Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/451

 PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 435

opportunity to show the concern of himself and his party for the real people, as over against the attitude of the party dominating the state. But because the militia was not called his scheme fell through, and the legitimate strike leaders, although they passed through much tribulation because of the political interference, did not eventually lose control.

The situation in the Chicago Stock Yards is an excellent epit- ome of the fact that government so often finds itself, not only in opposition to the expressed will of the people making the demand at the moment, but apparently against the best instincts of the mass of the citizens as a whole.

For years the city administrations, one after another, have protected the money interests invested in the Stock Yards, so that none of the sanitary ordinances have ever been properly enforced, until the sickening stench and the scum on the branch of the river known as " Bubbly Creek " at times make that section of the city unendurable. The smoke ordinances are openly ignored ; nor did the city meat inspector ever seriously interfere with business, as a recent civil-service investigation has demon- strated; while the water-steals for which the Stock Yards finally became notorious must have been more or less known to certain officials. But all of this merely corrupted a limited number of inspectors, and although their corruption was complete and involved the entire administration, it did not actually touch large numbers of people. During the recent strike, however, twelve hundred policemen were called upon to patrol the yards inside and out actual men possessed of human sensibilities. There is no doubt that the police inspector of the district thoroughly repre- sented the alliance of the City Hall and the business interests, and that he did not mean to discover anything which was derogatory to the packers, nor to embarrass them in any way during the con- duct of the strike. But these twelve hundred men themselves were called upon to face a very peculiar situation because of the type of men and women who formed the bulk of the strike-breakers, and because in the first weeks of the strike these men and women were kept constantly inside the yards during day and night. In order to hold them there at all, discipline outside the working hours was