Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/94

 THE NEED OF LEGISLATIVE EXPERTS from New York City, if they prove at all attached to suspicious bills, will hear not merely the outcries of hated "reformers," but will discover that the citizens of their own individual districts are organized against them. An earnest of what may happen is shown by the fate of three members of the Legislature of 1904. A Republican Assem blyman, who asked from the Metropolitan Traction interests the "privilege" as he naively confessed, of introducing one of their bills, was driven from a meeting of the Republican Club of his district where he had gone with possible thoughts of commenda tion. He was not renominated. Another Republican Assemblyman, whose name is attached to the notorious gas bill, was renominated and defeated in a Republican •district that gave Roosevelt an enormous majority. A Tammany leader, grown rich through favor, had sat in the Senate from time immemorial — until 1904, when a young man, aggressive and honest, defeated him, to his utter astonishment. Among his reported remarks on "Reform" is this choice specimen: "It makes me tired to hear people talkin' about legislators bein' grafters, because we vote for bills that some corporations wanted. They're even callin' me a grafter because I put through the bill closin' up Spuyten Duyvil Creek so as to make room for the New York Central Railroad tracks. They say, that when the bill becomes a law I'm goin' to get the contract for fillin' in the creek. Well, what of it? Ain't there such a thing as honest friendship left in the world?" So much for the efforts made by the citi zens of New York City to keep from the statute books all but the best of the reams of bills annually presented to the Legisla ture. It remains to speak briefly of the methods. In the first place, civic organiza tions have been able to do their part in ob taining for their city its present powers and to preserve it from greater spoliation be cause they have been thorough and syste matic. They have not depended on the

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corporation counsel of the city nor on honest Legislators to expose iniquitous bills, though there are mam'' honest legislators in the New York Legislature, as there are in every State. Neither have they placed the re sponsibility on the newspapers, zealous as the great dailies of the city have always been in the detection of corruption and prompt as they are to aid when others ex pose graft and greed. The average legis lator, because he is an "average American," has a multitude of duties and it can hardly be expected that he will study carefully the daily increasing pile of bills by the side of his desk. His time is occupied with ses sions, committee meetings, constituents, and at the end of the week he must go home to attend to his private affairs. On the other hand, there is a class of legislators whose scrutiny of prospective legislation can hardly be depended on. To this class will prob ably belong an Assemblyman of 1905, from a solid Tammany district, who was de scribed in the Evening Post's Voters' Di rectory thus: "bartender; out of work just now; first candidacy." The newspapers cannot give space, even when they are dis interested, to an analysis of all bills laid be fore the Legislature. Their legislative re porters cannot wade through the thousands of pages and be sure to hit on exactly the good and bad in every bill. In the Legis lature of 1904 the number of bills and re prints numbered 2070 in the Assembly and 1378 in the Senate, with an average of over ten pages each. Of this number 734 in the Assembly and 418 in the Senate affected the City of New York in one way or an other. It is not surprising, therefore, that the civic organizations of the city, made up as they are of public spirited men who gladly give of their time, yet find it neces sary to employ men to devote their entire time to questions of legislation and the supervision of official administration. The cure of legislation will come, not from vainly wishing for the good old days of parliamentary debates, but from the de