Municipal government -- United States; Political corruption -- United States
Minneapolis was an example of police corruption; St. Louis of financial
corruption. Pittsburg is an example of both police and financial
corruption. The two other cities have found each an official who has
exposed them. Pittsburg has had no such man and no exposure. The city
has been described physically as “Hell with the lid off”; politically it
is hell with the lid on. I am not going to lift the lid. The exposition
of what the people know and stand is the purpose of these articles, not
the exposure of corruption, and the exposure of Pittsburg is not
necessary. There are earnest men in the town who declare it must blow up
of itself soon. I doubt that; but even if it does burst, the people of
Pittsburg will learn little more than they know now. It is not ignorance
that keeps American citizens subservient; neither is it indifference.
The Pittsburgers know, and a strong minority of them care; they have
risen against their ring and beaten it, only to look about and find
another ring around them. Angry and ashamed, Pittsburg is a type of the
city that has tried to be free and failed.
A sturdy city it is, too, the second in Pennsylvania. Two rivers flow
past it to make a third, the Ohio, in front, and all around and beneath
it are natural gas and coal which feed a thousand furnaces that smoke
all day and flame all night to make Pittsburg the Birmingham of America.
Rich in natural resources, it is richest in the quality of its
population. Six days and six nights these people labor, molding iron and
forging steel, and they are not tired; on the seventh day they rest,
because that is the Sabbath. They are Scotch Presbyterians and
Protestant Irish. This stock had an actual majority not many years ago,
and now, though the population has grown to 354,000 in Pittsburg proper
(counting Allegheny across the river, 130,000, and other communities,
politically separate, but essentially integral parts of the proposed
Greater Pittsburg, the total is 750,000), the Scotch and Scotch-Irish
still predominate, and their clean, strong faces characterize the crowds
in the streets. Canny, busy, and brave, they built up their city almost
in secret, making millions and hardly mentioning it. Not till outsiders
came in to buy some of them out did the world (and Pittsburg and some of
the millionaires in it) discover that the Iron City had been making not
only steel and glass, but multimillionaires. A banker told a business
man as a secret one day about three years ago that within six months a
“bunch of about a hundred new millionaires would be born in Pittsburg,”
and the births happened on time. And more beside. But even the bloom of
millions did not hurt the city. Pittsburg is an unpretentious,
prosperous city of tremendous industry and healthy, steady men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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