CHAPTER 34
FIGHTING FOR THE LIFE OF MICHIGAN AGAINST THE HUMAN BLOODSUCKERS THAT SUBSIST ON SOCIETY EVERYWHERE
THE FIRST of January, 1911, I was inaugurated as Governor of Michigan. In order to devote every energy to the program of accomplishment I had outlined, I had determined that I would leave the office at the close of my two-year term and would not be a candidate for reelection. There was much to do and I realized that I would have strong opposition to the passage of the measures I advocated. The political organizations of Detroit were powerful at the state capital. Detroit control has passed long before into the hands of a local Tammany that would stop at nothing. The organization, unwritten, but understood, included men in both the Republican and Democratic parties, grading up from convicts to semi-respectables and connected with men on both sides occupying positions of trust and prominence, but ready at all times to profit by their political relationship to this tong, and just as ready to be parties to questionable political practices that they might not think of resorting to if proposed in their professions. This gang was “The Vote Swappers’ League,” named such by E. G. Pipp, manager at that time of the Detroit News. Most of the men had double standards of practice; one for politics and another for business. Most of those who aided the crooked league in the work were well known. The Republicans were even worse than their Democrat partners, because they presumed to hold their heads a little higher, cloak themselves in a bespotted mantle of respectability and patronize the town clubs and the golf links, and even go so far as to identify themselves with a church if it served a purpose. These fine bucktails divided the offices among their faithful, controlled the Council, boasted of their standing in the several judicial strata and most thoroughly removed the political viscera from any reformer or citizens’ movement that started any Taiping revolution. I had to decide whether I would serve Michigan or the Vote Swappers’ League. I chose the flag of Michigan. The word was passed to the Detroit gang that I could not be controlled. This started a war upon me that has gone the length of bitterness.
The fight was staged first in the Legislature. I found myself as Governor at first unable to secure a majority for anything for which any credit or responsibility attached to the Governor’s office. Gradually the legislative opposition wore down. Finally I had a certain majority in the House and soon after in the Senate. The failures in legislation were few and only of measures that required a two-thirds majority.
A multitude of things came up in the executive office. I had succeeded an administration unfriendly to me, and things were not made easy for me, which did not alarm or dissuade me. I had been accustomed to long hours and there was keen delight in putting them in now.
The very day I was inaugurated a plot was discovered to blow up Jackson prison with dynamite. The warden was new and there was much nervousness. Dependable guards were not known from the ones in league with the convicts. I counseled with Warden Russell, of Marquette prison, and Warden Fuller, of the Ionia Reformatory, both officials of long experience and high ability. I succeeded in getting a line on the bad men in Jackson. I had them brought to the executive office one at a time and between two and four o’clock in the morning, so that absolute secrecy might be secured. I succeeded in obtaining enough information to locate and remove quantities of high explosives, and to break up the convict gang, distributing the members among other prisons. While at this task I learned many other incidental facts. My greatest surprise was caused and my indignation was particularly aroused by the indisputable knowledge that a traffic in pardons and paroles was going on. I forced at once the resignation of the Board of Pardons and a new Board was appointed. I appointed a complete, new bi-partisan Prison Board of big men.
I learned that one of the Tax Commissioners of the State was also the retained attorney of a big manufacturer of automobiles. Of course the lawyer could not serve two masters for conflicting interests. I asked him to resign and he did so. Another Tax Commissioner gave very little time to the work and his performance was very unsatisfactory. In fact, the Commission was in a rut. I asked this man to resign. The epidemic phrase was “Go to hell.” This fellow applied it and I removed him. This removal made completely new three important boards. I cleaned out every vestige of the old administration that seemed to be necessary to wholesome state administration. In doing so I only kept faith with the people. It was what I had promised them I would do.
When I became Governor a deficit existed in the state treasury of about a million dollars. I was determined to wipe this out. Many economies were inaugurated in the management of state institutions. In this work I was aided by every institutional superintendent in Michigan and by all the appointive heads of departments. It was easy to save the State’s money if one managed with anything like the same care with which private business is conducted.
The new constitution of Michigan gives the Governor unusual fiscal authority. In fact, it imposes in him the power and responsibility practically of financial manager. The Governor can veto all or any part of an appropriation bill. I carefully went over every bill with those interested in it. As a result I cut out nearly enough to pay the state indebtedness. This financial use of the veto constitutes a precedent.
But it was in saving through economies introduced everywhere that the big results were obtained. At the conclusion of my administration the State was out of debt and the treasury contained a surplus of more than two million dollars. This was achieved and at the same time more money was appropriated for good roads than the estimate and more for the state university than ever before. The tax rate was also reduced. Also this saving improved the conditions at all state institutions, because the very care that made economy possible naturally conduced to improvements in every detail of service.
The regular session of the Legislature adjourned.
Early in 1912 I called a special session and followed it immediately with a second special session. Under the Michigan constitution the Governor is empowered to summon the Legislature in extraordinary session. At such only those measures submitted in message by the Governor may be considered. The effect is to compel legislative concentration and to focus the eyes of the public upon important measures. At a regular session there is pulling and hauling and trading and confusion, until the public is lost in a muddle of vexatious circumstances and the legislators are nearly as badly off.
Very near to my heart I had the matter of a workmen’s compensation law. I had given the subject considerable study in Germany and England and had talked it over often with my intimate associates and many others. The Legislature in regular session had empowered the Governor to appoint a commission to study the question and draft a form of a bill embodying a suitable law. The commission appointed, serving without pay, had given earnest attention to the important subject and had submitted a report of indubitable value. To obtain action upon this was my chief first purpose for a special session. Also I wished to utilize this meritorious measure to further define and stiffen partisan lines in the Legislature, so that I might feed in good measures that otherwise would not carry. The workingmen’s compensation act passed. The Legislature empowered the Governor to appoint an Industrial Accident Board to administer the law. The success of the new law might largely depend upon the practical foundation laid for it in its earliest application and interpretation. I secured for the board the only two members of the commission that framed the law who could be secured for state service. By virtue of the understanding and administration of this law by the first board, it came to be recognized as one of the best compensation enactments in America. It has been copied by many other States. Gradually it will undoubtedly be brought nearer to perfection.
Police Commissioner Croul, of Detroit, an official of rare courage and capacity, had told me that of some seventeen hundred saloons in Detroit quite twelve hundred were owned by brewers and distillers. It was their practice to start a booze joint on every likely corner they could obtain and especially near factory doors. Brewery-owned saloons were the worst of all. I saw to it that a bill was introduced making it illegal for brewers and distillers to own or encourage saloons. Forthwith fell upon me the liquor people. The Royal Ark, an association of saloon keepers in Detroit, endeavored to intimidate members of the Legislature. Conditions of much bitterness arose. But the bill became a law.
I found the Michigan Bonding Company to be the most hurtful and the boldest source of evil in the State. It was organized under a law that gave it the practical control of all the saloons in the State. If a saloon keeper did not obey its behests, his bonds were refused. It charged big fees and was strong financially. It had one or more agents in every county and cleverly selected them from among the best-equipped attorneys. By means of a retainer it secured the services of lawyers who would not naturally line up with it. Thus equipped, the Michigan Bonding Company became a dangerous entity. Of it men were afraid. It was the core organization around which was built the opposition to woman suffrage, prohibition and all related reforms. I asked the Legislature to repeal the law giving it existence and I made a fight against it that was nearly successful.
The fight at Lansing while these bills were pending became a vicious one, with enough bad feeling and personal passion almost to obscure reason for a time. I received as many as ten letters in one day threatening my life. To these cowardly messages I paid no attention. They only indicated the feeling that existed among the whiskeyites. Dynamite was placed under my house but it did not explode. My residence was on fire twice mysteriously. One of these fires occurred at two o’clock in the morning. I was attacked on all sides. Throughout all the conflict I did not worry nor lose sleep. My wife stood it bravely but confesses now she was deeply worried and wearied. But only words of cheer and courage came from her then. As for myself, I thought I was right and I think so now when the embers of thought are colorless from fire. Perhaps I took on some of the spirit of the crusader. At least I placed my trust in God and calmly asked divine approval and direction.
Those who were advocating woman suffrage were not united. Some of them, including most of the women propagandists who came to Lansing, were fearful that a measure submitting the question to the people could not pass the Legislature and that its failure would prove a setback. After discussing the matter with Representative Charles Flowers, a veteran partisan of the cause, and with several others, I decided to present the question. It carried nicely. Later, when it was submitted for popular consideration, it undoubtedly carried in the State. However, the liquor interests succeeded in obscuring and invalidating the result. Its next submission was in the spring, when the country vote is light as compared with that of the cities, and suffrage was then unquestionably defeated.
When the returns of the vote began to indicate that the measure had passed at the first plebiscite, those opposed held back the reports from polling precincts that they controlled, giving the impression that whenever totals were necessary to accomplish the defeat of the women would be supplied. There were signs of a sharp practice that was used by the vicious elements to obtain a momentary end. Apparently the only adequate redress for such is an aroused public that will finally act so decisively as to brook no resistance or trickery.
I do not say that all of those who oppose votes for women are vicious, but I do say that wherever I have been familiar with conditions, the management of the campaign against suffrage has been controlled either above the surface or below it by those who are inclined to lawlessness and who make it their instinctive business to fight anything that tends to improve the public tone or widen the zone of influence of those who would be most likely, in the nature of things, to endeavor to cure those evils that are eating cancerously at the foundations of the human family.
Women are the matrix of the race. They occupy a sphere that man, a mere fertilizing agent, never enters. Consequently woman knows instinctively when her own is imperiled. Fundamentally this is the raison d’etre of the woman movement. All talk of liberty and equality is incidental. Nature, always operating to make life dominant over death, and in ways often most obscure and indirect so far as man’s vision and comprehension are concerned, is the author of the activity that has for its purpose the bringing to bear of the powers of woman directly against the jeopardy of her children. The tendency may be delayed or misdirected but it cannot be defeated, any more than the precession of the equinoxes can be controlled by human agencies.
My messages to the Legislature, in special sessions, are a true guide to my state of mind, my thought processes and convictions at that time. I had not yet convinced myself that there could not be some compromise with alcohol. I hoped that if there was any good in it that it might be separated from the much that was bad, and the desirable retained and the objectionable rejected. I had visions of state control that would be more successful than the dispensary experience by the State of South Carolina. It was my nebulous hope that the whiskey traffic might be completely taken out of trade whereby man’s degeneracy was made a source of profit. It was a passing dream in which I saw pure whiskey, beers and wines served at cost in temperate quantities in clean environment to those who might be cheered but not poisoned.
But I was nearing the time when I became convinced that life and alcohol cannot exist together any more rationally than life and death. I saw the constant struggle of nature against death and all of the agencies of decay; the finely maintained equilibrium of wild animal and vegetable life; the self-pruning processes of primeval forests and many of the visible efforts of the war of life against death. Because of the limited visual powers of man, there are more invisible activities than those that we can see. But there are also many that we are slow to see because we do not wish to see. So I saw in the world’s growing social array against alcohol simply a great movement of life against death. As such it will succeed in spite of man’s blindness and opposition, just because of the world-old truth that man is ever the weak proponent and God is forever the mighty disponent.
Michigan voted in favor of state-wide prohibition at the election of November, 1916, and in favor of woman suffrage in 1918.
