MAYOR JOHNSON'S ULTERIOR MOTIVE
ey, Adeline Champn
MAYOR JOHNSON'S ULTERIOR MOTIVE By ADELINE CHAMPNEY In The Public. IS it possible that the people, the plain people, have become so materialistic that they can no longer believe in the existence...
...But Tcm Johnson is more than a politician...
...He said to himself, "What can I do...
...a free land...
...He's been trying foh de las' six weeks to get rid o' me...
...I wanted to fight Privilege and Special Interest, and I had already decided to give up working for dollars............I don't want you to misunderstand what I have been working for as Mayor...
...he has never made a promise he did not intend to keep...
...He may have played horse with precedent and red-tape in trying to make adjustments by his own scale of value and relative importance...
...And he has fought the fight, not as a hireling, but as his own fight, in making all else subservient to it...
...They see him courageous under loss of fortune, patient under ingratitude aiid political reverses, indomitable in the face of possible defeat, and they do not understand it...
...He's just feathering his own nest, that's all...
...The ordinary "good" man, honest even to incorruptibility though he may be, becomes a ludicrous and pitiful spectacle in the hands of the Big Business interests...
...Erastus Pinkley, "I hates to give in...
...Is this the reason why such absurd calumnies, circulated by men whose conception of argument is epithet and abuse, seeem to gain credence with many honest folk...
...His indomitable energy, impatient of restraint, has tried to take short-cuts which have been nearer related to common sense than to legality...
...That is the "private gain" for which he is using his public office...
...And on the Cleveland street corners one even hears in round numbers the exact amounts he has "made in this street car deal...
...His optimism may have led him to promise too much, through overestimating his own power of fulfillment...
...Johnson has sometimes taken the wrong way to do the right thing...
...He has never betrayed a trust...
...He has set scheme against scheme, strategy against strategy, for eight long years, and he has fought so hard, and at such cost—losing the bulk of his own fortune in the meantime—that people are suspecting there is something more than a pre-election pledge behind all this...
...Certain papers continually refer to Mayor Johnson of Cleveland as "using public office for private gain...
...a free people...
...His idealism is of the rarely practical sort that goes to work...
...it is the sole reason for their existence...
...And in this their instinct is partly right...
...He is not of the sort to think himself great and demand recognition because he has conceived a fine ideal...
...Perhaps they are accustomed to associate an idealist with a pulpit...
...His methods are those of the politician, but his aims and purposes are those of the idealist...
...It is this Johnson who will be remembered—Johnson the Idealist—when the mistakes of Johnson the politician have been forgotten...
...But Tom Johnson is in the mayor's chair because he was placed there by the people to accomplish a certain result...
...They look for ulterior motives...
...Well, suh," answered Mr...
...a dream of a city, a great city...
...No man, so they reason, would work so hard, and risk so much, without some personal end in view...
...They see Johnson as a politician, skilled in all the tricks of the trade, and they grow suspicious of him...
...As a matter of fact, "they" are not alike...
...He is working hard now to protect the Forest City shareholders, many of whom were led to invest through their personal confidence in Johnson, and his assurances of the safety of the investment...
...But the time came to Tom Johnson, millionaire, practical man of affairs, when he had a dream...
...He has never for a moment stopped fighting the people's fight, since they elected him to office...
...To accomplish this, required something more than a good and honest man...
...They see his political methods...
...He does not know how to fight fire with fire...
...Tom Johnson is not at heart a politician at all...
...They, at least, know the solidarity of their interests...
...No politician works as Johnson has worked, as Johnson is working, for the mere fulfillment of pre-election pledges, for the emoluments attaching to the mayoralty, and the honor of being called the "best mayor of the best governed city...
...He may have overvalued his friends...
...There's six in one, a half dozen in the other...
...And because he saw an opportunity right at home, in Cleveland, to begin the realization of that dream, he is giving the best years of his life, the best of his vitality and energy, to breaking the chains of special privilege, and restoring the city to the plain people...
...It wasn't a pipe dream, neither did he clothe it in fine phrases and go seeking a publisher...
...They are in Cleveland for that purpose...
...To some, this aspect of Tom Johnson as an idealist may seem incongruous...
...That is the ulterior motive which keeps Tom Johnson in the fight...
...It is no calumny to say that the old street railway company are working for financial gain...
...May the understanding not come too late for their own good...
...But he has never wilfully broken a promise...
...And here and there are heard such sentiments as these: "Tom Johnson is trying to fill his own pockets...
...This aspect of Johnson's character is not patent to the casual observer, and few of the plain people are more than casual...
...And Tom Johnson in Cleveland today is fighting the fight for low fare, not merely because he was elected on that platform, but because he had a dream...
...And to oppose the privilege of great public service corporations is to array one's self against the like interests of the whole country...
...He is no match for their methods...
...they have never made any pledge to do otherwise...
...to break the hold of the traction company on the streets, and to reduce the rate of fare...
...I haven't been laboring with the expectation of being reivarded by the gratitude of the people...
...they see his mistakes, and they are plenty...
...he has doubtless been over-generous toward his own and the people's enemies...
...and he is doing this for the satisfaction of working along the line of his own ideal...
...If I was to trade dat mule off he'd regard it as a personal victory...
...They're all alike...
...Tom Johnson undertook this fight against the traction interests with full knowledge of the magnitude of the task, and with confidence in his own equipment for it...
...IS it possible that the people, the plain people, have become so materialistic that they can no longer believe in the existence of ideals and idealists...
...The plain people have yet to learn their own solidarity...
...It is this Tom Johnson who will be honored and dealt with justly by the plain people, when they understand...
...And our own Tom Johnson, round of person, jovial of manner, with his keen sense of humor, his restless energy and untiring perserverance, with a head full of resources and a mouth full of practical, everyday common-sense, does not fit the picture...
...As he expressed it in an interview last fall, after the referendum and shortly after the loss of his fortune: "I er.tered the fight in this city with certain ideals before me...
...Determination "Why don't you get rid of that mule...
...San Francisco Star...
...One cannot count on that...It's pleasure in doing work that I ike, that has kept me in the fight...
...Tom Johnson needs the people far less than the people need Tom Johnson...
...to picture him lank of person and long of hair, with soulful eyes and upward gaze, with a head full of visions and a mouth full of metaphysics...
...He does not talk about it...
Vol. 1 • August 1909 • No. 33
