. The board was elected in the fall of 1909 and instead of waiting until the first of the year to begin its
work it organized at once. W. A. Somers, who had furnished his system to us in 1901, was employed by the board as its chief clerk. The real estate duplicate as made in 1900, to which had been added the buildings erected since, was now about one hundred and eighty million dollars. When the board of appraisers got through with its labors the real estate duplicate, exclusive of such exempted property as churches and the holdings of federal, State and municipal governments, reached five hundred millions. For the first time since Cleveland had ceased to be a village was its property appraised with any degree of fairness between its owners.

To some who have followed this story, it may seem that we have achieved a comparatively small measure of success. I do not share this view. To have taken more than ten millions of dollars of fictitious value out of a capitalization of thirty millions, as we did in the street railway fight, to have established three-cent fare in the sixth city in size in the United States, and to see that rate of fare paying after two years of trial — this alone is worth all the fight has cost. Municipal ownership of street railways is not yet possible under the State laws, it is true, but the sentiment in favor of it is stronger than ever and an effort is being constantly made to have the legislature authorize cities on their own votes to own and operate their street railways. The Cleveland city council— a Republican body — has just adopted (February 20, 1911) by unanimous vote a resolution endorsing a street railway municipal ownership bill now pending in the State legislature. This resolution was offered by Mr.
Haserodt, one of our administration councilmen to whom previous reference has been made.

Add to these things the by-products of our fight, if we may so characterize the beneficent legislation which has resulted from our agitation, the development and training for practical service of men interested in economic justice and the influence of our movement on other States and other cities. But the biggest thing and the most farreaching in its effects is the example we have given of how to fight Privilege. The same kind of a fight carried on in any other city under similar conditions will bring equally encouraging results.

But I would sound a note of warning here. There is very great danger of having the best of movements sidetracked by the calling of hard names and the personal abuse of individuals. Tactics of that kind will never get anywhere. Throughout the whole of our fight we adhered to our first plan, which was to attack institutions — Privilege, and not men. This is the first great thing to be kept in mind — that the battle is not a battle against persons, but against unnatural conditions, against a wrong social order! The next important thing is that the fighters be armed with patience, much patience. It takes as much patience to carry on this kind of a warfare as it takes stones to build the proverbial stone chimney.

“How much stone does it take to build a stone chimney? “asked someone of the man who had just built one, and he answered, “Haul and haul and haul until you
know
you've got enough, then haul twice that much more, and the chances are you'll have about half enough.”

But with the object of the fight well defined, the line of action faithfully adhered to, and plenty of patience, there
is no reason for despair. It is inevitable that those engaged in the great struggle should sometimes become discouraged. Temporary losses assume an aspect entirely out of proportion to their real importance. The defeats of the moment loom large and so obscure the vision of the workers sometimes that they are not always able to see that the direction of the general movement is invariably forward. But
it is a forward movement
and this is the word of cheer I would send to those taking part in it. It is in the nature of Truth never to fail.

Photo by Moore

PETER WITT TOM L. JOHNSON NEW TON D. BAKER 1910

M
R
. J
OHNSON'S
health was seriously impaired when the referendum election on the Schmidt grant was held in August of 1909, and while the beginning of his illness doubtless dates from a much earlier period he himself regarded this as the time of the fatal break. Yet he went through his fall campaign with much of the vigor, the fire and the good humor that had always characterized his work.

On election night when the returns showed beyond a doubt that he had been defeated he alone of the devoted group of men and women gathered at the City Hall was philosophical and brave and calm. For men who were to weep unashamed, no matter where they happened to be on the day their leader died, made no effort to conceal their emotions that night. Some of them swore, some of them cried, some of them became ill. Only the mayor was very still and very gentle and “sorry for the boys.”

When it was known that he had been returned as city solicitor Mr. Baker came and stood beside his chief and gripped his hand and said in a voice tense with suppressed feeling, “I don't know how I can do it.” Without a second's hesitation came the answer, “Do it? Of course you can do it. You've got to do it. The people want you.”

The mayor insisted upon remaining in his office until early morning and when the last returns were in and he knew that four out of five of his candidates for the quadrennial board of appraisement had been elected, he construed this as an endorsement of the taxation principles on which the campaign had been fought.

He had trained his spirit never to know defeat and it harked back now, all unconsciously no doubt, to the lesson of the Noah's Ark incident of his childhood, and there were “two left anyhow.”

When he relinquished his office to his successor, January 1, 1910, Mr. Johnson said, “I have served the people of Cleveland for nearly nine years. I have had more of misfortune in those nine years than in any other period of my life. As that is true, it is also true that I have had more of joy. In those nine years I have given the biggest and best part of me. I have served the people of Cleveland the best I knew how.”

Almost immediately after this he went to New York for medical treatment, remaining there until February 6, when he returned to Cleveland. He spent five weeks at home all of that time under the care of a trained nurse. On the thirteenth of March he went back to New York, his mind fully made up to go abroad. He was no better; his physician's prognosis was unfavorable, he was slowly losing strength and for hours each day was the victim of severe pain. But he ceased consulting physicians, dismissed his nurse and proceeded with the arrangements for his voyage. By some supreme act of will he had resumed the mastery of himself.

One who was observing him closely at this time wrote to a friend, “A most remarkable thing has happened.
Tom seems to have struck rock bottom and then to have lifted himself by his own boot-straps out of the depression caused by his illness. His spirit is in complete ascendancy over his body. He is going to Europe. Nothing can stop him.”

On March 23, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Fels, Mr. Johnson sailed on the
Mauretania
for London. He seemed reasonably well and enjoyed the voyage. Arriving in London he was met at Paddington station by a reporter, but he consistently stuck to the policy he had adopted upon going out of public office — that of refusing to be interviewed by the newspapers. Mr. Johnson had several rules of personal conduct from which he seldom swerved. One of these was never to speak at a meeting or gathering of any kind at which an admission fee was charged, and another was never to stop with friends in their homes, but always to put up at a hotel. By some magic Mr. and Mrs. Fels persuaded him to depart from this last named rule and be their guest during his stay in London.

On April 11, the United Committee for the Taxation of Land Values gave Mr. Johnson a dinner at the Trocadero, one of London's big restaurants. His address on that occasion was a fine one, at least half of it being devoted to an appreciation of the character of Mrs. Fels, who was, he said, half of her husband's work, giving to it not the mere old-fashioned inspiration of the heart, but thought.

Just as he had insisted upon going to England so Mr. Johnson now insisted upon a trip to the continent. Fearing that the contemplated journey might prove too fatiguing friends tried to dissuade him, but in vain. He
was determined to go, so Mrs. Fels and John Paul, editor of
Land Values
and, next to Mrs. Fels, the closest friend Mr. Johnson made in Great Britain, accompanied him. They made a ten days' tour visiting Paris, Rouen, Brussels, Cologne and Frankfort. The change stimulated Mr. Johnson wonderfully. Following this trip Mr. Fels and Mr. Paul joined Mr. Johnson in a few days' visit to Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin. A reception was given them in Glasgow which afforded Mr. Johnson an opportunity of meeting many of the friends whom he had for years desired to know personally. He was especially attracted to those who had been friends of Henry George. “He suffered a great deal of pain at times, indeed almost constantly,” writes John Paul, “but he was cheerful and enthusiastic over the evidence he witnessed on every hand here of the progress of the ideas and the policy he himself had done so much to promote in the United States.”

On April twenty-seventh, the night the vote on the Budget was taken, a dinner was given to Mr. Johnson at the House of Parliament. He tells about this dinner in a speech in New York a month later, but fails to mention what an English correspondent tells us that “on this occasion all factions and conflicting opinions were harmonized, Mr. Johnson being the reconciling spirit. Josiah Wedgewood, M. P., presided, and speeches were made by Redmond, the hero of the Budget fight, Keir Hardie, T. P. O'Connor, Charles Trevelyan and Joseph Fels. Mr. Johnson's own speech was of the things nearest his heart. He talked but little of his work in Cleveland, dwelling rather on the outlook for the final triumph of truth and justice, and expressing his own profound faith in democracy. On the thirtieth of April he departed for
America, leaving behind him many new friends and a broadening of spirit to the single tax movement in England.”

Photo by Jacks & Co., London

DINNER GIVEN TO MR. JOHNSON IN LONDON, APRIL, 1910

Mr. Johnson returned to New York on the
Mauretania
, arriving May 5. That he had benefited by his six weeks' holiday was with him a hope rather than a belief, but he was full of enthusiasm for the people's cause. “A political revolution is going on all over the world,” he said, “and the next fifteen years are going to show great progress. I'd like to live to see it and I almost think I have an even chance.”

For months a self-constituted committee composed of August Lewis, Bolton Hall, Joseph Fels, Lincoln Steffens, Frederic C. Howe and Daniel Kiefer, representing thousands of Mr. Johnson's friends, had been importuning him to permit a demonstration in his honor. They now refused to be put off longer and Mr. Johnson gave a reluctant consent to the public reception and dinner which took place at the Hotel Astor in New York City, the evening of May 31, 1910. The interval between his return from England and the time of the dinner he spent in Cleveland. The special feature of the testimonial banquet was the presentation to Mr. Johnson of a bronze medallion bearing the faces of Henry George and Tom L. Johnson in bas-relief — the work of Richard George, the sculptor and son of Henry George. Frederic C. Leubuscher, president of the Manhattan Single Tax Club, presided and addresses were made by Herbert S. Bigelow of Cincinnati; Henry George, Jr., and John DeWitt Warner of New York; Louis F. Post of Chicago; Newton D. Baker and Edmund Vance Cooke of Cleveland.

As Mr. Johnson ate nothing he must have found the
long dinner a tedious ordeal. It was nearly midnight when he was called upon to respond to the addresses which had been made in his honor. He spoke briefly, saying, in part:

“The friendly words that I have been listening to tonight might be more appropriate at a later time — when the struggle for me is closed. They are pleasant to hear, but it does not seem just fitting while I am still with you. The bronze medallion, too, in which I am associated with Henry George, seems more appropriate for that later time. I said to my friends when they first suggested this testimonial, that it seemed to me like a tribute to one who had completed his work, who had finished the game; but some of my friends said I was so near the end of the struggle that we might overlook the seeming inappropriateness. I don't believe we are at the end of the struggle. I don't believe we have been in our last fight together. But if I am mistaken I have no regrets — only that I might have been stronger, more powerful, more nearly deserving of the things that have been said about me to-night, for no man can deserve all those nice things * * * Since my return I have often been asked, ‘Did the trip improve your health?' I don't care whether it did or not. If by taking it I shortened my life by many years I should never regret that trip, for I met over there a set of men and women who have kept the fires burning all these years, who have never failed, and who have never compromised the truth. I would have made that trip to have met one of those men — John Paul. * * * It was my good fortune to meet and know this man in Great Britain, who, with Mr. Fels, has done so much to bring our movement to the center of the stage.

“One night John Paul said a suggestive thing. It was a sort of a fable, a dream — I don't know what he called it; but it has been ringing in my ears ever since and I am going to try to tell it to you. * * * John Paul said there was a certain river and that many human beings were in it, struggling to get to the shore. Some succeeded, some were pulled ashore by kind-hearted people on the banks. But many were carried down the stream and drowned. It is no doubt a wise thing, it is noble that under those conditions charitable people devote themselves to helping the victims out of the water. But John Paul said it would be better if some of those kindly people on the shore engaged in rescue work, would go up the stream and find out who was pushing the people into it. I could not help but follow that thought. We single taxers, while ready to help pull the struggling ones out, feel something urging us up the river to see who is pushing the people into the river to drown.

“It is in this way that I would answer those who ask us to help the poor. Let us help them, that they may at the last fight the battle of Privilege with more strength and courage; but let us never lose sight of our mission up the river to see who is pushing the people in. * * *

“In London I found that they understood me. I did not know whether they would understand me or not, but they looked on me as one who had accomplished something — and I was a friend of Henry George. They understood that; and they loved me as you do, and of course that made me very happy. In Scotland, at Glasgow, at Number Thirteen Dundas street, they gave me a banquet, not at two dollars and a half a plate, but at ‘ninepence a skull.' * * * Probably the most en
joyable part of my trip was the dinner that took place under the House of Commons in Westminster the night the Budget was passed. It was attended by radicals in the Liberal party in Parliament, by Irish members and by Labor members. During the banquet we went upstairs while the Budget vote was taken, and then came back for our speeches. When we broke up it was to go again to the House of Commons to hear the discussion of the Verney resolution;
our resolution
, we single taxers could say, for it declared for our principles. * * * It was carried by forty-three majority.

“We of the United States are interested in that struggle over there, not as outsiders but as insiders. * * * The English fight seems to us a fight where we are making the biggest headway. But everywhere, all over the world, our cause is moving, so that those of us who twenty-five years ago thought it far off, have now the good fortune of seeing the realization of our dreams. Privilege has been caught, exposed; and there is but one way of putting it down, and that is by the doctrine of Henry George. Abolish Privilege! Give the people who make the wealth of the world an opportunity to enjoy it.

“And now I come back from England and am invited to this gathering. I find here that same love and affection that I found abroad, that I have found in Cleveland. But I am not taking it as a personal compliment. I am but an instrument, I am but an agent in promoting that greater love, that love of big things, that love of justice which at last must win the world.”

About the middle of June Mr. Johnson went to Siasconset on Nantucket Island to spend the summer. Here he remained, except for two or three days spent in New
York on business, until late in August. He made a friend of every man, woman and child with whom he came in contact. Nearly every man in the village was soon known to him — from the rich owner of the cranberry meadows to the casual doer of odd jobs. The engineer on the little steam railroad, the fisherman, the sail and tent maker, the house painter, the carpenter, the dairyman, the butcher, the store keeper, the lawyer who came up from Boston for week ends, the actor who spends his summers in “Sconset “—he knew them all and liked them all and they all liked him. Declining physical strength did not seem to lessen the charm of manner which gave him such a hold on the minds and hearts of all who came his way.