Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/155

 *mus, we tried the case, and we won, overthrowing not only the doctrine at the Cincinnati case, but the whole fabric of municipal legislation in the state, so that a special session of the legislature was necessary to enact new codes for the government of the cities.

Our satisfaction and our pride in our legal achievement was somewhat modified by the fact that the application of the same rule to conditions in our sister city of Cleveland had the effect, in certain cases then pending, of pulling down the work which another great mayor, Tom L. Johnson, was then doing in that city. It was even said that the Supreme Court had been influenced by the desire of Mark Hanna, Tom Johnson's ancient enemy in Cleveland, to see his old rival defeated. Some were unkind enough to say that Mark Hanna's influence was more powerful with the court, as at that time constituted, than was the logic of the attorneys who were representing Golden Rule Jones.

But however that may have been, the decision in that case had ultimate far-reaching effects in improving the conditions in Ohio cities, and was the beginning of a conflict that did not end until they were free and autonomous. In my own case it was the beginning of a study of municipal government that has grown more fascinating as the years have fled, a study that has led me to see, or to think that I see, the large hope of our democracy in the cities of America.

I regard it as Jones's supreme contribution to the thought of his time that, by the mere force of