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HONORABLE JOHN F. FITZGERALD 

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iv MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



Page. 

The New England Church 61 

At the Congregational Conference, October 10, 1910. 

Loss of a Steamship Line 63 

Letter to Chamber of Commerce, October 18, 1910. 

Franklin Park Zoo 64 

Letter to United Improvement Association, November 8, 1910. 

Waterways 67 

Letter to Chamber of Commerce, February 8, 1910. 
Greek Union 70 

At Pan-Hellenic Meeting, February 17, 1911. 
Home Rule 73 

Northampton, March 17, 1911. 
Fire Conditions 76 

Letter to various public bodies, March 29, 1911. 
A State Finance Commission 77 

At Rockland Board of Trade, April 26, 1911. 
Mortmain 79 

Special Article, May 4, 1911. 
Defeat of Fire Hazard Bill 83 

Statement, May 12, 1911. 
Canadian Reciprocity 85 

Statement, May 28, 1911. 
Memorial Day 87 

Speech at Sandwich, May 30, 1911. 
West End Merger 89 

From Speech at Canobie Lake, June 24, 1911. 
Needs of the Fire Department 91 

Letter to Finance Commission, August 31, 1911. 
Industry in New England 94 

Industrial and Educational Exposition, October 20, 1911. 
The Irish Literary Revival 98 

At First Performance of Abbey Theatre Company, September 
25, 1911. 
Street Improvements 99 

Letter to Chamber of Commerce, January 27, 1912. 
Boston Catholics 101 

Reception to Cardinal O'Connell. 
Irish in New England 106 

Charitable Irish Society Banquet, March 18, 1912. 
Titanic INIemorial Ill 

At Faneuil Hall, April 22, 1912. 
Address to Gospel Mission 113 

At Park Street Church, May 13, 1912. 
Preferential Vote 116 

Letter to Matthew Hale, May 27, 1912. 
Forsyth Dental Infirmary 118 

Speech of Acceptance, June 4, 1912. 
Port of Boston 121 

At Navigation Congress Dinner, June o, 1912. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS, 



Page. 

Introduction vii 

Bigger and Better Boston 1 

Franklin Exercises, January 17, 1906. 
Expectation 4 

Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics' Association, March 13, 
1906. 
Public Spirit 7 

Before Committee on Metropohtan Affairs, March 21, 1906. 
Boston's Chinese Trade 8 

Welcome to Chinese Emissary, April 20, 1906. 
Health Measures in Boston . , 11 

Welcome to Medical Congress, June 5, 1906. 
Temperance 15 

Women's Christian Temperance Union Convention, October 
18, 1906. 
Michael Anagnos 16 

Memorial Exercises, Tremont Temple, October 24, 1906. 
The City Club 18 

At the Opening, December, 1906. 
Peace 21 

Peace Day, May 11, 1907. 
The Old Latin School 26 

At King's Chapel Exercises, September 23, 1907. 
General Booth 28 

Welcome, September 27, 1907. 
The Administration of 1906 and 1907 31 

At Fane ail Hall, November 29, 1907. 
The Irish Exiles 45 

March 17, 1907. 
Inland Waterways 46 

At the Waterways Convention, May 19, 1910. 
The Free School 49 

At the Teachers' Convention, July 4, 1910. 
The Finance Commission 51 

Statement, August 18, 1910. 
Maine's Opportunity ; 53 

At Lewiston, Me., September 10, 1910. 
Refusal of Nomination for Governor 58 

Statement, September 26, 1910. 
Unearned Increment 59 

Letter to Finance Commission, October 4, 1910. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. V 

Page. 

General Forbes 125 

Address at Banquet, June 21, 1912. 
In Favor of Wilson " . . 128 

At Rockland, Me., September 5, 1912. 
The Winning Team 131 

Reception to Red Sox, October 17, 1912. 
Steamship Line to Texas 132 

Letter to Banking Houses, October 26, 1912. 
The Senatorship 135 

Faneuil Hall, October 26, 1912. 
The Tariff 141 

October 31, 1912. 
South American Trade 144 

Statement, April 27, 1913. 
Misapprehensions 147 

Gambol of Chamber of Commerce. 
Edward Everett Hale 151 

Speech at Memorial, May 22, 1913. 
Boston College 154 

Dedication of New Buildings, June 15, 1913. 
Metropolitan Planning 159 

At First City and Town Planning Conference, State House, 
November 18, 1913. 
Thanksgiving 163 

Statement, November 27, 1913. 
Governor General Forbes ' 164 

City Club Banquet, December 2, 1913. 



BIGGER AND BETTER BOSTON. 
Franklin Exercises, January 17, 1906. 



My honored predecessor in his happy introduction 
has asked me to explain wherein Boston is bigger and 
better to-day than she was in the time of Frankhn. I 
do not think those of you who have eyes and ears will 
entertain any doubts as to her tangible growth. The 
Boston that Franklin knew was planted on three low 
hills which gave its first name to the peninsula. Dor- 
chester and South Boston were then dotted with farms; 
Cambridge and Charlestown were aspiring villages the 
other side of the Charles; a thin strip of land united the 
town proper with Roxbury, and along this neck, as it 
was called, three stages a week ran out of the capital of 
New England, which counted in all some 12,000 souls. 

Contrast this picture with the stretch of streets and 
houses, the glittering panorama visible from Great Blue 
Hill in early winter evenings, the trains running north, 
south and west almost every minute of the day, the 
nightly exodus to the suburbs and the swinging back 
and forth all day long of the million persons, more 
or less, who now ply their occupations within our 
boundaries. 

There is no doubt Boston is bigger and busier. I 
believe, also, that she is better, though not so good as 
she might be and will be if we all give a little of our 
strength and enthusiasm towards making her so. Her 
laws are now framed by free citizens and not by a foreign 
parliament, owing allegiance to an imbecile king. Her 
children are well taught, her poor relieved, her sick 
healed. The blind, the dumb, the crippled, the aged, 
the insane are not without friends and providers among 
us. Our works of positive achievement, — our parks, 
libraries, churches, museums, banks, theaters, shops and 
factories, — compare favorably with those of any city of 



2 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

similar age and size. The Boston of to-day encircling 
its beautiful harbor and reaching back among the hills 
and rivers of the interior is a monument of human 
achievement, a great symbol erected by ten generations 
of builders to bear witness to their labors and to the spirit 
that ruled them. It is better than the straggling townlet 
of 200 years ago as fulfillment is better than promise and 
the ripe fruit and flower superior to the seed. 

It is fitting that Boston should commemorate the 
birth of Franklin, because Boston was the scene of that 
memorable event. That he did not forget his birth- 
place and the home of his boyhood is evident from his 
liberal bequest of funds for the benefit of his former 
townsmen — one of them long devoted to the award 
of prize medals in our public schools, the other soon 
to be consecrated to some great measure of social 
improvement. 

This great benefactor of our city and of his race was 
one of seventeen children, — the son of a poor soap 
boiler and himself by occupation a printer. He made 
the most of his opportunities, perhaps I ought to say he 
made his opportunities, and became rich, wise, powerful 
and famous. But riches, wisdom and power were 
merely instruments which he used to benefit his fellow 
man. He beheld the pomp of courts, the glories and 
frivolities of London and Versailles with unmoved 
composure and wore the homespun garments woven by 
his wife into the presence of ministers and kings. He 
was our first great democrat, his whole biography a 
perfect illustration of the simple life. 

We do not think of Franklin as a patriot or statesman 
mainly, although he bore a part second to none but 
Washington in the creation of our Union. He was 
delegate to the Continental Congress, minister to Paris 
throughout the War of Independence, and a member of 
the convention which framed the Constitution. But he 
did not owe his reputation to these activities, or to any 
part which he took in public life or the wars of the young 
colonies. In the groups of brilliant soldiers and states- 
men whom the need of that great hour wakened to high 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 3 

achievements, he stands a figure apart, calm, reflective 
and mature. He belonged, in fact, to an earlier genera- 
tion. In the year of the signing of the Declaration of 
Independence Franklin was a venerable sage of seventy. 
Washington himself was but forty-four, Jefferson thirty- 
three and Hamilton nineteen. The others had their 
reputations to make. Franklin was already successful 
in commerce, a household word in literature, renowned 
throughout two continents in science and invention. 
And, although he added to the lustre of his fame by his 
conduct in the trying period that followed, still it is 
not as a diplomat that he is remembered to-day. We 
think of him in his more characteristic pursuits, as the 
inventor of the lightning rod, the founder of a public 
library, the organizer of a fire department, the indus- 
trious experimenter in all directions that promised 
practical advantage to his fellowmen. 

If Franklin were alive to-day it is easy to believe 
that, with alj the changes in our civilization, he would 
yet devote himself to the same ends and in the same 
spirit. I doubt if he would strive for that sort of 
success which puts some men of our day on pinnacles, 
elevated to such dizzy heights that they seem separate 
from the rest of humankind. Franklin's nature was 
social, his ambition involved service. In these days of 
feverish and reckless speculation the youth of our city 
could not have a better model than this printer's 
apprentice who rose out of want by frugality and indus- 
try and made himself the ^third figure in our national 
history, surpassing even Washington and Lincoln as a 
philosopher and a practical humanitarian, and falling 
behind them mainly in the fact that he never knew the 
responsibilities of leadership before the whole nation. 
Of them also it might have been written that they took 
away the sceptre from tyrants, but of Franklin alone 
it can be said that he drew down the lightning from 
heaven. He cannot be called, like Washington, first in 
war or first in the hearts of his countrymen, but he may 
dispute even with the father of his country himself the 
honor of being the first American in the arts of peace. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



EXPECTATION. 

Before Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic 
Association, March 13, 1906. 



Gentlemen, — Your toastmaster has told you what 
the people expect of their elected magistrates. To all 
that he has said I subscribe most devoutly. The citizens 
of Boston have chosen me to serve them and I feel 
bound in honor to labor strenuously and scrupulously 
for their interests. This, their expectation, is my graven 
purpose and rooted resolve. 

In carrying out that resolve no class of the com- 
munity can be of more assistance than you, the manu- 
facturers and master mechanics. Among the most 
vivid recollections of my youth is my annual or, at least, 
periodic visit to the exhibitions held in this building. 
Looking back upon them now, I realize more than ever 
their value as a school for the young, in kindUng their 
ambition and stimulating an interest in applied mechan- 
ics and practical invention. They made the useful 
arts as fascinating as the Arabian Nights' entertain- 
ments and revealed the wonderland of progress and 
experiment that envelopes the plain world of everyday 
industry. They taught, also, by the silent sermon of 
the happy mechanic tending his machine a high respect 
for work. Any live boy, able to appreciate his own box 
of Christmas tools, could see that men who made things 
with their hands held an honorable position in society 
and, if well treated by their employers, were generally 
happy in their labors. Certainly there is no better 
model to hold before the eyes of average boyhood than 
the skilled artisan, ingenious, versatile and productive, 
and as a rule a good citizen and sterling patriot. 

I am here to assure you that Boston understands the 
important share such men have had in developing and 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 5 

upholding her prosperity. Our wealth is not in forests, 
farms or mines, for we have few of these within the city 
limits. It is in the things we make, sell or ship by land 
and sea. If you set out a wharf, a railroad station, a 
store and a mill you will have laid the four corner- 
stones of our industrial prosperity. Your association 
represents the application of brains to raw material, so 
that something — design, quality, texture or what not 
— is added to it, its substance is refined in some one of a 
million ways and its value multiplied many times. A 
rough block of spruce wood becomes a ream of tinted 
stationery. A ton of pig iron from Pittsburgh goes 
back transformed into watch springs, needles or steel 
pens. These magic processes are the miracles of modern 
science, and the men who discover or apply them bring 
wealth and credit to the community in which they live. 
Boston has never lacked such men and never failed to 
appreciate their worth. 

Still, looking over the census of 1900 the other day, I 
found some evidence which made me think there might 
be room for greater activity even in manufactures and 
the mechanic arts in Boston. The capital invested in 
manufactures in this city was given as $143,000,000, 
while that invested in St. Louis was $162,000,000. In 
certain lines of manufacture — for example, in musical 
instruments and in rubber goods — we far surpassed 
our sister city of nearly equal population, having about 
$7,000,000 invested in those industries, while St. Louis 
has almost nothing. But I could not understand why 
St. Louis should have $2,000,000 invested in the manu- 
facture of chemicals, while Boston has only $132,000, 
or why she should have $1,000,000 in leather manufac- 
tures, while Boston in the heart of the leather district 
has only $104,000. These comparisons and others 
which might be made suggest that the hour is ripe for a 
careful scrutiny of our commercial methods and our 
educational system. 

Personally I expect, to return once more to my cue 
word, that our greatest future development in addi- 



6 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

tion to our commercial expansion will be in those fields 
in which the fine arts lend grace and charm to objects 
of practical utility. I look to see Boston famous for her 
fabrics, jewelry, bronzes, bookmaking, scientific appa- 
ratus, artistic pottery and woodwork, and in other 
fields that call for preeminent taste and skill. The 
culture and ingenuity of our people ought to find 
expression in these forms, and by such development we 
can easily meet the pressure of competition and main- 
tain our traditional leadership. 

It is you, gentlemen, or your colleagues and suc- 
cessors who will realize this expectation of mine. For, 
after all, my forecast would be an idle dream were it not 
for the broad foundation you have laid and the spirit 
you have kept alive for more than a hundred years. I 
expect, when my hopes are consummated, to see this 
building, ample as it seems to our present-day imagina- 
tions, far outgrown and your membership list swollen 
so as to tax the industry of your capable secretary and a 
large corps of assistants. In a word, I prophesy and 
wish for you all the pleasant embarrassments that 
accompany rapid expansion and a success beyond 
expectations. I am willing to accept the vigor of this 
association so characteristic and representative of the 
genius of the New England people as a fair measure of 
the prosperity of Boston. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



PUBLIC SPIRIT. 

Before Committee on Metropolitan Affairs, 

March 21, 1906. 



I trust that the ladies and gentlemen who are opposed 
to this legislation will show a proper public spirit in 
connection with this enterprise. I regret to say that I 
think it has not been shown in the past. Every attempt 
that has been made to assess damages for betterments 
along Beacon street, whether it has been in the nature 
of a sewer assessment or for other purposes, has met 
with opposition from the Beacon street residents. 
I do not think that the action, of these wealthy, influen- 
tial and highly educated people has been such as to 
set a good example to the community. The period of 
unrest that is manifest in every part of the country is 
the result of rapacity shown up in court and in legisla- 
tive proceedings of the wealthy men of the country. 
It is the persons who have large wealth, education and 
good circumstances who ought to lead the way and 
show a proper public spirit. This has not been the case 
with the Beacon street residents. They have shown a 
desire in every possible way to escape legitimate taxes 
and are willing to get all the advantages of the expendi- 
ture of large sums of money from the public treasury 
without making any return whatever. These men and 
women know that this is^ not sound ethics. It is graft 
in its most insidious form. Actions of this kind tend 
more to the weakening of our public spirit than 
complete and barefaced thieving. I hope, therefore, 
gentlemen of the committee, that this matter will be 
considered with a view to the welfare of the one million 
two hundred thousand people of the metropolitan dis- 
trict who will be compelled to pay for the improve- 
ment which is going to directly benefit two hundred 
residents of Beacon street. I trust that it will be con- 
sidered in the larger sense of the welfare of the entire 
metropolitan district rather than that of a few. 



8 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



BOSTON'S CHINESE TRADE. 

Welcome to Chinese Emissaries, April 20, 1906. 



Mr. Chairman, — If my recollections of early studies 
in geography are correct, a shaft sunk through the earth 
directly under my feet would come out somewhere 
west of Pekin, in the province governed by our dis- 
tinguished guest, Commissioner Tai Hung Chi. In 
other words, the envoys of the Empress of China could 
scarcely travel farther away from their native land 
than they are at this moment. Half the circumference 
of the globe separates them from the kingdom of rice, 
friends, and bamboo forests, of tea gardens and teeming 
rivers, which they left a few weeks ago. Whether 
their course, in leaving us, takes them to the east or to 
the west, either way they will be headed for home. 

Yet, distant as this City of Boston is from China, 
more than a hundred years ago its merchants and 
sailors had found a path across the seas to the ancient 
empire of the East. One of the most romantic episodes 
in our history was the creation of the Chinese trade, 
which strengthened the foundations of our commercial 
prosperity and bred a race of ''gentlemen adventurers" 
of whose enterprise and citizenship their descendants 
are justly proud. 

It was in 1790 that the Boston ship ''Columbia'' set 
sail for Cape Horn, visited the Oregon shore on her 
way to Canton, then the only open port of China, and 
returned to Boston by way of the Cape of Good Hope, 
having been the first American vessel to circumnavigate 
the earth. It was a three years' voyage, in a little 
wooden vessel, with mere boys as navigators, through 
seas infested with pirates and hostile natives, yet, on the 
whole, as good a course of study and discipline, as 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 9 

complete a training for the faculties that make men 
and nations great, as any modern college affords. 

As you know, a strong current of trade sprang up 
between Boston and Canton. Nearly half the com- 
merce between the United States and China, from 1810 
to 1840, was in the hands of the Boston house of Bryant 
& Sturgis. Great family fortunes were founded by the 
enterprise of those boyish navigators (in whom love of 
adventure, no doubt, whetted the desire for gain), and 
the names of Perkins, Forbes, Bromfield, Russell, 
Derby, Sears, Parkman, Lyman and Low are inseparable 
from that splendid passage in our history. From 
China the merchantmen brought tea, silk, nankeen and 
crepe. In return they gave specie, ginseng (highly 
prized in the Orient for its medicinal properties) and 
the pelts of sea otters captured on the northwest coast 
of America. 

I regret to have to add that this thriving trade was 
ruined by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature. A 
tax on the returning cargoes, imposed in arrogant dis- 
regard of the protests of the merchants of Boston. 
It is my earnest hope that some day our distinguished 
visitors may visit our city again and be witness to our 
old-time activity in China's trade and commerce. 

And so these mariners of Boston who had sailed 
their vessels to Calcutta and Cronstadt, to California 
and the Mediterranean, knitted together by their 
daring voyages the oldest and the youngest civilizations 
of the earth. Times have changed since the first half 
of the nineteenth century. The vessels in which these 
long journeys were made were very different from those 
in which you, gentlemen, crossed the ocean to honor 
us with your visit. But the memory of those old 
commercial relations has not faded out, and I am sure 
that you cannot visit any part of America in which you 
will meet a more genuine hospitality and a more sincere 
interest in the purposes of your investigation. It may 
be that in the city of Canton there still lingers some 



10 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

recollection of the white traders who came there and 
established agencies in the city long ago, — who looked 
like EngUshmen but were particular to explain that 
they belonged to a different nation. At any rate, we in 
Boston have not forgotten the benefits of our early 
Chinese trade. Our city contains many mementos of 
that period, as well as evidences of our interest in the 
great and wonderful civilization which you, gentlemen, 
represent. It was my privilege to accompany you 
yesterday on your tour of inspection and to note the grave 
courtesy and the high intelligence of your commentary 
on what you saw. May the remainder of your journey 
be as profitable and pleasant as we trust your stay in 
Boston has been, and may its fruit be a closer knitting 
of the bonds of friendship and understanding between 
two great peoples! 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 11 



HEALTH MEASURES IN BOSTON. 
Welcome to Medical Congress, June 5, 1906. 



Gentlemen, — Once more, after an interval of forty- 
one years, your association holds its convention in 
Boston, and I, as Mayor, am privileged to throw open 
to you the gates of our official hospitality. It is indeed 
a rare privilege to greet the representatives of a profes- 
sion which renders such universal service and has a 
personal claim on the good will of every man. Dealing 
with life itself, and the mysteries of birth and death 
which envelop it, you develop in your calling the finest 
virtues of our nature. When we read of the young 
physicians in Cuba and New Orleans, giving up their 
lives in experiments designed to trace the source of 
yellow fever, and when we remember that such instances 
of heroic sacrifice are the commonplace of medical 
history, we understand why the title of doctor is every- 
where one of dignity and affection. 

You come from many states and foreign countries, 
single-minded in your devotion to a great central idea. 
I trust that during your stay in Boston you will observe 
that the government of this city is not uninfluenced by 
the same idea, but feels its due responsibility for the 
health of the people. We provide sanitary living con- 
ditions, a pure water supply, inspection of milk and 
vinegar, registration and quarantine of all contagious 
or infec Jous diseases, hygienic instruction in the public 
schools, public baths, gymnasia and playgrounds. Any 
inspection of our efforts in the field of hygiene which 
should ignore the last-named agencies would be sadly 
incomplete, for as you know prevention in this matter is 
a thousand times better than cure. 

Yet prevention is not always possible in spite of all 
our efforts. There has always been practice enough for 



12 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

physicians and surgeons in Boston, and I believe we 
have had our share of the great names of your profession. 
One chair alone, the Parkman professorship of Anatomy 
at Harvard, has had four such distinguished occupants 
as John Warren, J. Collins Warren, Oliver Wendell 
Holmes and Thomas Dwight, my associate in this 
reception, and an honored member of the Board of 
Library Trustees. Indeed, the faculty of the Harvard 
Medical School has never been without names of national 
and international eminence, and the Ether Monument 
on the Public Garden, erected in honor of Dr. W. T. G. 
Morton, certainly commemorates one of the greatest 
discoveries ever made in the history of medicine. 

Most of you, I presume, will visit our various medical 
colleges while you are here, and some of our well equipped 
hospitals, from the Massachusetts General Hospital, the 
oldest of all, to the City Hospital, of which Boston is no 
less proud than of its public library, its schools, its park 
system and its water works. The land and buildings 
of this institution represent an investment of nearly 
three million dollars, and its various departments con- 
tain nearly a thousand beds. Its administration, which 
is in the hands of a Board of Trustees, giving time 
and services without pay, is of the highest order, 
while the progressive spirit of its medical staff may be 
judged from the fact that the Boston City Hospital was 
among the first to introduce pathological study in 
clinical work and to use anti-toxin for diphtheria and 
the X-ray for diagnosis. 

Other hospitals may be mentioned as deserving credit 
for success in special fields — such as the Carney Hos- 
pital, which for a long time was alone in receiving 
consumptive patients, and the Children's Hospital 
which has done such noble work in correcting deformities 
and in preserving precious young lives. But there is 
one hospital which is still to arrive, and one monument 
not yet erected. The people of Boston have in tubercu- 
losis a foe as implacable and as insidious as the typhoid 
fever which scourges Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 13 

have recently organized our defensive forces, and laid 
the foundation of what I prophesy will be a great 
institution, and I here and now promise a monument, 
built by popular subscription, on any site he may select 
to the member of your profession who shall forge the 
weapon by which we may effectively check the ravages of 
the White Plague. 

Long addresses are not to your taste, gentlemen. Let 
me then briefly but heartily bid you welcome to Boston. 
I trust that your deliberations may be fruitful in good 
results for suffering humanity, and that you may succeed 
in your efforts to raise the standard of membership in 
your honorable profession. 



14 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



TEMPERANCE. 
W. C. T. U. Convention, October 18, 1906. 



A few years ago Boston was honored by the presence 
of delegates from the International Peace Society hold- 
ing their annual convention in Tremont Temple. iVmong 
those present were representatives from many lands, 
including men and women of world-wide reputation — 
Pastor Wagner from France, Baroness Von Sutton from 
Germany, Dr. William Walsh from Scotland and, by no 
means least in eloquence and charm, a Chinese woman 
physician who addressed the gatherings in the pure 
English of a Wellesley graduate. 

I seem to see the same forces, if not the same personali- 
ties, assembled before me to-day. Your movement no 
less than the mission of the peace delegates has a 
universal appeal because, sad to say, it also fulfils a 
universal need. Intemperance like war knows neither 
latitude nor longitude, and the army that pursues it in 
all its habitations must fly the flag of every nation 
under the sun. Such an army must be nonpartisan, 
nonsectarian, international, and thus incidentally pro- 
mote the spread of the spirit of human brotherhood; 
for, as far as I know, there is no race or sect or country 
free from the plague of inebriety. 

But if the evil is great — and I think it is hardly 
possible for the wildest extremist to exaggerate it — 
the forces of redemption are stronger still. You all 
know what Father Mathew did for Ireland, what Lady 
Somerset has done in England, and the signs of the times 
point to the sure, if gradual, triumph in America of the 
cause for which so many genuine apostles have lived, 
the cause for which you, whom we are proud to welcome 
as our city's guests on this occasion, are sacrificing time 
and energy and means with no thought of personal 
reward. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 15 

You will find, I think, right here in Boston manifest 
evidences of improvement: In the diminished consump- 
tion of liquor, the reduced number of arrests for 
intoxication, and the comparative absence of dis- 
graceful exhibitions in the public streets. Here, as 
elsewhere, the working class, and that includes all of 
us except a negligible fraction, are learning that alcoholic 
indulgence is the surest means of impairing the faculties 
and reducing earning capacity. Employers, in self- 
defence, are raising the standard among their help, the 
labor unions are exerting a powerful influence within 
their own ranks, and thus economic pressure, adding its 
force to the social stigma and. religious and ethical 
appeal, is writing the legible marks of sobriety, happiness 
and health on the population which you will observe 
during your sojourn here. 

What this means to the state and the city everyone 
knows. As drunkenness decreases, crime, poverty and 
disease, its legitimate offspring, must tend to disappear, 
and the people at large will be relieved of the burden 
of supporting a huge multitude of delinquents and 
incapables. 

Speaking then as an official I am glad to offer you my 
warmest sympathy in your noble efforts at reform. 
the greatest variety in our membership 
in order that there may be at least one social organiza- 
tion in the city which is thoroughly representative. The 
members of such a body cannot fail to gain in mutual 
understanding and in fraternity of spirit, and the club 
as a whole must surely wield an influence toward united 
and coherent action for the welfare of Boston. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 21 



PEACE. 
Peace Day, May 11, 1907. 



In the coming month the nations of the world will 
turn their thoughts and attention to the Second Peace 
Conference to meet at The Hague. Upon the decision 
of that tribunal will hang the future happiness or sorrow 
of millions of our fellow beings. There will be none who 
w411 wait and watch for the final judgment of the assem- 
bled delegates with a deeper interest, a more fervent 
hope, or a fuller realization of the woe that war entails 
than the mothers of men throughout the world. It is 
they who in the final analysis of war will be found to 
have paid the dearest cost. It is they who have come 
to know the full meaning of Longfellow's lines : 

The tumult of each sacked and burning village, 
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns, 

The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage, 
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns. 

The prominent part played by women in the recent 
Peace Congress is theirs by right. And it is to united 
womanhood that we must continue to look for the guid- 
ing force to drive war and its horrors from the face of 
God's earth. It is through the efforts of such organiza- 
tions as the Massachusetts Federation of Women's 
Clubs that this and similar reforms are to be advanced, 
and it is to the noblest of Boston's daughters, Julia 
Ward Howe, the honorary president of the Federation, 
that the chief honor of the work already accomplished 
belongs. 

In every movement instituted during the past hundred 
years that has had for its object the improvement of 
the moral or physical well-being of mankind, the citizens 
of Boston have ever been leaders. While it was here in 



22 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the streets of our city that the first blood was shed for 
American Independence, here, too, was planned the 
first International Peace Congress in the world, which 
resulted in the meeting held in London in 1843. And 
although Philadelphia claims the honor of establishing 
in 1815 the first Peace Society for the promotion of 
universal peace, it was the following year that the Massa- 
chusetts Peace Society was formed under the guidance 
of Noah Worcester, Channing and Sumner. Here in 
1869 was held the great Peace Jubilee under the direc- 
tion of Gilmore. There were assembled on the Coliseum 
Grounds at that time an orchestra and chorus embracing 
musicians and singers from every quarter of the globe in 
a monster peace celebration, the memory of which 
remains unique in the world. In October, 1904, the 
International Peace Congress held its meeting here in 
Boston, where the entire movement for the world's 
peace as at present organized had its inception sixty-five 
years ago. 

In the discussion incident to the proceedings of the 
recent congress held in New York City it was gravely 
suggested by men whose education and training should 
have taught them better, that war was a necessary evil 
and would continue so long as man remained human. 
The utter fallacy of such a position is apparent to every 
reader of history, to every student of men. The truth 
is that war will continue just so long as nations or 
powerful individuals find in it a source of profit. It will 
continue until man has been taught to apply to the 
solution of international questions the same code of 
reason and law which he relies upon for the adjustment 
of his private affairs. No sane man desirous of collect- 
ing an account from a debtor would think of calling on 
him armed to the teeth and presenting to him the 
alternative of being shot to pieces or paying on the spot. 
Nor is any man's honor vindicated by his putting a 
bullet into him who assails it. He merely stops one 
tongue and adds the stain of murder to the honor he 
would defend. Yet this is exactly the attitude of 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 23 

nations; a demonstration of force is deemed necessary 
to back up each and every demand whether just or 
unjust. In a single generation, during the past cen- 
tury, the so-called Christian countries of Europe and 
America gave proof of their belief in the teachings of 
the Divine Apostle of Peace by slaughtering 2,200,000 of 
his creatures as a gory tribute to national honor. Aside 
from the homes made desolate, and the attendant 
suffering in varied forms resulting from these conflicts, 
the actual money cost has been computed at thirteen 
billions of dollars; a sum greater by a billion dollars 
than the total assessed valuation of the entire United 
States forty years ago. 

It seems a trifle strange, in view of the apparent 
earnestness of the various countries represented at the 
Hague, that the world's expenditures for purposes of war 
have increased at a greater rate during the past five years 
than for any similar period since 1881. Great Britain's 
expenses in this direction have more than doubled in 
the past twenty-five years; Germany's have trebled; 
Russia's have trebled; Japan's more than quadrupled, 
while the peace-loving United States has doubled its 
expenditures. Although President Roosevelt says we 
maintain but an infinitesimal army, our expenditures 
for its support have trebled in the last generation. 
Though it is claimed that our navy is not being increased 
in power, we are spending on it to-day $16.40 of each 
$100 appropriated by Congress for all purposes, as 
against $6.20 in 1885. 

Despite conditions, however, despite this enormous 
increase in expenditure for war by every nation on 
earth, the end of war as a means for settling interna- 
tional disputes is in sight. Thanks to the spread of 
education, the plain citizen, whose principal interest in 
the matter is to pay the cost, is beginning to realize that 
it is not he but the ship builder, the ordnance and armor 
plate manufacturer who reaps the profit. He is learn- 
ing to question the wisdom of spending millions of 
money and sacrificing the lives of thousands of men for 



24 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

no purpose that he can see but that this or that trust or 
monopoly should gain thereby some trade concession. 
He is told that trade follows the flag, but he is beginning 
to wonder how profitable that trade will be to him if 
for each $1,000 of trade so won he is compelled to pay 
a million dollars for protection. He is coming to realize 
that the money spent to-day for the maintenance of 
armed peace would pay for the reclamation of every 
desert and arid tract of land on earth; would supply 
millions of people with homes; would establish indus- 
trial education throughout the entire world, and put 
every unemployed man to profitable labor; that it 
would establish a world-wide system of old age pen- 
sions, or enable man to successfully combat poverty 
and disease. It would mean that the millions of picked 
men who comprise the standing armies of the world 
could return to the pursuit of arts and industries. It 
would do all these and a thousand other things, but 
above all it would promote the universal happiness of 
mankind. William Penn's plan for universal peace was 
not a dream; his estimate of the resultant good will 
yet be proven true. 

In the prosecution of this work none should deprecate 
the great good that must result from free discussion of 
the entire question, nor should we fail to recognize the 
power for good that rests in the hands of women organ- 
ized for the promotion of human happiness. The 
Massachusetts Federation, with its 200 clubs and 
upwards of 25,000 members, has established a noble 
record during the fourteen years since its formation. 
Nor is it to be wondered at with the venerable Mrs. 
Howe acting as its president during the first years of its 
growth. To few persons in the world belong a greater 
part in the abolition of slavery than is her share, and it 
is to her and to the mothers of the world that we must 
look for support in the grandest work ever undertaken 
by mankind, the abolition of war. 

It is woman who is ever called upon to make the 
supreme sacrifice. While the world rings from end to 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 25 

end with the glory of this or that military hero, no word 
is heard of the mother who bore him, no word is heard 
of the mothers of those who gave their lives for his 
renown. No thought is taken of the hopes and fears 
which beset each mother's heart during the long years 
from infancy to manhood, when as she fondly hoped he 
would stand beside her in his full strength, her pride 
and protector. None reck of her misery when that day 
has come and she learns in sorrow and bitterness that a 
mocking fate has decreed that the son whom she brought 
into the world in pain and anguish was destined to be 
but food for gunpowder. Julia Ward Howe's ''Appeal 
to Womanhood" still rings throughout the world. The 
day described by Whittier is not far distant: 

When earth as on some evil dreams 

Looks back upon her wars, 
And the white light of Christ out-streams 

From the red disk of Mars. 

His fame who led the stormy van 

Of battle well may cease. 
But never that which crowns the man 

Whose victory is peace. 

Who can blame the mothers of men in all the world if, 
until that day shall come, we find them like Zimena, 
*'The Angel of Buena Vista," breathing forth their 
reproach on the battle field as they minister to the 
fallen friend and foe: 

A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth. 
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping lonely in the 
North. 



26 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



THE OLD LATIN SCHOOL. 
At King's Chapel Exercises, September 23, 1907. 



As I stand here in this magnificent presence, in this 
house of prayer and praise, I cannot help thinking how 
appropriate it is that these exercises take place in 
King's Chapel, for is it not true that when the com- 
municants of this church needed larger accommodations, 
the Latin School changed its residence to a site on the 
opposite side of the street and ''Learning gave way to 
the church." How many of our citizens know, or for a 
moment recall, that School street takes its name from 
the fact that on this street stood for generations the 
first free pubhc school in America, the Latin Grammar 
School, whose children assemble here to-day to com- 
memorate in bronze the first successful protest of the 
American boy against foreign oppression. 

In your Fourth of July oration of the year 1897, Dr. 
Hale, you say: ''I believe that if I were in your Honor's 
chair next January, on one of those holidays which 
nobody knows what to do with, I would commemorate 
the first great victory of 1775. To do this well I would 
issue an order that any school boy in Boston who would 
bring his sled to School street might coast down hill all 
day there in memory of that famous coasting in January, 
1775, when the Latin School boys told the Enghsh 
general that to coast on School street had been their 
right 'from time immemorial,' and when they won that 
right from him." 

While there may be serious practical objections to 
such an annual commemoration, we are here to-day to 
show that we are not forgetful of the event and that we 
hold in grateful memory the boys who in the morning 
of the Revolution knew "their rights and knowing dared 
maintain them." 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 27 

As the representative of the city government in 
accepting from you this tablet commemorative of the 
independent spirit of Latin School boys of a bygone 
generation, I am possessed with a feeling of honorable 
pride in the knowledge that I, too, am a Latin School 
boy. In the estabhshment of the Latin School, ante- 
dating by a few years the founding of Harvard College, 
the forefathers laid the foundation of the now universal 
system of free education that is native only to American 
soil. From the beginning the school has been a perfect 
type of democratic institution. Here the child of the 
most aristocratic citizen of the colony sat side by side 
with the boy whose father occupied the most humble 
position; here caste had no meaning. Perfect equality 
was guaranteed to every one w^ithin the colony. For the 
old world question as to the rank and quality of the 
individual voiced in the query ''Who is he?" was 
substituted the inquiry ''What is he?" It was the 
individual himself who counted in those days of empire 
building. All were on the same level; he only was 
considered most worthy who exhibited the greatest 
ability. Nor during the 272 years of the school's 
existence has there been a change in this respect. A 
descendant of the signer of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence will be found sitting side by side with the son 
of a recently arrived immigrant, neither having a 
monopoly of the honors, and each equally proud of the 
traditions of his beloved school. 



28 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



GENERAL BOOTH. 

Welcome, September 27, 1907. 



In welcoming General Booth to our City of Boston, I 
fully appreciate the great honor that is mine, in that I 
am to-day the bearer of Boston's welcome to one of the 
greatest figures in the Christian world. It is because I 
welcome to our city the living personification of an idea; 
of the sublime courage that knows not defeat; of the 
perfect charity that can see none lost, that can see none 
suffer, but best of all, one whose broad tolerance and 
abiding faith in human nature enables him to discern 
the good in even the lowest and most degraded of God's 
creatures. It is due to his perfect optimism and to his 
ability to discover the little grain of gold that exists in 
the moral dross of every man however debased or fallen. 

Throughout the world his fame has gone as one of the 
greatest men of our time; one who has performed a 
great and noble work, and unlike the fate of most men 
who give their lives for the uplifting of their fellows, 
honor has come to him in his lifetime. His whole life, 
since that day forty-six years ago when he took up his 
burden for the sake of humanity, has been one of 
unceasing toil and persistent endeavor; years of it spent 
beneath the jeering scorn of an unthinking and unheed- 
ing world. 

A little tent in the old burial ground at Mile End road 
in East London was his first tabernacle; the denizens of 
Whitechapel formed his first congregation. From that 
small beginning has grown the great organization that 
exists to-day as the Salvation Army, an organization 
represented in fifty-three countries and numbering 700 
army corps, 18,000 officers and millions of privates, 
each and all of whom are imbued with a moiety of the 
indomitable will that inspired their leader. In every 
possible way have his energies been bent to the task of 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 29 

promoting the spiritual, moral and physical welfare of 
humanity of whatever race or color. From first to last 
the entire work of upbuilding the splendid organization 
that fills so important a place in the world to-day has 
been the labor of this giant among men. 

The institutions that have been founded, the homes 
that have been erected to shelter those who have been 
plucked like brands from the burning, form to-day a 
glorious and lasting monument to the genius and devo- 
tion of General Booth. Throughout the world this 
wonderful organization maintains homes for women, for 
boys and girls, rescue missions, and farm colonies. 
It conducts immigration and labor bureaus, naval and 
military homes, a hospital, Indian schools, a bank and an 
insurance company. In its great elevators at London 
it employs hundreds of men sorting and packing tons of 
waste paper. In connection with these elevators there 
is maintained at Battersea a wharf and a large fleet 
of barges for transporting this reclaimed waste product 
to foreign markets where it is sold. 

In the work of the immigration bureau, as conducted 
by the army, there is an object lesson which might well 
be learned by the United States officials in charge of the 
department in this country. It has ever been the 
experience of General Booth that men will work if they 
can find work, but that sometimes too many congregate 
at one point to the disadvantage of all. To remedy this 
fault the army has established labor bureaus everywhere 
to the end that the unemployed may be sent to points 
where their services are in demand. He would solve 
the problem of surplus labor, which often results in 
filling our cities with great armies of unemplo^-ed men, 
by aiding the idle to emigrate to those colonies or 
countries where work in abundance awaits them. Thus 
it will be seen that underlying all the charity so widely 
dispensed by the Salvation Army there is a foundation 
of sound and practical economy. 

How noble, how deserving of fame and honor are the 
works of the Salvation Army, representing as they do 



30 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the labors of a single individual with no other capital 
than an unfailing spirit and a firm belief in himself and 
in his mission. Thus we find General Booth to-day, 
although well past the allotted three score and ten years 
of life, still zealous, still as active and full of enthusiasm 
as when forty years ago he went bravely about his task 
of saving souls and making easy life's tortuous path- 
ways for the suffering and oppressed. In those bygone 
days he was compelled to bear the lash of Huxley's 
scornful ridicule and abuse. Even within the memory 
of many among the young men about us to-night his 
creed and his labors have been targets for the derisive 
jeers of the mob. Yet through it all his steadfast spirit 
has never faltered. He has lived to see the verdict of 
the world reversed. He has lived to hear men say of 
him to-day as Goldsmith sang of the village preacher of 
an older time: 

His house was knoAvn to all the vagrant train; 
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain. 
The long remembered beggar was his guest, 
Whose beard, descending, swept his aged breast; 
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud. 
Claimed kindred there and had his claims allow'd. 

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay. 
Sate by his fire and talked the night away — 
Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done, 
Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won. 
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, 
And quite forgot their vices in their woe; 
Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 
His pity gave ere charity began. 

And as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new fledged offspring to the skies. 
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, 
Allured to brighter worlds and led the way. 
At church, with meek and unaffected grace. 
His looks adorned the venerable place; 
Truth from his lips prevailed, with double sway, 
And fools who came to scoff remained to pray. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 31 



THE ADMINISTRATION OF 1906-07. 
At Faneuil Hall, November 29, 1907. 



I come before you to-day as a candidate for re-election 
to the office of Mayor of Boston, to which I was chosen 
by your suffrages two years ago. I come before you 
standing upon and prepared to defend the record of my 
administration, not as distorted by prejudiced oppo- 
nents, but as disclosed by official facts and figures. I 
am well aware that my administration has not been a 
perfect one, and I am quite certain that in the light of 
my experience in office and with the help of an aroused 
interest in our municipal affairs among the people I 
can improve it during the next two years. But I do 
not shrink from, on the contrary I challenge, any fair 
comparison of my record with that of past administra- 
tions. Democratic or Republican, whether the basis of 
comparison be honesty, economy or efficiency. The 
citizens of Boston certainly intend to be fair. They 
will not charge me with the responsibility for matters 
or for conditions which are wholly outside of the con- 
trol of the Mayor's office, and I do not seek to avoid 
the full responsibility for the exercise of all the powers, 
whether administrative or financial, which our charter 
places in the hands of the Mayor. 

It is no small honor and no light responsibility to be 
the chief magistrate of this great city. Boston stands 
for something, not only in New England or in the 
United States, but in the world. Her patriotic history 
is a part of our common inheritance; her reputation as 
a center of enlightenment, of philanthropy and of pro- 
gressive ideas is dear to all her people. Her deeds of 
charity in the relief of distress and disaster are known 
throughout the world; her hospitals, her schools, her 
philanthropic activities in many varied fields are a 



32 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

source of pride to all of us. The scope of her municipal 
activities is so great, her relations to the welfare of her 
people are so close, that the duties of the Mayor are 
indeed exacting; these duties are so comprehensive and 
the responsibilities accompanying their performance are 
so great that no man has in recent years filled, or ever 
can fill, the office to the full satisfaction of all of our 
citizens or without falling short of its full requirements. 

It is easy to criticise and to distort, to find officials here 
and there who do not fully measure up to an ideal 
standard, to find instances here and there of lax admin- 
istration or of defective systems or methods. An 
administration is entitled to be judged neither by its 
worst nor by its best features, but by the standard of 
its average performance. I have the right to ask to be 
so judged. I make the claim that the present adminis- 
tration when so measured may challenge comparison 
with its predecessors in respect to the average character 
and ability of the new appointee whom it has placed 
in office, in the average character of the municipal 
service which it has maintained, and in its general 
dealings with the finances and business of the city. 

We all know that public opinion in this city as else- 
where has in the last two years grown more exacting 
in the standard which it sets up for public officials. 
While this makes the task of one who presents himself 
as a candidate for re-election a more difficult one, I am 
far from complaining of this advanced attitude of the 
public mind; on the contrary, even though I may have 
to suffer some injustice and overcome many added 
difficulties on account of this change, I welcome it as 
one which is full of promise for the future. If the 
government of Boston is upon the whole, as I believe 
that impartial judges will pronounce it, superior in the 
variety and the character of the service which it renders 
to our citizens than the governments of other great 
American cities, this is because the standards of our 
people have in the past been higher than those which 
have existed elsewhere. If our citizens are now ready. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 33 

as seems to be the case, to elevate still further their 
municipal standards, to demand greater efficiency in 
administration, a general improvement of systems and 
methods, and sounder financial policies, no man who 
is fit to be Mayor of this city can fail to join with 
them, if not to lead them, in helping on this upward 
movement and in introducing such changes as will satisfy 
the more exacting and enlightened civic spirit of the 
present day. 

With the present aroused state of public opinion in 
this community, helped on so largely by the Press, 
much can be done which has not heretofore been possible; 
many changes and improvements can be introduced 
for which the necessary legislative authority could not 
formerly be obtained. Much can be done during the 
next two years which was not possible during the last 
two years. I do not yield to either of my opponents in 
the coming election in a desire to improve the financial 
and administrative system of the city, and to elevate 
the standard of efficiency in its executive departments. 
Having acquired by hard work an intimate knowledge 
of present conditions, I cannot make promises which 
every well informed man must know are impossible of 
fulfillment. I cannot promise to keep all employees in 
office at existing salaries or wages and at the same time 
reduce the pay rolls; nor can I promise to control the 
increase of debt in those lines of expenditure, such as 
the construction of subways and schoolhouses, which 
the Legislature has place.d beyond the power of the 
city government. But I can promise to apply to the 
problems which our citizens desire to see solved all of 
the experience which I have gained and of the knowl- 
edge which I possess in regard to city affairs, and this 
is incomparably greater than that of either of my 
opponents. 

Every intelligent citizen must know that if I had no 
other motive for promoting the reforms which the 
citizens of Boston demand, and for which the time is 
obviously ripe, I have one which is all-sufficient. A 



34 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

stranger to Boston would be led to believe, if he obtained 
his information from certain of our newspapers, that 
the Finance Commission had been instituted by my 
political opponents as a means of discrediting my 
administration; yet that body was created and endowed 
with its powers wholly at my initiative and upon my 
recommendation. I have sometimes been credited with 
possessing my share of political ambition; let me assure 
you that this ambition extends not merely to the tem- 
porary holding of public office, but to the building up 
of a public reputation, which in the long run is of much 
greater consequence to any man. Born and educated 
in Boston, owing my advancement from a humble start 
in life to the support which her citizens have given me 
as a candidate for various offices, intending to remain 
identified with Boston and with the interests of her 
people for the remainder of my life, bringing up my 
family of six children to share her future, I have some- 
thing at stake in this community. If after being 
responsible for the creation of the Finance Commission, 
well knowing its action would be wholly beyond my 
control, I should obstruct its work or oppose the adop- 
tion of the measures which it will later recommend, 
my future reputation and usefulness would necessarily 
suffer. 

I have one other preliminary word to say about a 
subject to which it ought not to be necessary to refer. 
Racial and religious considerations have nothing to do 
with the city government of Boston and have no place 
in a municipal campaign. No man is either qualified 
or disqualified to serve as mayor of this cosmopolitan 
city through the blood that runs in his veins or the 
church to which he chooses to belong. It is an insult 
to the people of this city to say that no one is politically 
eligible to the highest office in their gift unless he belongs 
to a particular race or adhere to a particular religion; 
their suffrages will never be given to or withheld from 
a candidate on any such grounds. Every well informed 
man knows that there is no political solidarity in this 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 35 

city among its citizens of the various races and creeds 
who live together here in harmonious relations; they 
are too intelligent and too independent to allow their 
votes to be delivered in a block by any man or by any 
political party. 

I have a right to resent articles recently published in 
a national weekly, obviously for effect upon this local 
campaign, not because they are directed against myself, 
but because they '^re cunningly designed to raise a 
racial and religious iit^ue where none exists, to give to 
my candidacy a character which is foreign to it. The 
people of Boston are aware, even if the stranger is not, 
that no man has ever held office in this city who was 
less actuated by prejudice than myself, more cosmo- 
politan in his sympathies and affiliations and more 
loyally supported by different elements in the com- 
munity. The people of whom I happen to be one will, 
like all others, vote according to their political con- 
victions at the coming election; if I had no better plea 
to make to them than one based upon community of 
blood and faith they would be the first to reject me. 

I certainly do not wish to discredit any movement 
for greater economy in our municipal administration, 
but nothing is to be gained by misrepresenting the 
facts or by holding up Boston as a horrible example of 
financial extravagance and mismanagement. A stranger 
might assume from reading the newspapers that our 
municipal affairs have been so extravagantly conducted 
that our people are crushed beneath a relatively high rate 
of taxation; but the fact is that within the MetropoHtan 
District a comparison of tax rates is decidedly in favor 
of Boston. The tax rate for each and every one of the 
twelve cities in the district for the present year is higher 
than our own rate of $15.90, and the average for the 
whole district, including Boston, is $18.12. A state- 
ment of our relation to the other cities of the Common- 
wealth in respect to percentage of net debt to taxable 
valuation is also decidedly pertinent and interesting. 
The impression is given that Boston is more heavily 



36 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

burdened with debt than are other cities; the fact is 
that of the thirty-three cities in the state Boston ranks 
not at the top but midway in the Ust in the percentage 
of net debt to valuation, fifteen cities making a better 
showing than Boston, while seventeen make a poorer 
showing. If we are overburdened with debt these 
seventeen cities are in a still worse plight, and it is high 
time that they instituted local finance commissions, as 
we have done, to improve their financial systems and 
methods. 

Some of you have been led to believe that Boston 
stands alone among the cities of the country in respect 
to increased municipal loans and expenditures, but this 
is far from being the case. Boston enjoys no isolated 
pre-eminence in this matter; our experience simply 
illustrates the general tendency, not only throughout 
the United States but throughout the world, to increase 
public expenditures and public loans. This tendency 
may have gone too far and it may threaten alarming 
consequences in the future, but this certainly is not 
peculiar to the City of Boston, as we learn from the 
last publication of the United States Census Bureau. 
This tells us that in the four years of 1901-05, inclusive, 
the 148 largest cities in this country increased their net 
debt by not less than 21.5 per cent, while during the 
same period their aggregate population only increased 
7.9 per cent. These figures tell of modern municipal 
expenditures and loans due to the demand of the people 
for improved and extended municipal service. 

One would think from some of the comments which 
are made upon the debt of Boston that it represented 
a wasteful expenditure of public money; the fact is 
that it is balanced by assets of enormous value. This 
appears very clearly from the figures contained in the 
recent publication of the United States Census Bureau 
covering the statistics of American cities for the year 
1905. 

This publication gives the gross debt of Boston as 
$99,191,856, and the assets of the city as $152,972,670. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 37 

Further analysis would demonstrate that the real show- 
ing is still more favorable to the city, as sinking funds 
held against gross debt are not included in our assets, 
nor are streets and sewers, and of course our invest- 
ment in the latter item is enormous. The Census 
Bureau calls attention to this fact, and says: ^^There- 
fore, in making comparisons between the value of these 
properties and the total debt there should be eliminated 
the debt for sewers, general street improvements, street 
paving and local improvements and practically all that 
are for general improvement.'^ 

The census classes $39,434,570 of our assets as pro- 
ductive, and $113,558,100 as nonproductive; therefore 
if our productive assets have not decreased since 1905 — 
and everyone knows on the contrary that they have 
increased — we hold to-day, as against a net debt of 
$69,371,967 on November 21, 1907, more than 
$39,000,000 of productive assets, to say nothing of 
$113,000,000 of assets classed as nonproductive but 
representing immense value. Something has been said 
in regard to the purchase of land by the city at extrav- 
agant figures under my administration. I have had this 
matter thoroughly gone into and have had a statement 
prepared showing the total expenditures of the city 
for real estate purchased or taken under the different 
administrations since 1899. 

Without assuming to criticise any of my predecessors 
in office, I can at least claim that the figures present a 
surprising contrast in favor of my administration. Of 
course the only standard by which we can measure the 
extravagance or economy shown in such transactions is 
by the relation between the amount paid by the city 
and the assessed valuation. Taking this as a basis the 
figures show that under the first administration of 
Mayor Hart the city paid 79 per cent for such pur- 
chases or takings in excess of the assessed valuation; 
under the administration of Mayor Matthews 89 per 
cent; under the administration of Mayor Curtis 92 per 
cent; under the administration of Mayor Quincy 85 



38 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

per cent; under the second administration of Mayor 
Hart 58 per cent; under that of Mayor Collins 51 per 
cent> while during the first year of my administration 
the excess was only 18 per cent above the assessed 
valuation. These figures speak for themselves. 

Perhaps many people honestly believe that my admin- 
istration has been particularly extravagant in its 
creation of new debt; the record shows that, on the 
contrary, it has been particularly economical. The 
increase of the net debt during the calendar year 1906 
amounted to $1,530,494, and during this year it has 
amounted to $1,071,265; this is a smaller increase of 
the debt in each of these years than for any year since 
1893. The decrease of the debt during the years 1900 and 
1901, as is well understood, was wholly due to the large 
payment — $12,530,000 — received from the Common- 
wealth for the taking of our waterworks. Omitting 
these two years, the average yearly increase in the net 
debt for the other ten years, from 1894 to 1905, inclu- 
sive, was $4,208,912.88. Surely vague charges of extrav- 
agance in respect to the incurring of indebtedness are 
sufficiently disposed of by the citation of such figures as 
these. I should be glad to submit my record in respect to 
the increase of our debt to every business man and 
taxpayer in Boston and rest my claims to re-election 
upon their impartial verdict. 

The City Auditor has compiled, at my request, a 
statement of the number of municipal employees for 
the years 1888 and 1907. This shows that the total 
number of employees has increased 80 per cent in this 
period, partly through increases in departments existing 
at the former date, partly through the creation of new 
departments or the instituting of new lines of municipal 
service. The claim is constantly made that these in- 
creases are made largely for political reasons, to increase 
the amount of patronage available; but the figures show 
that with a total increase of 80 per cent, the number of 
the employees of the Street Department increased only 
37 per cent, while those of the School Committee increased 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 39 

108 per cent; those of the Hospital Department 147 
per cent; those of the Library Department 278 per cent; 
those of the Pauper Institutions 284 per cent, and those 
of the County of Suffolk 146 per cent. 

Certainly these marked increases in the departments 
which have never been accused of being subject to 
political influence tell a story of a legitimate growth in 
the requirements of the municipal services. 

I have just received the latest report of the Finance 
Commission, made as a result of the investigation 
which it has just finished, closing with ten specific 
recommendations. These cover at least one change in 
the law of the state, various changes in the systems and 
methods of conducting the business of the city, and 
several recommendations as to the action and policy of 
the executive departments. The commission has pos- 
sessed much larger facilities for thorough investiga- 
tion than have ever before been available, and any 
carefully considered recommendations which come from 
it are entitled to every consideration; having initiated 
the commission I certainly receive them with every 
disposition to put them into effect. That many of 
these recommendations can be adopted with advantage 
to the city, I have no doubt. I am certainly in sympa- 
thy with the recommendation that members of the 
state Legislature should be prohibited from being 
interested in city contracts; I believe, moreover, that 
the present provision of the charter providing that 
members of the City Council shall not ^^ directly or 
indirectly take part in the making of contracts,'^ should 
be made so specific that there can be no possible doubt, 
as there is at present, of its legal interpretation. Of 
course, all contracts with the city should be signed by 
the real parties in interest, and I should be glad to adopt 
any methods the Finance Commission can suggest to 
better enforce this requirement. I am in entire 
sympathy with the recommendation that the City 
Engineer should be given larger powers and responsi- 
bilities in connection with any city contracts involving 



40 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

city engineering; but instead of changing the interpre- 
tation of the existing ordinances as suggested by the 
commission, I believe it would be much better to so 
amend the terms of the ordinance that the city would 
not be dependent upon an interpretation which might 
change under different administrations. It has cer- 
tainly been my desire and intention that heads of 
departments requesting authority from the Mayor to 
award contracts over $2,000, otherwise than through 
advertisement and open competition, should file with 
such requests "sl written statement giving in detail 
good and sufficient reasons for not inviting bids by 
advertisement ;'' if this has not been done in every 
case heretofore, I shall certainly see that it is done in 
the future. Of course, reputable firms should be 
encouraged to compete for city work; if it is intended 
to imply that reputable firms are not now so competing, 
any such idea is wholly contrary to the facts and can 
be readily disproved. Of course, the city should not 
allow under a percentage contract any higher salaries or 
wages than those actually paid by the contractor, and 
I will heartily support any means of enforcing this 
obviously proper requirement. 

Having said this much in regard to the formal recom- 
mendations of the commission, I feel bound to add that 
the report which accompanies these recommendations 
seems to be in many respects not in accordance with 
the facts disclosed in evidence and unfair to the present 
administration. I propose to take up this report in 
future speeches and go more into detail than I can 
now. To take a single instance, I do not believe that 
the commission can show to the satisfaction of any fair- 
minded business man that it is possible for the city 
through any change in its methods of purchasing coal 
to save any such sum as $100,000 a year. Under 
existing conditions in the coal trade I do not believe 
that it is possible for the city to save money as suggested 
by the commission by making contracts for coal in the 
spring for delivery in the fall, and I believe that the 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 41 

experience of large private consumers of coal in this 
city will bear out my statement. 

The investigations of the Finance Commission have 
brought prominently before the public the question of 
the methods which ought to be employed in the making 
of city contracts. One side of this question, namel}^, 
that which favors the advertising of all contracts of any 
size and their award to the lowest bidder, is apparently 
intended to be supported by the investigation; full 
inquiry and study of the subject may, perhaps, show 
that this, upon the whole, is the best system; yet 
much is to be said upon the other side. This adminis- 
tration has not originated, as some might be led to 
imagine, the practice of making contracts otherwise 
than through public advertisement and award to the 
lowest bidder, nor is such practice peculiar to the City 
of Boston. This administration has adopted no methods 
or practices different from those which have existed here 
for many years, nor are they different from those which 
exist in the conduct of the business of other cities and 
of the Commonwealth itself. It is not the established 
practice of the departments of the Commonwealth to 
advertise publicly in the open market for the work 
which they require to be executed and for the supplies 
which they are required to purchase, and to award their 
contracts to the lowest bidders in such open competi- 
tion; the statutes are far more strict in the control of 
the business methods of Boston than in their control 
of the departments of the Commonwealth, — and the 
state departments, freely and without criticism, seem 
to be able, without arousing public criticism, to avail 
themselves of the discretion and of the latitude which 
is allowed them. It is by no means an axiom, as some 
people now thoughtlessly assume, that public authori- 
ties can secure better and more economical results by 
advertising for bids; if such were the case all well- 
managed private corporations would follow that prac- 
tice, whereas it is a notorious fact that they do not do 
so, and for good business reasons. 



42 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

The best private practice is that of private competi- 
tion among a limited number of selected bidders and 
experience shows that this produces the best results. 

I do not claim that the conditions surrounding public 
work are such that it is proper and desirable to adopt 
this system as a rule; I do claim that the assumption 
that the public suffers whenever it is departed from is 
wholly unwarranted. Many of the best and most 
responsible bidders are unwilling to submit to the con- 
ditions of a public competition, but are perfectly willing 
to bid privately. The assumption that there is some 
political or corrupt motive underlying every departure 
from strict competition in the case of public work is 
entirely unfounded. 

A striking illustration of what I have said has been 
afforded in connection with the purchases of coal by the 
city. 

In the past most of the city departments have pur- 
chased their supplies of coal, as have most large private 
consumers, relying upon the representations of the coal 
dealer and upon a practical test of the coal as used. 
The inquiry of the Finance Commission led up to the 
conclusion that it would be theoretically a more scien- 
tific system and one more proof against fraud to purchase 
coal upon specifications which made the seller guarantee 
its fuel value and which subjected him to deductions 
for any deficiency which might be disclosed by analysis 
below certain standards. I adopted this idea with 
enthusiam, believing that it ought to prove beneficial 
to the city; but it proves that theory is one thing and 
practice is another in connection with the coal business. 
Under the specifications which the City Engineer had 
prepared by Mr. Williams, the coal expert of the Finance 
Commission, the coal dealers of Boston, who are neither 
dishonest nor in collusion with one another, were 
unwilling to bid. On such a public advertisement the 
Public Buildings Department did not receive a single 
bid; the Supply Department received only one bid and 
this had to be rejected as plainly disadvantageous to 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 43 

the city, since the same coal could be purchased otherwise 
at a considerably lower price. I have no doubt that some 
system will be worked out by which the city will throw 
all possible safeguards around its purchases of coal; but 
if anyone has the idea that obvious and easily applied 
safeguards have been disregarded in the past and that 
coal dealers could easily have been made to guarantee 
the fuel value of the coal which they sold if the officials 
had taken the trouble to ask them to do so, he is very 
much mistaken. 

All of our taxpayers have occasion to become familiar 
with the analysis and classification of the expenditures 
of the city which is printed upon the face of the tax 
bills. I have had the Statistics Department carry out 
this analysis in much greater detail, covering all of the 
ordinary expenditures of the city for the financial year 
1906-07. This enables me to present a clear state- 
ment, comprehensible to the average citizen, showing 
the application of our taxes; from this statement it can 
also be clearly seen how far it is in the power of any 
Mayor to effect economies through the control of these 
expenditures. Carrying out the percentages only to a 
single figure beyond the decimal point, this table shows 
that of the $26,688,359 raised by taxation and expended 
during our last financial year, 17.6 per cent went for 
interest and sinking fund requirements on city and 
county debt, 15.4 per cent for taxes and assessments 
payable to the Commonwealth, 14 per cent for schools, 
7.2 per cent for police, ^5.3 per cent for Fire Depart- 
ment and 3.6 per cent for the County of Suffolk; these 
six items, therefore, account at once for 63.1 per cent, 
or nearly two-thirds of our ordinary expenditures, and 
it is certainly beyond the power of the Mayor to effect 
economies in respect to any of these items. Continuing 
the same analysis, we find that of the remaining expendi- 
tures 8.1 per cent were made by our twelve unpaid 
boards; while their work is under the supervision of the 
Mayor, they are to a large extent independent admin- 
istrative authorities, and I do not think it is charged 



44 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

that they are unduly extravagant in the expenditure of 
public money, or that they are influenced by any 
political motives. 

The Lamp Department accounts for the expenditure 
of an additional 3 per cent of the total, and this is 
practically a fixed expense; the financial departments, 
which are certainly not extravagantly run, account for 
a further expenditure of 1.5 per cent; the legislative 
departments, over which the Mayor has no control, 
account for .75 per cent and the Water Department 
accounts for 3 per cent. The aggregate of these last- 
named items amounts to 16.3 per cent, and adding 
these to the others first named, we have a total of 79.4 
per cent, or almost exactly four-fifths of the whole tax 
levy. The remaining 20.6 per cent covers, besides the 
Health Department, all of the departments formerly 
coming under the jurisdiction of the Street Depart- 
ment, including the Sanitary, Sewer, Bridge and Street 
Cleaning Departments, as well as the present Street 
Department, and all other departments not enumerated 
above. Everyone who is at all informed as to the city 
finances knows that the expenditures for the main- 
tenance of these departments are practically fixed, and 
that no Mayor can materially reduce them without 
such curtailment of their service as would soon arouse 
a public protest, or without such a reduction of salaries 
and wages as public opinion would not support. I 
shall be glad to submit the full table from which these 
figures are drawn to anyone who desires it, and I com- 
mend it to the attention of those who are promising 
large reductions in the expenditures of the city without 
discharge of employees or impairment of the service 
now rendered, or the discontinuance of lines of municipal 
work demanded by the public. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 45 

THE IRISH EXILES. 
March 17, 1910. 



To-night our thoughts turn to Ireland, but not to 
Ireland alone. What of the ^^poor exiles"? What of 
the seed scattered in five continents? Has it thriven 
and borne fruit? Their blood has reddened every 
battlefield; their voices have been heard everywhere 
preaching the gospel of liberty and humanity; their 
labor has enriched every clime; their energy and virility 
have founded and sustained tremendous enterprises 
which have prospered the republic. 

But the black history of our race still throws its 
shadow over us. For hundreds of years all activity in 
Ireland was political, military or literary. The island 
was a welter of bloody onslaught and desperate resistance 
until there settled over it at last the desolate peace of 
the eighteenth century — the peace of a prison. Walled 
in by repressive enactments, menaced by the guns of 
an alien soldiery, this fairest land of Europe wore the 
grim aspect of a penal colony. The world passed on 
its way, adding new arts and inventions, all the modern 
machinery of industry and commerce to the stock of 
human achievement, while in Ireland the people vege- 
tated in barren acres, dreaming of liberty and writing 
their passionate visions on the walls of their dungeons. 

Is it wonderful that they came out of their experience 
bewildered and dreaming still; that, like the child torn 
from its home and only restored after long years, they 
did not at first know the face of the great parent of 
success — opportunity? The Indian, long a hunter, 
cannot turn farmer in a day. The Jew, a trader for 
centuries, does not take readily to the mechanical arts. 
We must allow the Irishman to shake off the dreams, 
legacy of the day when nothing was left him but a 
stifled inward brooding over wrong. He has to 
learn to look out upon the world as it is, to study 
anew the importance of skill in hand and eye and 
head — once, many centuries ago, his birthright. 



46 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



INLAND WATERWAYS. 

At the Waterways Convention, May 19, 1910. 



Gentlemen, — A century ago Massachusetts was the 
foremost of American commonwealths in the promotion 
of inland waterways and canals, but with the introduc- 
tion of steam as a motor force and the creation of a 
great network of railroads the water connections fell 
into disuse and promising projects like the Cape Cod 
Canal were abandoned. Latterly, we have felt the 
pinch of high railroad rates and of acute railroad con- 
gestion and commerce is now seeking relief through the 
cheaper and easier outlets afforded by waterways. The 
movement which has expressed itself on a large scale 
in the Panama Canal and the proposed development of 
the Mississippi is reflected in Massachusetts in a dozen 
smaller projects, some of which exist only on paper, 
while others are well on the way toward completion. 

In all these we are merely imitating the wisdom of 
the older and more crowded countries of Europe. These 
nations long ago discovered that transportation by water 
is the cheapest method and the bulk of their coarser 
freight goes to its destination along the rivers and canals. 
The relative cost of various methods of transportation is 
well shown by a recent writer in the ^^ Outlook '': 

Suppose we had a ton of freight to ship and a dollar with 
which to pay for its shipping — how far will the dollar carry 
the ton by these different methods of transportation? By horse 
and wagon, 4 miles; by English steam truck, 20 miles; by rail, 
at the average rate for United States railways in 1907, 127 1-2 
miles; at the rate on the group of selected railways, 200 miles; 
on the Erie Canal, 333 miles; on the European canals, 500 
miles; by lake, at the average rate through the ^'Soo" Canal 
in 1907, 1,250 miles; while at the rate at which coal has been 
carried both on the Great Lakes and on the Ohio and Missis- 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 47 

sippi rivers, the ton of freight can be shipped 30 miles for a 
cent, 300 miles for a dime, 3,000 miles for a dollar. 

Marseilles, in France, was once the foremost port of 
continental Europe; it lost its prestige by not properly 
maintaining its waterways. The French Government 
has recently spent millions in the building of a canal, with 
the idea of helping this city to regain its standing as a 
seaport. In Russia wonderful engineering feats are now 
being pushed forward, and waterways of stupendous 
dimensions are being constructed, the one from the 
Baltic to Vladivostok being a most unusual feat of 
engineering. This policy of linking the great river 
systems has proven a stimulus to the national life of 
the country. 

England has suffered because her inland waterways 
are practically all canals. Their care and improvement 
are the subject of continual discussion, but the fact that 
the greater part of the stock of the controlling com- 
panies is owned by the railroads has proven a hindrance 
to any extensive development. Ireland has not gone 
ahead because the British Government has not per- 
mitted the expenditure of public money to develop the 
river and water courses so abundant throughout the 
island. In other sections of Europe and in the large 
centers of commerce and industry of the United States 
the important river and harbor frontage is controlled 
by railway companies. This is not true hereabouts at 
the present time, but it will be true unless we take care. 

Here in New England we have the greatest chance 
that exists in any part of the world for successful inland 
waterway development. It is time that definite action 
be taken in regard to the reclaiming of the flats in East 
Boston and Dorchester Bay and the extension of the 
Taunton river and its tributaries, so as to make a com- 
plete connection between the Fore river and Taunton, 
and the development of the Newburyport and Mystic 
rivers and the waterways leading to the accessible 
centers in Maine. 



48 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

When one visits Europe and sees evidence on every 
side of cities connected by artificial waterways rendered 
prosperous by the ease with which commerce is con- 
ducted, it makes one marvel that we are so laggard in 
this respect in our own country. It is therefore with 
the greatest pleasure that I commend the work of this 
body, and you may be sure that I will accord it every 
encouragement within my power. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 49 



THE FREE SCHOOL. 
Speech at Teachers' Convention, July 4, 1910. 



I am not an educator; I may not even be educated 
in any highly technical sense; yet in my official capacity 
I represent education as completely as any teacher in 
this gathering. The office which I have the honor to 
fill could not exist except among an intelligent and 
educated people. Education of the people implies 
government by the people. That is why tyrants have 
everywhere dreaded the free school, and why the free 
schoolhouse occupies a place in our affections second 
only to the charter of liberty itself. Upon its powerful 
influence we rely to prevent the return of tyranny and 
to maintain a just equilibrium in the state. 

This circumstance, I think, explains why Boston has 
so often taken the lead in the field which you cultivate. 
If you pay a visit to Dorchester you will find there a 
tablet marking the site of one of the first free schools 
in America. Our city has also been the cradle of those 
ideas of self-government which are now accepted by a 
great part of the civilized world. Long before the 
Revolution our Puritan colonists had resented the royal 
yoke. During the last hundred years we have inaugu- 
rated more than one movement for the emancipation of 
men. Most of our great educators — Franklin, Quinc}^, 
Horace Mann, Walker, Eliot, Lowell — have taken an 
active interest in government in one or another of its 
phases. In a word, the ideals of democracy and popular 
education are so interwoven here that any conception 
except that of a free people, schooling all its children 
free, would be utterly foreign to our way of thinking. 

The fruits of this temper you may have witnessed in 
the early days of your pilgrimage among us. You have 
doubtless seen schools of every description, public and 



50 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

private, ranging from kindergarten to university. Their 
numbers and external appearances are impressive. Their 
enrollment includes every child up to the threshold of 
manhood and womanhood. Their teaching staff contains 
the flower of our population. Their courses of study 
are elastic and progressive, growing with the needs of 
the times, but never really departing from basic princi- 
ples which have stood the test of experience. Their 
support is so generous that the cost of the public school 
system alone this year amounts to over six and a half 
millions, and constitutes the largest single item of our 
city budget. 

You come, then, teachers of America, to a city pre- 
disposed in your favor and deeply interested in your 
labors. Your deliberations will be followed with eager 
sympathy, tempered and governed by critical under- 
standing. Your calling is honored here as in few other 
communities. It is my privilege and my pleasure to 
speak for six hundred and fifty thousand citizens of 
Boston who, differ as they may on other subjects, are 
unanimous to-day in welcoming you to the warmest 
hospitality of this city. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 51 



THE FINANCE COMMISSION. 
Statement, August 18, 1910. 



The communication from the Finance Commission 
does not seem worth much more than a passing comment. 
It is not such a judicial criticism as the law requires 
and the people expect from the Finance Commission. 
It is not a criticism. It is a political assault by men 
who have before charged me with the worst of crimes 
and who were but temporarily silenced by the verdict 
of the people at the last election. The gentlemen who 
comprise this commission are the appointees of a 
Republican Governor who is entering upon a doubtful 
political campaign, and this commission is only another 
device of Republican state machine politicians to 
harass and torture self-government in Boston. The 
belief is prevalent among this class of politicians that it 
is of advantage to them to poison the minds of the 
citizens of the state with the notion that Boston is the 
worst governed city in the world. They heap upon 
Boston unjust burdens of taxation and unjust abuse 
in order that they may hold the state through the 
prejudice thus incited against the commercial heart 
of the commonwealth and the party which ordinarily 
controls it. 

It is because this attack of the Finance Commission 
is not made in good faith but for political purposes 
that I shall not permit myself to be drawn into a wrangle 
of which it is designed to be only the beginning. The 
citizens of Boston may feel assured that, whenever the 
Finance Commission or any other body of citizens makes 
any charge against me which ought to be denied or 
explained, both my sense of the right of my fellow- 
citizens to know the facts and my own sense of self- 
interest will require that I answer it. But I shall not be 



52 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

drawn into squabbles with men whose real object is not 
what it appears. When the Republican state politicians 
want to exercise their ventriloquial powers they must 
do it at the expense of someone other than myself. 
The gentlemen of the Finance Commission sit on the 
knees of these men and seem to speak for themselves. 
But I have been behind the scenes and I know whence 
the voices come. 

Before I drop the subject I want to make just one 
observation. The Mayor is responsible by law for the 
conduct of the departments. He is the chief executive 
officer, ''and, as such executive officer, it shall be his 
duty to secure the honest, efficient and economical 
conduct of the entire executive and administrative busi- 
ness of the city and the harmonious and concerted action 
of the different departments." I have accepted the 
responsibility imposed upon the Mayor by the law and 
no man ever yet secured ''harmonious and concerted 
action" in great departments filled with men who dis- 
liked him or had no faith in his capacity to administer 
the business of the city well. Whenever I find that, in 
the interest of the city, a loyal man who has faith in 
me is needed in the city government anywhere, I shall 
appoint such a man if he is otherwise competent. 

I came into office after the city had been convulsed 
by the most violent campaign it had ever known, and 
after a princely fortune had been spent to disseminate 
just such caviling attacks as this upon me, and now I 
am accused of having changed less than a dozen officials 
in the largest corporation in New England! Those who 
are the head even of little corporations must smile as 
they read of this serious offence. Does anybody think 
that such a cavil is worth an answer? 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 53 



MAINE'S OPPORTUNITY. 

Speech at Lewiston, Maine, September 10, 1910. 



The battle between the money power and the people, 
which has been imminent for many years, is about 
to be fought to a finish. It is idle to obscure the 
issue. The revelations of the past decennial have shown 
American people that it is the men who control 
our financial institutions and the big business enter- 
prises who menace the freedom and prosperity of the 
country. For more than a quarter of a century they 
succeeded in fooling the American people, but now the 
searchlight has been turned on and it has exposed such 
rottenness in American finances as to startle the world. 
For years we have been told that the extraordinarily 
high duties imposed by Republican Congresses were 
necessary for the protection of American labor. Too 
many people believed these statements, made by the 
agents of greedy monopolists, with the result that we 
have raised a tremendous crop of millionaires and 
of misery. We have been misled day in and day 
out for fifteen years by men who, meeting together 
around a small table in the great city of New York, 
created fictitious values at the expense of the American 
people and demanded, as a right, the toil of millions to 
pay those unjustifiable dividends. The railroads of the 
country, which are capitalized for eighteen billion dollars, 
represent in actual value nine billion. In other words, 
nine billion of fictitious capitalization has been dis- 
tributed among a few personal favorites, and ninety 
million of American people taxed to pay the dividends. 
Six per cent, the average rate paid upon the American 
railroad, means a tax of $540,000,000 a year which the 
American people are compelled to pay over and above the 
just requirements. Our big United States Steel Trust, 



54 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

which can sell its products cheaper abroad than it can 
to the American people, is capitalized for $1,400,000,000; 
about $600,000,000 represents the real investment. 
Eight hundred million dollars of value is created to be 
distributed amongst a few intimates while the American 
people at large are taxed to pay the dividend. 

And our express companies! Every large civilized 
country in the world has a parcels post system. The 
United States is the single exception. Though there is 
a deficit amounting to millions of dollars a year through 
the establishment of a rural mail delivery, no attempt 
to establish a parcels post system operated through 
these carriers has yet been successful. Theodore Roose- 
velt, our great reformer, though in Washington seven 
years, and knowing that it was the express companies 
of the United States which made impossible the passage 
of this legislation, never made the dramatic appeal to the 
conscience of the American people that he is doing at the 
present time. The Sherman law was on the statute 
books at the time and could have been enforced. Some 
of those men could have been jailed, and should have 
been jailed if our strenuous President had been as sincere 
in his efforts in ofhce as he is in his efforts for office. 
Only a short while ago the earnings of one of these com- 
panies were so enormous that the directors were afraid 
to let them be known to the American people and an 
adjustment was made by giving every stockholder two 
additional shares for every one held, a dividend of 200 
per cent. Postmaster General Wanamaker said : ' ' There 
are four reasons why America has no parcels post system 
— 1st, The Adams Express Company; 2d, The American 
Express Company; 3d, The United States Express Com- 
pany, and 4th, The Wells Fargo Express Company." 

The sugar trust is another example. The little joker 
in the Payne-Aldrich bill, which President Taft has 
described as the best tariff law ever made, takes fifty 
millions a year out of the American consumers. Though 
comparatively little of the sugar used by the people of 
the United States is produced in this country, sugar 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 55 

costs the people of the United States twice as much as 
it does the people of Europe. 

The cotton and woolen factories here in New England 
are tremendously over-capitalized. It is laughable to 
hear the manufacturers of these great corporations rebel 
against the action of the Legislature in reducing the 
number of hours on the ground that the mills in New 
England cannot compete successfully with Southern 
mills if shorter hours are compelled by law. Many mills 
in New England have paid out in dividends in a few 
years vastly more than the amount of the original 
capitalization; at the same time it is a matter of public 
record that the wages of the average employee are only 
$7.50 per week, and that many children are employed 
and paid only S3 a week. 

It is this enormous over-capitalization and watering 
of stocks that is directly responsible for the high cost 
of living, notwithstanding the statement of Senator 
Lodge to the contrary. Practically every industry in 
the country which could stand capitalization has been 
taken over in the past few years by banking syndicates. 
Properties having an actual value of a few hundred 
thousand dollars, paying 12 or 15 or 20 per cent, have 
been capitalized on the basis of 5 or 6 or 7 per cent. 
The result is that the apparent wealth of the United 
States in industrial and commercial and business enter- 
prises is capitalized at more than the real wealth, and 
the American people are taxed to pay the difference. 
Only a short while ago the Fifth Avenue Bank of New 
York declared a regular quarterly dividend of 25 per 
cent and a special dividend of 130 per cent. This extra 
dividend is not the largest ever authorized by this bank. 
For more than eight years the average disbursement 
to stockholders has been something like 250 per cent, 
and though the par value of its stock is $100, the stock 
has recently sold as high as $4,500 a share. This is 
only a single instance, and is not only true of bank 
stocks but of many cotton and woolen mills and other 
forms of industry. How unjust this over-capitalization is 



56 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

to the average cotton operative and woolen operative 
here in Lewiston can be seen in the fact that wages 
here, as in every other big manufacturing center, are 
presumably based upon the ability of the companies to 
pay reasonable dividends. When a dividend of 6 per 
cent is asked for by the stockholders, based upon an 
honest valuation, the operatives should be willing, and 
are willing I know, to meet the demand in a spirit of fair 
play and equity, but when 6 per cent dividends means 
6 per cent upon millions of capital which has never been 
invested it is the rankest kind of injustice. 

The time has come, therefore, when the American 
people must assert their spirit over the few men who 
have hitherto drafted legislation, determined the deci- 
sion in many of our courts, and even disposed of the 
enormous wealth of the country in whatever manner 
seemed best suited to their own selfish purposes. Drastic 
action against the tyranny of these men is the necessity 
of the hour. 

Never will there be such action by the Republican 
party. All the protests against the execution of the 
present Payne-Aldrich tariff by the Republican insur- 
gents were hopeless and will be hopeless. Speaker 
Cannon is supreme in his own district, and though 
there is little likelihood of his return to the speakership 
because the Congress is Democratic, yet he will domi- 
nate the Republican minority, and hold the whip hand, 
so that no legislation except that which is friendly to 
the intrenched wealth of the country can be successful. 
Here in Maine you have the opportunity to judge the 
power of the Republican machine. It has held the 
state steadily in its clutches for years, and has been run 
mainly in the interests of the wealthy men. President 
Roosevelt, with all his talk about corruption, never 
lifted his finger in Washington to reduce expenses in 
framing a proper tariff bill or to punish the big criminals. 
What reason have we to expect any different course 
from him or those in the battle with him? He stands 
for his close personal friend. Senator Lodge, who is a 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 57 

staunch advocate of the Payne- Aldrich tariff bill. Yet 
he must realize, if he knows anything about the public 
record of Henry Cabot Lodge, that he is pleading for 
the return of a man to the United States Senate for 
six years who, day in and day out, has stood for a system 
of government which has made a few fabulously rich 
while compelling millions to labor incessantly for enough 
to keep body and soul together. 

There is no help for the evil situation into which we 
have been brought by the Republican party. It must 
be, as it has been for so long, the enemy of the people 
and the friend of privilege. To you, men of Maine, it is 
given to sound the tocsin for the country. Let it be 
the first blow to the money power and the first victory 
for justice and the people. 



58 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



REFUSAL OF NOMINATION FOR GOVERNOR. 
Statement Issued September 26, 1910. 



Men have been kind enough to tell me that I ought to 
stand for governor. The publicity given to this sugges- 
tion has caused an unexpected and an embarrassing 
activity among my friends throughout the state. It has 
tended to confuse the situation. Local Democratic 
leaders have told me that the doubt whether I would 
permit myself to become a candidate has disturbed 
alignments and postponed decisions in different localities. 

It will not be wise to allow this condition to continue. 
The Democrats to-morrow will choose the delegates who 
at the coming state convention will nominate the 
Democratic candidate for governor. So great is the 
probability that the Democrats at this convention will 
be able to elect the next governor, if they select their 
candidate wisely, that it seems to me of the greatest 
importance to make their task as easy and as simple as 
possible. Eliminating every unavailable candidate is 
one way to simplify the problem of selecting our candi- 
date for governor. I am keenly conscious of the great 
opportunity which is afforded me to lead the Democrats 
to victory in the state this year, and no one would 
appreciate the honor more than I; but on reflection it 
does not seem to me that I ought to lay down the task 
in Boston which my city so recently put in my hands, 
and which is still so far from complete. Therefore, I 
must ask the Democrats of the state not to consider my 
candidacy. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 59 



UNEARNED INCREMENT. 
October 4, 1910. 



Dear Sir, — Among the parcels of real estate com- 
prising the property of the late Andreas Tomfohrde 
occur the buildings at 37-41, 45-47 and 51 Court street, 
with the land attached thereto. Investigation reveals a 
striking though not unusual state of affairs in connec- 
tion with this property. The value of the land alone 
increased in twenty years from $238,000 to $695,100, 
an increase of $457,100, or nearly 200 per cent. In the 
meantime the building, either through neglect or from 
natural depreciation, decreased in value $42,100, or in 
round numbers 60 per cent. 

This fortunate investor is reported to have made no 
public bequests, yet he owed every dollar of this added 
value to the public. He displayed no intellectual or 
moral quality in acquiring it, and rendered no form of 
service. His only talent was to purchase and to keep. 
Meanwhile, the growth of population, the ever swelling 
tides of travel and of trade, the expenditure of the public 
money on pavements, sidewalks, lights and fire and police 
protection, the building of a great court house on 
Pemberton square — in a word, all the multifold activities 
of the community at large — increased and enhanced the 
value of his estate and would have enhanced it equally 
if its owner had been some absentee landlord instead 
of a restaurant keeper doing business on the premises. 

Of this huge unearned increment of value the owner 
returned each year about 1| per cent in taxes. The 
inadequacy of this return does not require any special 
argument. Since ordinary processes of taxation fail in 
such cases, the question arises whether some method 
should not be devised for returning to the public, which 
creates it, a larger fraction of the increase of value. 



60 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

Under the present system individuals are virtually 
permitted to tax the people and too often, as in the 
instance cited, such individuals die without any fulfill- 
ment and perhaps without any recognition of their 
social obligations. 

The spectacle of unimproved buildings on land, every 
inch of which has its appreciable value, is all too common 
in the older portions of Boston now dedicated to trade 
and commerce. In all such instances the natural 
relations are reversed. The community is not served 
but serves; the owner merely waits and profits by wait- 
ing. This practice should as far as possible be dis- 
couraged by law, in interest not only of justice but of 
social progress. 

I respectfully ask your permission to consider some 
plan by which a larger fraction of the increased value 
of land may go to the community, at least when this 
increase assumes abnormal proportions, and failing this, 
the owner may be compelled to maintain some minimum 
ratio of value between their land and the buildings 
erected upon it. While the subject is a difficult and 
abstruse one, conditions are becoming so acute that 
some form of relief would seem to be required. 

Hon. John A. Sullivan, Chairman of the Finance Commission. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 61 



THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCH. 

At the Congregational Conference, October 

10, 1910. 



I take great pleasure in extending the hospitalities of 
the City of Boston to the delegates to the Congrega- 
tional Conference, representing, I am informed, six 
hundred thousand enrolled members throughout the 
country and no fewer than six thousand ordained 
clergymen. In greeting you I feel that I am welcoming 
the descendants of the pilgrims of Plymouth and the 
first settlers of Boston, retaining no little of their 
doctrines and most of their church polity. Such con- 
cessions as you have made to modern taste in the 
enrichment of your ceremonies, and in the adoption of 
a form of fellowship which faintly suggests the more 
elaborate organization of the older churches, do not 
make you any the less the lineal heirs of Bradford and 
Brewster, of Endicott and Winthrop. 

In other words, there is something distinctive of 
Boston and New England in your churches. If I mis- 
take not, your influence has spread over the country 
with the tide of migration from this section and wherever 
the New England blood is to be found, there, in a greater 
or less degree, are seen the spires of what the old- 
fashioned people used to call the orthodox churches. In 
coming back to Boston you come to the cradle of your 
origin, to a city many of whose most distinguished names, 
both of clergymen and of laymen, have been enrolled 
in your membership. 

Early New England, as you know far better than I, 
was almost a pure theocracy. The functions of church 
and state overlapped and the clergyman was a civic as 
well as a religious leader. Perhaps it is the spirit of this 
tradition that makes your pulpits so often resound with 



62 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

eloquent discourses upon purely civic affairs. I am not 
one of those who believe that this tendency should be 
condemned, as long as the comment is governed by the 
spirit of fairness and criticism is tempered with a decent 
recognition of the good deeds that are occasionally per- 
formed even by public men with whom we disagree. 

It is possible to differ with a man and still respect 
him, probably because beyond and around the area of 
difference there remains a wide margin of agreement. 
You and I have more in common than some of our 
ancestors were prone to believe. We have all inherited 
the ethics of Christianity and a good part of its doctrines. 
Your invitation to me this evening and my cordial 
acceptance of it shows that the rifts of disagreement 
need not necessarily widen into a hopeless gulf of dis- 
trust and misunderstanding. It is possible for both of 
us in different ways to serve the needs of society and to 
fulfill the will of our Maker. Times have changed since 
Endicott in his fiery zeal cut the cross out of the British 
flag because of his hatred of Rome. The modern Endi- 
cott counts a journey to the seat of Christendom and 
an audience with the head of the ancient church as one 
of the most memorable incidents of his life, while, on 
the other hand, a Catholic Mayor is called to welcome 
in Tremont Temple the descendants and followers of 
those who, whether '' nation seed or gospel seed the 
more," have emblazoned their names in letters of gold 
upon the history of our common country. 

I wish you all a most pleasant stay in Boston and a 
most successful convention. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 63 



LOSS OF A STEAMSHIP LINE. 
October 18, 1910. 



Dear Sir, — A recent item in the Boston papers con- 
veys the intelHgence that the steamers ''Harvard" and 
''Yale," formerly plying between New York and Boston 
in the service of the Metropolitan Steamship Company, 
have been sold to a company which intends to run 
them between San Francisco and Los Angeles and 
that they have started, or are about to start, on the 
fourteen-thousand mile journey around Cape Horn to the 
former port. These vessels supplemented admirably the 
transportation facilities between New York and Boston 
and provided a most delightful voyage for persons 
desiring to make the trip by night. They were also 
the means of carrying a considerable volume of freight 
to and from these cities, and that their loss will be felt 
the coming season is obvious. I would respectfully 
inquire whether the Chamber of Commerce has taken 
any steps to interest capital in a similar line of steam- 
ships which would take the place of these vessels. 

Unless I am greatly misinformed the investment was 
by no means an unprofitable one, and it would seem 
that there might be sufficient local capital, the owners 
of which would be actuated by local patriotism as well 
as keen business sense, ta furnish substitutes for them. 

Bernard J. Rothwell, Esq., President Chamber of Commerce. 



64 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES, 



DEFENDING FRANKLIN PARK ZOO. 

November 8, 1910. 



Gentlemen, — Your letter of November 5, addressed 
to me as Mayor, copies of which have been furnished to 
the Press, calls for an expression of opinion upon the 
important issues which you have raised. Permit me to 
take them up seriatim and supplement your observa- 
tions by the relation of certain facts which do not seem 
to have been brought to your attention. 

You express surprise that the representatives of the 
Massachusetts Zoological Society, who had requested the 
Legislature for funds to establish a zoo at Middlesex 
Fells and had previously favored a location in the Fells, 
acting on the advice of Mr. W. T. Hornaday, Director 
of the New York Zoological Garden, should have lent 
themselves to the project for establishing a zoological 
garden in Franklin Park. You are, perhaps, unaware 
that the proposition to use the Middlesex Fells had been 
practically abandoned because the private subscriptions 
offered for this purpose amounted to only a few thou- 
sand dollars and there seemed to be no immediate 
prospect of collecting the substantial sum needed for 
the creation of a worthy institution. Moreover, the 
distance of the Fells from Boston constitutes a disad- 
vantage as compared with the readiness of access of 
Franklin Park, which is only a short ride from the homes 
of the great majority of our citizens. The fact that the 
society and Mr. Hornaday abandoned a project which 
is not likely to be realized for many years, and availed 
themselves of the opportunity which was created by 
the bequest of Mr. Parkman, should not be regarded as 
a fatal inconsistency. 

A special reason for placing the zoological garden in 
Franklin Park is found in the lack of patronage of the 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 65 

park. Although the original cost of Franklin Park was 
about four million dollars, and the annual maintenance 
charge is about sixty thousand dollars, it is frequented 
for only a comparatively short season, and except on 
Sundays does not seem to attract any large numbers of 
people. One may walk through its paths and over its 
meadows any pleasant summer morning and encounter 
only a handful of straggling visitors. This neglect is 
due, in the opinion of good judges, to the lack of human 
interest, of live attractions which would form a definite 
objective for the people at large. At present the park 
appeals chiefly to those who go there to play games, 
like tennis, golf and baseball, lovers of pure landscape 
not being as common as they might be among people 
whose lives are spent far from nature and natural scenery. 
In adding the zoological garden with its groups of grace- 
ful or curious live creatures the city would only be 
carrying out and amplifying the conception of the 
designer of the park, Mr. Olmsted, whose original plans 
allotted the space selected by the Park Commissioners 
and their experts for a zoological garden to a deer park. 
As for the aquarium at Marine Park, this seems to me 
peculiarly appropriate on account of the pre-eminence 
of Boston as a seaport and fishing center. 

In your strictures upon the existing parks, many of 
which you say have been repeatedly declared a disgrace 
to the City of Boston, I find a lack of definiteness. 
While the condition of some of these parks is not all 
that could be desired, it does not seem to me that the 
uncharitable language of your letter is justified by the 
conditions as I have observed them. 

Moreover, the anxiety which you express as to the 
possible exhaustion of the income of the fund by the 
use of a portion of it for the creation of an aquarium 
and zoological garden, ignores the magnitude of the 
fund itself. The income upon five million dollars, which 
is in round numbers the amount of the bequest, comes 
to something like two hundred thousand dollars a year, 
or two million dollars in every decade. The estimated 



66 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

cost of the zoological garden, the Greeting, and the 
aquarium, is about six hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. Even if the entire income of the fund were 
devoted to this purpose in the immediate future, the 
fund would be free for other purposes in a little over 
three years. By using only a portion of it each year 
the aquarium and zoological garden could be gradually 
brought into existence and the remainder of the fund 
devoted to general improvement purposes such as you 
suggest. This, I believe, is the better plan, since it not 
only leaves some portion of the fund for other projects, 
but provides for the gradual adaptation of the plans 
for the aquarium and zoological garden to circumstances 
as they arise. It would appear, then, that the difference 
between your point of view and that of the Park Com- 
missioners, as set forth in their report, is not an irrecon- 
cilable one. 

To United Improvement Association, 8 Beacon Street, Boston. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 67 



WATERWAYS. 
February 8, 1911. 



Dear Sir, — His Excellency Governor Foss in his 
inaugural message emphasized the need of waterways 
in the following words: ''The State must also take 
immediate steps to outline and construct a system of 
waterways and canals to supplement the railways, so 
that raw materials may be secured to our industries at 
the lowest possible cost.'' Acting upon this suggestion 
the Committee of the General Court on Harbors and 
Public Lands advertised a hearing at the State House 
for February 3, at half past ten, expecting a large repre- 
sentation of the commercial interests upon this important 
issue. The results seem to prove either that the com- 
mercial organizations of this section are not alive to the 
importance of the creation of a system of intra-coastal 
canals or that they are unaware of the progress which 
has been made by the engineering division of the United 
States War Department in preparing plans for such a 
system. Only two or three persons attended this hear- 
ing, which was continued until Wednesday, February 15. 
Previously communications had been received from 
Lieut. -Col. J. S. Sanford, attached to the United States 
Engineer's Office at Newport, R. I., and from Col. Frederic 
V. Abbot, of the United States Engineer's Office located 
in Boston, requesting the appropriate department of the 
city government of Boston to answer a somewhat com- 
plicated series of questions relating to the prospective 
advantages of these proposed waterways to Boston and 
the contiguous territory. After consultation with the 
Acting City Engineer, now the Commissioner of Public 
Works, it has seemed to me doubtful whether the studies 
that would be required for comprehensive answers to 
this schedule of questions would properly come within 



68 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the functions of any municipal department and whether 
the city would be justified in employing an outside 
engineer to prepare a statement which might be given 
forth with the official sanction of the municipal govern- 
ment. At the same time I have been impressed with 
the need of these waterways and have personally 
attended conventions at Washington and at Providence, 
at which I took occasion to recommend their rapid 
development along the entire eastern seaboard of the 
country for purposes of protection in time of war as well 
as of commercial relief. 

Occupying, as Massachusetts does, a situation some- 
what remote from the sources of supply for the raw 
materials used in her industries, she should certainly 
look with favor upon any measures calculated to reduce 
freight rates at present placing her at a disadvantage 
with the growing competition from other sections of 
the country. Unless the business interests identify 
themselves with this movement for intra-coastal water- 
ways there seems to be no hope of realizing what has 
been for a hundred years the dream of far-sighted 
students of our commercial history and prospects. 

An interview given by Colonel Abbot on the day of 
the abortive hearing before the Harbors and Public 
Lands Committee gave expression to his own feeling as 
to the apathy displayed by the business organizations 
of Boston upon the question, and intimated that unless 
some interest could be aroused among persons who 
would benefit most signally by these improvements, 
the whole scheme would probably be abandoned by the 
United States Government. 

I have thought it timely, therefore, to lay the whole 
situation before your body and to transmit to you the 
communications from Lieutenant-Colonel Sanford and 
Colonel Abbot for such action as may seem to you 
appropriate. Even if time is lacking for the compilation 
of thoroughly studied replies to the questions propounded 
by the United States Engineers, a general argument in 
favor of the canals might be prepared by those of your 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 69 

members who may be particularly interested in this 
topic and who may have given it some prior thought. 
Such a report would serve the purpose of proclaiming 
to the national authorities the keen interest which an 
organization like the Chamber of Commerce must 
certainly take in this question and dispelling the impres- 
sion that commercial Boston looks with indifference 
upon a proposition which carries so much promise of 
relief and benefit to her industries and those of the 
tributary territory. 

I respectfully submit, therefore, these communications 
in the hope that the whole subject may be taken up by 
the Chamber of Commerce and that so promising a 
scheme of development may not be allowed to expire 
through want of cooperation among the different units 
interested in it, and a consequent dissipation of the 
forces which, properly united and controlled by adequate 
leadership, might carry it to a successful issue. 

George S. Smith, Esq., President Chamber oj Commerce. 



70 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



GREEK UNION. 
At Pan-Hellenic Meeting, February 17, 1911. 



Boston, which is proud of its title of the ^^ Athens of 
America,'' has been glad to count among its citizens 
during the past twenty years a number of representa- 
tives of that glorious people among whom ancient 
Athens was the center of culture and civilization. 
While the Greeks of Boston have been few in numbers, 
several of them are already counted as typical Bos- 
tonians. It is a pleasure and an honor to me, therefore, 
to come to this hall to-night and meet a gathering of 
men whose ancestry is perhaps, from a racial point of 
view, the most distinguished in the world. 

Certainly no people ever left nobler landmarks in the 
places which they inhabited, or ever scattered more 
fertile germs of thought among the other nations of the 
earth. The age of Pericles and Socrates marked in the 
opinion of many judges the highest level of average 
intelligence that has ever been reached during the period 
of recorded history. In the arts, especially in archi- 
tecture and sculpture, in the drama, in history, in phil- 
osophy, in oratory, and even in science, the names of 
the great figures of that period still shine on the world's 
roll of honor and their thought has resisted the rusting 
process of age, so that many of them still seem as modern 
as our own contemporaries. 

What an illustration of the irony of fate that this 
gifted people, in the vicissitudes of its history, should 
have come under the domination of an Asiatic race, 
whose undeniable virtues are rather those of splendid 
barbarism than of a fully developed and civilized people. 
An Alexander could penetrate almost to the borders of 
India, founding kingdoms on the way and planting even 
on the shores of the Nile a lesser Greece, which, in the 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 71 

decline of the mother country, perpetuated its culture 
and ideals; but the sturdy people that had resisted the 
hordes of Xerxes and Darius, weakened perhaps by the 
rule of the Roman legions, yielded at length to the over- 
powering might of those later swarms whose emblem was 
the crescent and whose weapon was the scimitar. 

The Greece we visit to-day is a scene of desolation, 
where the tyrant has everywhere left his imprint in 
ruined cities and shattered temples. The exquisitely 
wrought metopes of the Parthenon have been used as 
slabs to make a modern wall, and at times it would seem 
as though the very descendants of Leonidas and Mil- 
tiades had forgotten the glories of their ancestry. But 
the vital spark of patriotism still lives and in the past 
century was blown into a flame which burned away 
the last vestiges of foreign domination and made of the 
Greeks once more a free and united people. 

To the war of liberation Boston sent among others 
its superb citizen, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, whose name 
has become personally associated with Greece through 
the marriage of his daughter to the Greek patriot and 
philanthropist, his successor in the Superintendency 
of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, the late Michael 
Anagnos. 

To-day Greece enjoys its own government and holds 
a place among the free nations of Europe. But this is 
true only of the Hellenic peninsula. On the outlying 
islands of the iEgean and Mediterranean seas are 
branches of the Greek people, separated from their 
brethren by subjection to an alien rule. Among these 
the Cretans for many years have excited the compassion 
of lovers of liberty, not only because of their sufferings 
and strenuous resistance but because of the admirable 
part which Crete played in the early development of 
Greek civilization. Lying midway between Hellas and 
the ancient monarchies bordering upon the modern 
Levant, Crete was the stepping stone for the progress 
of civilization from Egypt and Phoenicia to the European 
continent. Recent excavations have revealed the 



72 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

wonders of its early culture and disclosed the island as 
the seat of a flourishing population, with numerous cities 
all maintained at the highest level of Grecian progress. 

The spectacle of such a people with such a tradition, 
bound against their will to a despotism which they must 
necessarily regard as inferior in type, aroused the sym- 
pathies of the other nations of Europe, and by an agree- 
ment among the great powers Crete, some dozen years 
ago, was placed under the protectorate of Great Britain, 
France and Russia. But the spirit of liberty is never 
satisfied with halfway concessions, and the Cretans are 
still appealing to the sense of justice of the world for 
release from their anomalous status and a return to full 
union with the Greeks of the mainland, who are their 
kindred in blood and religion. 

To us Bostonians, rebels ourselves and the heirs of the 
most successful rebellion that the world ever knew, the 
appeal of such a people is irresistible, and as Mayor of 
the city I can do no less than assure you that my per- 
sonal sympathies, and I believe those of most of my 
fellow citizens, are extended to the struggling Cretans 
in their efforts at reunion with the kingdom of Greece. 

Unless the hands of the clock of progress are turned 
backward once more, I feel confident that this reunion 
will be brought about and the people of Crete placed once 
more in an environment in which they can develop 
their own individuality. 

America has never in the past hesitated to extend a 
welcome to patriots striving for freedom and to send 
messages of sympathy to those of other lands, who are 
merely repeating the incidents and episodes of our own 
early history. 

I trust that your campaign will be crowned with suc- 
cess and I know that the news of your victory, flashed 
over the wires, will send a thrill of sympathy not only 
through the colony of Greeks and Cretans among us 
in Boston, but among those of our own people who are 
still true to the maxims and convictions of the fathers 
of this country. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 73 



HOME RULE. 
Northampton, March 17, 1911. 



This is an auspicious moment to celebrate the na- 
tional holiday of the Irish people. Through seven 
hundred years of struggle they have proved their vitality, 
not alone by individual examples of splendid virtue, but 
by united action in support of a coherent and progressive 
program. Their conquest is a victory of the highest 
order, in that it implies not merely brute superiority in 
numbers and in strength, but a conversion of the foe to 
the ideal which they have always opposed. The ^' Home 
Rule" bill, which is about to grant to Ireland substantial 
independence similar to that enjoyed by Canada and 
the other provinces of the British Empire, can only be 
passed through the House of Commons by the votes of 
Englishmen and Scotchmen, and to this extent it repre- 
sents the will of the English people yielding to the forces 
of moral persuasion which their better natures could no 
longer resist. In the very act of granting self-govern- 
ment to Ireland they have acknowledged the error of 
their past refusals and have conceded to the Irish people 
the qualities necessary for the exercise of this right, which 
misguided English politicians and historians have too 
often denied them. 

But these incidents have a broader significance than 
attaches to a mere chapter in the history of a single race. 
As the frontiersman who defends his home against savage 
assailants is a bulwark of the civilization which advances 
in his wake, so the people of Ireland, doing battle against 
odds to preserve their own identity, have fought for all 
humanity as well as for themselves. It is no accident 
that the passage of a home rule bill coincides with the 
imminent fall of the British House of Lords. The same 
deep lying sentiment dominating the English people 



74 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

with one hand lifts Ireland from its humble seat to a 
position of dignity and of promise, and with the other 
lays low the insolence of the peers, who have been the 
traditional opponents of every movement for the expan- 
sion of human liberty and the happiness of the people. 
What better proof that the cause of Ireland and that of 
the English Democracy is the same than the perpetual 
opposition of the titled aristocracy of Great Britain to 
both. When the history of this epoch-making event is 
written, historians cannot fail to credit the fall of the 
House of Lords, in great part, to the Irish party in the 
Commons. Ireland, in a word, has been the slender 
and ever-youthful David who has laid low this haughty 
Gohath. 

It is of course an accident, but a highly felicitous one, 
that the day on which we honor the patron saint of 
Ireland is the anniversary of the evacuation of Boston 
by the British troops, one hundred and thirty-five years 
ago. Just as the cause of Ireland is essentially that of 
the English people and has contained in itself, unrecog- 
nized perhaps, the germ of a liberal and humane pro- 
gram, applicable to all the races of the world, so 
the American revolution was in some of its aspects a 
conflict between two elements of the British nation 
rather than a revolt of thirteen united colonies against 
a mother country equally united in resisting their claims. 
America had its Tories and England its Liberals, and 
then as now the implacable enemy of progress was the 
English House of Lords. The costly victory at Bunker 
Hill and the final surrender at Yorktown paved the way 
for the reform bills in the House of Commons, and all 
that movement towards the extension of the suffrage 
and the recognition of the rights of the common man, 
which has drawn the English people to-day to the very 
forefront of the democratic movement in Europe and 
the world. By a natural gravitation of ideas the two 
greatest events in American history — the revolution, 
which established the nation as an independent entity 
and the emancipation of the slaves, which removed a 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 75 

destructive cancer from its vitals — attracted the sym- 
pathetic attention of the two Irishmen who tower above 
all other public men of their race. Burke's speech on 
conciliation outlined a policy which, if it had been pur- 
sued, might have altered the current of history and 
enunciated clearly his sympathy with the ideals for 
which the American patriots were striving; and 
O'Connell stood shoulder to shoulder with Wilberforce 
in those early divisions in the House of Commons when 
the number of courageous spirits who dared to take sides 
against the slave owners on behalf of the oppressed 
black men in the British dominion could be counted 
almost on the fingers of one hand. In a word, the great 
liberal minded men have known no boundaries of race 
or geographical distinction, but have drawn upon the 
common treasury of ideas and principles which is the 
heritage of enlightened men and women the world over. 
The most ardent believer in the cause of Ireland can 
well afford to welcome this prospect of the healing of old 
wounds, and I am sure that the first to rejoice in this 
manner will be those who have themselves received 
wounds in the cause of their mother land. Now that 
we have wrung our doom from the ancient oppressor we 
can afford to write the history of the past in a tolerant 
and forgiving spirit for the perusal of our children, who, 
happily, will inherit only the echoes of this ancient feud. 
With all their divisions and discords, Ireland and Eng- 
land have much in common. Their literatures fuse and 
coalesce through the medium of a common tongue. 
Their soldiers have fought with valor against savage 
and civilized foes, and the red flag whose boast it is that 
the sun never sets upon it was carried to the uttermost 
bounds of the earth by soldiers, many of whom in their 
hearts paid secret allegiance to the harp-embroidered 
green banner of Erin. The Irishman will not cease to be 
what he is by conceding the sturdy virtues of the English 
people, and the Saxon might well crave a dash of Irish 
fervor and brilliancy to leaven his own heavier good 
qualities. 



76 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



FIRE CONDITIONS. 

Letter Sent to Various Public Bodies, 

March 29, 1911. 



Gentlemen, — Recent occurrences in New York and 
Boston have revealed the necessity of a systematic 
canvass of the city for the discovery of unsafe building 
conditions. The Building, Fire and Police Departments 
are able to do a great deal to protect the lives and prop- 
erty of citizens, but they cannot always cope with the 
ingenuity, indifference and ignorance of certain property 
owners. So much risk is involved in this matter that 
every private citizen should be willing to assist the 
authorities in their efforts to prevent the holocausts 
which have so often marred the records of American 
cities. 

The immediate question is not the framing of new 
laws which shall guarantee a higher degree of safety, 
but of the conflict of two elements, one seeking to enforce 
and the other to evade the laws as they now exist. The 
best way for right minded people to contribute to the 
general safety is by promptly reporting the street and 
number of every building which seems to afford legiti- 
mate ground for apprehension. 

I respectfully ask that you endeavor to interest the 
membership of your society in this subject and that you 
favor me with the results of your observation, whether 
of general or particular conditions. By so doing you 
will manifest a high degree of good citizenship, and will 
perhaps bring to the attention of the Fire Commissioner 
and the Building Department incidents of careless or 
illegal construction which might otherwise escape 
attention. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 77 



A STATE FINANCE COMMISSION. 

At the Rockland Board of Trade, April 25, 1911. 



I am somewhat astonished to find any objection to the 
appointment of a State Finance Commission. It seems 
odd that the RepubUcan leaders who were so very 
anxious to give extraordinary powers to the Finance 
Commission which investigated Boston's affairs a few 
years ago should hesitate to give a like authority to a 
state board. Is it the same old story over again? When 
I first proposed a Finance Commission in Boston every 
Republican member of the City Council voted against 
the proposition, and then attempted to claim the credit 
for the work done by the commission. There is certainly 
more need for a Finance Commission throughout the 
state than there ever was for the City of Boston. When 
we find municipalities with debts outstanding for which 
no sinking funds are being accumulated; when we find 
loans from banks or individuals obtained chiefly on 
demand notes ; w^hen we find the principal of trust funds 
being borrowed and used; when we find funds given 
to the cities and towns for the perpetual care of lots in 
the cemeteries being used for other purposes; when we 
find state highways, which last but five years on an 
average, being built with money borrowed for a term 
of forty years; when we find twenty different purchasing 
agents for twenty different institutions in the same city 
instead of one central purchasing agent; when we find 
no audited bills in many institutions; when we find 
contracts awarded without competitive bidding; when 
we find the lowest bidder ignored when such bidding 
does take place; when we find different prices being paid 
for the same article in different institutions, it seems to 
me that it is time for the appointment of a Board which 
shall have the authority to investigate conditions all 



78 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

over the state and apply the proper remedy. Every 
city in the Commonwealth at the present time borrows 
money for the paving of its highways except Boston; 
many cities, if we are to believe the statements in the 
inaugural addresses of the Mayors, are borrowing 
money for public celebrations, for the payment of school 
teachers, and for various other purposes which should 
be met out of the tax levy. In fact, the situation is such 
in many cities and towns in the state now that it is 
impossible for officials to give an honest statement of the 
financial condition of the municipality. The citizens of 
Rockland ought to insist that their local representatives 
stand behind the Governor and the Commonwealth in 
demanding the passage of legislation which will give 
the Governor the power to appoint a Board of five men, 
with full and complete powers, to put the financial 
affairs of the state and the cities and towns in the state 
on a proper basis; to recommend legislation which will 
make it impossible to borrow money for current expenses; 
which will require cities and towns when borrowing 
money to provide a proper sinking fund basis, and to 
organize the business of the city on a sound basis. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 79 



MORTMAIN. 
Special Article, May 4, 1911. 



Seven hundred years ago, at the time of the Magna 
Charta, England found it necessary to make laws to 
prevent land from getting into the hands of those who 
would withdraw it from development and sale. These 
were called the Statutes of Mortmain, meaning laws 
against the dead hand. 

The condition of business in Boston at the present 
time is very much like the situation which caused the 
revolt in older countries leading to these statutes against 
the dead hand. Boston has been put to sleep by our 
foolish tax laws. They have forced the great body of 
Boston trustees to invest in the shares of our railroads, 
national banks and Massachusetts corporations. These 
trustees hold hundreds of millions of dollars, the accu- 
mulations of dead and gone Bostonians. Try to do 
business with them and you will find their rule of con- 
duct to be, as one of their number has wittily said: 
^' First, the safety of the trustee, second, the convenience 
of the trustee; third, the commissions of the trustee." 

Our banks, our railroads, our street railways, our 
mills, our wharves, all bear the weight of the heavy dead 
hand of the trustee, who. cares nothing for development, 
but only for his fixed income. The Boston & Albany, 
for instance, was once in their control, a prospering rail- 
road, but getting behind the times. Did they renew 
rails, put on new cars, buy heavier locomotives? No, 
indeed! That might have meant going without a few 
dividends temporarily. Instead of this they jumped 
at an offer from the New York Central to take the prop- 
erty off their hands and continue their income without 
interruption. They were indifferent to the future 
business of the road and of the port of Boston. They 



80 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

wanted a sure thing. The Boston & Albany lease was 
the direct result of the dead hand. 

They parted in the same way with the Boston & 
Lowell, Boston & Providence, the Eastern, and Fitch- 
burg. It was so much easier to get a fixed return by 
lease without bothering about the management. 

Among the chiefs of the hierarchy of the dead hand 
are two whose power and influence may be seen from the 
following lists of companies in which they are officers: 

A. 

Boston Pier or the Long Wharf, President and Treasurer. 

Boston Real Estate Trust, Trustee. 

Boston & Providence Railroad, Director. 

Boylston Market Association, Director. 

Commercial Wharf Company, President and Director. 

Department Store Trust, Trustee. 

Fifty Associates, Director. 

Lewis Wharf Company, President and Director. 

Midland Realty Company, Treasurer, Secretary and Director. 

Otis Company, Director. 

Pepperell Manufacturing Company, Director. 

Proprietors of Rowe's Wharf, President and Director. 

Social Law Library, Trustee. 

B. 

American Bell Telephone Company, Director. 

American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Director. 

Battery Wharf Store Company, Treasurer and Director. 

Board of Trade Building Trust, Trustee. 

Boston Personal Property Trust, Trustee. 

Boston Water Power Company, Director and Trustee. 

Boston Wharf Company, Vice-President and Director. 

Brauier Building Trust, Trustee. 

Brookline Riverdale Land Association, Trustee. 

Business Real Estate Trust, Trustee. 

Central Wharf and Wet Dock Corporation, President and 

Director. 
Conveyancers Title Insurance Company, Director. 
Copley Square Trust, Trustee. 
Fitchburg Railroad, President and Director. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 81 

Massachusetts General Hospital, Trustee. 

Merchants Real Estate Trust, Trustee. 

Merchants Warehouse Company, President and Director. 

Municipal Real Estate Trust, Trustee. 

National Shawmut Bank, Director. 

Park Square Real Estate Trust, Trustee. 

Pemberton Building Trust, Trustee. 

Real Estate Exchange and Auction Board, Vice-President. 

State Street Trust Company, President and Director. 

Summer Street Trust, Trustee. 

Trimountain Trust, Trustee. 

West End Street Railway Company, Director. 

Western Real Estate Trust, Trustee. 

Western Telegraph and Telephone Company, Director. 

Note their control of wharf property: A is president 
of the Boston Pier, president of the Commercial Wharf 
Company, president of the Lewis Wharf Company, presi- 
dent of the Proprietors of Rowe's Wharf. B is treasurer 
of the Battery Wharf Store Company, vice-president of 
the Boston Wharf Company, president of the Central 
Wharf and Wet Dock Corporation. 

How much development of that important part of 
Boston harbor which is covered by these properties can 
be expected from these trustees. None whatever. To 
their minds a 3 per cent income from second or third 
class commerce is better than taking any shadow of risk. 
Trustees cannot afford to take risks. Their natural 
position is that of lenders of money to the more ven- 
turesome and progressive. But our tax laws have 
forced them out of this position into the position of 
owners and managers of industries and the vehicles of 
our trade and commerce. If our tax laws can be changed 
to allow the dead hand to resume its normal and proper 
function, figuring interest, then the activities of the 
city will naturally and surely come into the hands of 
other owners, who will have as their motive in owning 
and managing them the hope of such profit as will follow 
their improvement and development to the point 



82 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

where they can successfully compete with other great 
centers of industry and commerce. 

Our mercantile real estate suffers perhaps more than 
commercial property. Analyze conditions in the retail 
business district between Boylston, School, Washington 
and Tremont streets. How many new buildings have 
been erected within twenty-five years. Not one a year. 
What a commentary on the progressiveness of this city. 

Some members of the Chamber of Commerce have 
been endeavoring to raise one million dollars to inaugu- 
rate steamship service between Boston and Texas. Not 
one banking house has lifted its finger to aid. Millions 
can be raised for questionable mining enterprises, but 
a single million for a business enterprise which will add to 
our commerce and bring happiness to many homes 
cannot be found. 

If Boston could disinherit about twenty-five men who 
have their hands clutched about the throat of commercial 
and industrial Boston, this city would attain a growth 
in the next ten years almost unbelievable. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 83 



FIRE HAZARD BILL DEFEAT. 
Statement, May 12, 1911. 



It is with the utmost regret that I have learned of the 
defeat of the Fire Hazard Bill by a majority so over- 
whelming as to leave me stunned with amazement. I 
cannot believe that the legislators who so lightly put 
aside this opportunity to strengthen the building laws 
of Boston realized the grave peril in which we are living. 
Certainly there was nothing in the history of the bill or 
in its support that could have aroused their suspicion. 
Acting on the advice of city officials entrusted with 
grave responsibilities in the protection of life and 
property and on the results of my own observation, I 
appointed a committee in which all interests were 
represented. It contained an architect, a real estate 
expert, a builder, and delegates from the Carpenters' 
District Council, the Board of Fire Underwriters and the 
Civic League. The measure drafted by this committee 
was regarded as extremely moderate, as it was felt that 
to attempt too much would be to endanger the pros- 
pects of the whole scheme. It was made contingent 
upon acceptance by the Boston City Council, and those 
who know the temper of that body must agree that if 
there were any sound objections to the bill the objectors 
would have been granted a fair hearing. Its provisions 
relate to matters upon which there is really no disagree- 
ment among thinking students of the question, such as 
non-combustible roofs, open spaces between buildings, 
the erection of fire-proof party walls, and the restriction 
of floor areas. It was known that the lumber interests 
would oppose the bill, but their hand was so veiled and 
their operations so stealthy that until the last moment 
its advocates indulged a hope of final success. 

What the Legislature has done is to yield to the per- 



84 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

suasions of a special interest, guarding its own profits 
and perquisites as against the security of the population 
of a great city. How short-sighted they were may be 
seen from the oft-repeated comparison of fire losses in 
Boston and in other American cities as compared with 
those abroad. The average per capita loss in a city 
like Berlin or Vienna is only one-eighth of that in 
Boston, a discrepancy which is truly staggering and 
which is due absolutely to the difference in the building 
laws, a difference which this conservative measure 
would in some degree have reduced. The Chelsea fire 
seemed a disaster of almost national scope and interest, 
and yet every five years or so the fire losses in Boston 
aggregate the loss on that one occasion. It has been 
pointed out that every half decade we burn up a value 
equivalent to the cost of all the church buildings in the 
city. 

Above and beyond the direct loss from fire our char- 
acteristic American recklessness brings other penalties. 
The cost of the Fire Department, for example, in Boston 
is huge as compared with that of any continental city 
of the same size. We employ as many men, roughly 
speaking, and maintain as elaborate apparatus as London, 
which has ten times our population. The insurance 
rates also mount in proportion to the extent of the fire 
losses, and as this burden is distributed every insured 
person must bear his share. The type of building 
legislated against not only constitutes a bad fire risk; 
it is one which is undesirable in other respects. The 
fire hazard bill which has been defeated would have 
conduced to a finer style of architecture and made the 
city to that extent more attractive and habitable as well 
as safe. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES S5 



CANADIAN RECIPROCITY. 

Statement, May 28, 1911. 



Twenty-five years from now, when another generation 
has grown up, the wonder will be that any tariff law 
had ever existed between Canada and the United States. 
It must be obvious to anyone who knows anything about 
the history of this continent that the largest freedom 
of trade between both countries is the best possible 
thing for their inhabitants. If a line is drawn from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific from the northernmost point in 
Maine to the northernmost point of the State of Wash- 
ington, and this ought to be the natural border line, 
the principal cities of Canada will be included within 
our domains. Montreal, the principal city of Canada, 
is but three hundred and fifty miles from New York or 
Portland, while Chicago is about a thousand miles. 
New York and Boston are hundreds of miles nearer 
Montreal than Halifax or St. John, and ought to be the 
natural ports of Canada, particularly in those months 
of the year when the St. Lawrence river is frozen over. 

These two nations have now the longest boundary in 
existence, extending from ocean to ocean; they have 
lived in peace and mutual respect without a fortress, a 
soldier, or a gun on either^ side of the boundary. Each 
country has about three thousand square miles of 
territory, the United States with a population of one 
hundred millions and Canada with but seven millions. 
According to the best authority the United States will 
have reached its ability to supply its population with 
wheat in a few years, while Canada will be just com- 
mencing. The United States has just reached the point 
where its exports consist of manufactured products, 
while Canada is being settled by a population which will 
not only develop the wheat fields, but produce pig iron 



86 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

and coal and minerals of all kinds for use in the devel- 
opment of the great industrial establishments of this 
country. 

When one analyzes the history of our country to find 
reasons for the marvelous industrial and commercial 
success it has achieved in the last one hundred years, it 
will be found that the greatest factor in its development 
has been the freedom of trade that has existed between 
all the states of the Union. The map of the United 
States placed over Europe would cover all that country 
outside of Russia. More than twenty nations are 
included, each one armed against the other, supporting 
millions of soldiers in time of peace, speaking different 
languages and with different tariffs. The United States, 
with its forty-eight states, without fortresses, without 
tariff walls, with cotton in the south, wheat in the west, 
manufactures in the east, the ocean on the west, the east 
and the south, has furnished opportunity for the devel- 
opment of trade unexampled in the history of the world. 
While the United States was forging ahead, Canada was 
stagnant. Recently Canada has awakened to her 
advantages; her statesmen and her business men have 
come to realize the marvelous riches that her soil pos- 
sesses, and the people are turning to them, with the 
result that the last ten years has witnessed a prosperity 
unexampled in the history of the world. 

It is utterly foolish for two nations thus equipped, 
both in their infancy, to be apart in trade matters, and 
I think the fair-minded citizens of both countries will 
bless the day that Sir Wilfred Laurier and William H. 
Taft agree that both nations should adopt a trade policy 
for the mutual benefit of their peoples. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 87 



MEMORIAL DAY. 
Speech at Sandwich, May 30, 1911. 



To-day a grateful nation offers tribute to the memory 
of her patriot soldiers. In recognition of their devotion 
to their country's cause these hours have been set apart. 
And although the ritual of the Grand Army makes their 
service on this day both inspiring and impressive, it is 
from the hearts of the whole people of the nation that the 
most touching portion of these exercises is drawn. It 
is to the women of our country that we are indebted 
for the origin of the beautiful custom of decorating 
the graves of our heroic dead with flowers. At the close 
of the war the women of the North and South who had 
lost father, husband, brother or son in that terrible 
conflict through which the nation had passed, were 
moved to place the first flowers of spring on the graves 
of their beloved dead. The custom was quickly adopted 
by the various Posts of the Grand Army throughout the 
country, whose members could not and would not forget 
those comrades who had gone down with them and been 
lost in the seething maelstrom of civil war. The Act 
of Congress setting apart the 30th of May as a day 
sacred to the memories of patriotic citizen-soldiery of 
the nation came as a fitting tribute to the unselfish 
heroism of her loyal sons, both native and adopted, who 
had given their lives in her defence. 

No day in the calendar is more calculated to inspire 
a loftier or more noble patriotism than this, which brings 
to us memories of the men who on the battle field, in the 
hospital and in prison became, at the sacrifice of their 
lives, saviors of their kind. In all the histories of the old 
world heroism there is none worthier to be called hero 
than the American citizen-soldier, who, for the first time 
in the world's history, took up arms in the defence of 



88 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

peace. For him there was no glory of conquest, no 
consuming ambition, no thought of personal renown. 
In his heart there dwelt no lust of power or the sordid 
avarice that would seize upon the riches of his conquered 
foeman as his own just spoils, the price of his victory. 
His one thought, his sole desire, had root in his 
unbounded love for his country and its institutions. 
To-day it is often a matter of comment among Europeans 
that Americans abroad almost invariably refer to their 
native land as '^ God's country," and '^ God's country" 
it is to them. ^^God's country" it was to the men of 
'61 who gave up their lives cheerfully and without 
thought or question in its defence. ''God's country" 
was theirs and in it God's law should be supreme; His 
creatures, whether white or black, should enjoy there at 
least the full freedom and equality that His law had 
ordered and the law of the country had decreed. 

The patriot dead whom we honor here to-day pre- 
sented to the world the sublime example of a glorious 
manhood willing to make the most supreme sacrifice 
that can be demanded of man, in that he lay down his 
life, and this in defence of a principle. The only reward 
he hoped for, the only result that he sought to procure 
was that this nation should forever remain one and 
indissoluble, that the words of the constitution granting 
to all men freedom and equal rights might never lose 
their meaning. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 89 



WEST END MERGER. 
From Speech at Canobie Lake, June 24, 1911. 



I want to say a word on a subject which is now 
before the pubhc. It is the matter of the leasing of the 
West End Street Railway Company by the Boston 
Elevated Railway Company. The Public Franchise 
League, as well as members of the Rapid Transit Com- 
mission and all the newspapers in Boston, have joined 
in an effort to induce the owners of the common stock 
of the West End to permit the consolidation of the West 
End and the Boston Elevated on a 7 per cent basis, 
the terms of the lease during the past fifteen years. 
Because the owners of the common stock in the West 
End Road feel that they have the Elevated and the 
public in a hole they are insisting upon their pound of 
flesh. This means $116,000 a year, and on a basis of 
fifty years this would amount to about six millions of 
dollars taken out of the pockets of the people of Boston 
and given over to a few individuals. The men who 
stand ready to plunder the people of these millions are 
among our so-called ''best citizens.^' They would shun 
with contempt contact with a man who had indulged 
in the smallest kind of graft at the expense of the city, 
while they unblushingly demand an extortionate divi- 
dend which must come out of the pockets of the people. 

Francis C. Welch, of Quincy A. Shaw trust fame, is, 
as trustee, the largest holder of this stock, having control 
of over 7,425 shares; one of our trust companies, the New 
England, is the trustee for 3,553 shares; J. J. Bright 
owns 3,300; A. Bartlett, trustee, controls 3,122; J. A. 
Skinner owns 2,425; Richard Olney (Chairman of the 
Committee of 100) controls, as trustee, 638 shares; 
Francis Henshaw & Co. own 661; Chase & Barstow, the 
bankers, own 580; R. L. Day & Co. own 828, and 



90 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

H. C. Jackson, a leading member of the Charter Associa- 
tion, has 800 shares. All these men are supporters and 
contributors to the funds of the Good Government 
Association. They are willing to hire a man to publish 
a ''Good Government '^ magazine every month to set 
forth details which have little or nothing to do with the 
maintenance of our municipality. Does this action 
qualify them to act as censors of the city government? 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 91 



NEEDS OF THE FIRE DEPARTMENT. 

August 31, 1911. 



Dear Sir, — Your letter of August 18 declining to 
serve on a commission to be appointed by me for the 
investigation of the needs of the Fire Department has 
been received. In this communication you declare in 
substance that the whole matter has been settled and 
nothing remains for me to do but to ratify your decision. 

I am familiar with this tone in the communications 
which I receive from certain departments of the govern- 
ment. It was manifest to a certain degree in the atti- 
tude of the School Committee a year ago when it esti- 
mated an increase of seventeen hundred and eighty-seven 
(1,787) pupils a year for five years as a basis for certain 
appropriations. My own contention was that conditions 
were as likely to bring about a decrease as an increase 
in the school population and the results have proved 
that I was not mistaken. The actual figures, as pub- 
lished by the Statistics Department, show a falling off 
of twelve hundred and seven (1,207) pupils between 
February 28, 1910, when the estimate of the School 
Committee was prepared, and February 28, 1911. The 
question then as now was the wisdom of making a 
permanent addition to the pay rolls of the department 
in the face of changes which might in the near future 
make such an addition unnecessary. 

When convinced by a broader investigation than that 
which furnishes the basis of your report that the city 
should spend $193,000 at once and add $60,000 a year 
or more to its tax levy, I shall recommend this expendi- 
ture to the City Council as advised by you. In the 
meantime permit me to say that no one of the Fire 
Commissioners whom you quote has ever recommended 
an increase in the number of firemen in any official 



92 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

document, as far as I have been able to ascertain, or 
has given this phase of the problem the importance 
which it has assumed in the eyes of a commission hitherto 
noted for its desire to reduce rather than increase the 
number of city employees. 

In this connection permit me to quote an editorial 
from the Boston Transcript of August 2, 1910, comment- 
ing on an assertion attributed to Acting Commissioner 
Carroll that one hundred more men were needed in the 
department : 

The number of men in the department is over 900. . . But 
the situation is not a new one and hardly affords warrant for 
the suggestion of the acting head of the department that the 
force should be increased 10 per cent. . . The head of a 
department naturally sees legitimate needs that are not always 
apparent to the executive or legislative branches of the munic- 
ipal government, and in the case of this one the recommenda- 
tions are usually considerably in advance of their satisfaction, 
but not in recent years have the suggestions for increase been 
placed at so high a figure. . . The proposed increase would 
mean a matter of more than $100,000, a burden which the city 
is hardlj^ prepared to assume at such short notice. 

This is precisely the point of view which I have taken, 
and which I shall maintain until the new commission 
has reported. I learn from a table compiled by Prof. 
C. H. Merriam, and printed in the University of Chicago 
Magazine, that the per capita cost of the fire departments 
of Glasgow and Vienna is 12 and 16 cents, respectively. 
In Philadelphia and Chicago the cost is only 92 cents 
and $1.14. Boston heads the entire list of European 
and American cities with a per capita expenditure of 
$2.39, which is twenty times that of Glasgow, fifteen 
times that of Vienna, two and one-half times that of 
Philadelphia and twice that of Chicago. Yet your 
commission, so keen on the scent of extravagance in 
other departments, asks me to jump this expenditure 
immediately by the sum of $193,000, which is about 
equal to the entire cost of the fire department in Glasgow 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 93 

for two years. You base this recommendation on a 
report of the Fire Commissioner which has never been 
submitted to the responsible head of the city govern- 
ment, and which I never saw until it was incorporated 
in your letter. 

What I want as Mayor of the city, responsible to the 
taxpayers for outlay and return, is some satisfying 
explanation of the huge cost of fire protection in this 
city. I consider a delay of a few weeks well worth while 
if it results in a saving of expense, a radical improvement 
in fire-fighting methods, needed amendments to the 
building laws, or even a more thorough understanding 
of the unique conditions that appear to exist in Boston. 

Hon. John A. Sullivan, Chairman the Boston Finance Commission, 
Boston, Mass. 



94 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



INDUSTRY IN NEW ENGLAND. 

Speech at the Educational and Industrial 
Exposition, October 2, 1911. 



It is customary to say that New England was given 
little in the way of natural wealth. The picture usually 
drawn of this section contrasts the fertility of the New 
England mind with the barrenness of the New England 
soil, and it is true that we have no abundant stores of 
raw material in this section now that the virgin timber 
has been almost exhausted. We have little or no 
leather, cotton, wool, iron, paper pulp or coal. But, on 
the other hand, we have water power, which is better, 
because more lasting than coal; we have a coast indented 
with some of the finest harbors in the country; we have 
peculiar advantages of position in relation to the great 
nations of Europe, and a population in which skill of 
hand and education of the mind have been traditions for 
three centuries. 

This population, while dense according to the Amer- 
ican standard, is not the teeming swarm that it is some- 
times imagined to be. All New England contains only 
about six and one-half millions, while little Belgium, 
which is only one-third the size of Maine and a trifle 
larger than Massachusetts, supports seven millions. 
The time has not yet come when we should look to 
emigration to relieve our commercial congestion; on 
the contrary, we can still find use for the thousands who 
are arriving yearly on our shores. Population and 
wealth are growing together, and if anything the latter 
outruns the former from decade to decade. 

When we speak of New England, grouping the six 
states together, I think we unconsciously touch upon 
one of the elements of our strength. There is an un- 
doubted community of interest among these common- 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 95 

wealths and a distinctive type or character among the 
people. This does not mean that we are isolated from 
the rest of the country in any narrowing sense, but that 
we are individualized, and have worked out in this upper 
right-hand corner of the nation a destiny of our own. 
When one looks at the great variety of interests and 
industries to be found within our borders it seems 
absurd to talk of narrowness. New York itself is not 
an '^ Empire" state in any truer sense than New England. 
Our commerce, our manufactures have reached the 
finest point of delicacy, intricacy and taste, represented 
in the watch factories at Waltham and in the sumptuous 
book-binderies in the neighborhood of Boston; while 
at the opposite end of the scale we find men living in 
Maine and along the waterfront by the most primitive 
occupations, such as hunting and fishing. If this 
exposition does nothing else, it will have emphasized 
this versatility of the New England section. 

I think we all realize that in order to hold our own 
we must continue the efforts which have brought us 
our present prosperity. The moment we start to drift 
with the tide we shall find it turning against us. We 
have to compete with our own offspring who have 
settled the Middle West and even the far North West. 
These men of New England blood have seized oppor- 
tunities which we would like to have made our own. 
Every time I see a line of automobiles I remember that 
60 per cent of the machines in the United States are 
made in Detroit, and many of them sold to purchasers 
in New England. As a good Bostonian, I could wish 
that things were exactly the other way. 

The one thing that will confirm our priority and hold 
the advantages we have won is education. It was 
education in a sense that placed us where we are, and 
education must advance us still further on the path of 
industry and prosperity. The instinct of the public 
groped unconsciously toward this truth, and, in spite 
of conservative opposition, has modified the curriculum 
in the direction of more practical training for life. The 



96 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

elementary schools now include manual training for 
almost every pupil; the high schools have become 
specialized, so that a boy may take a commercial or a 
mechanical course as well as a course which aims to 
impart a general culture. Even the colleges are shaping 
their courses to conform to this new tendency. Harvard, 
for example, includes a graduate school of business, 
applied science, agriculture and forestry, as well as 
departments which prepare for the so-called liberal 
professions. It seems to me that this tendency should 
be encouraged and developed and that we should go 
even further. We should undertake the education of 
the adult mind and get the whole public into the habit 
of thinking in business terms. We should inculcate 
among them a sort of industrial sense which is never 
lacking in communities at the heyday of their prosperity. 

This exposition is rightly called educational. It is 
a world's fair in little — a great object lesson in the 
achievements and possibilities of New England industry. 
I will not stop to argue against those who contend that 
such education is prosaic and materialistic. Here, 
amid the roar of the machines and beneath the finished 
elegance or sturdy solidity of the product, one feels the 
qualities that have gone to produce such a result, the 
patience, industry and thrift, provident frugality and 
that loyalty to home and family which characterize 
everywhere the skilled artisan and mechanic. 

As the Mayor of Boston I may be pardoned for point- 
ing out the pivotal position which our city occupies in 
this display. If New England is, as I have said, a sort 
of nation in itself, then her capital, like those of other 
nations, sums up in a concentrated form the life of the 
whole territory. Whatever vitalizes New England 
heightens the brilliancy and the strength of Boston, 
while, on the other hand, the stability of our banks and 
commercial houses, the improvement of our harbor, the 
development of our railroads and terminal facilities, all 
react upon the territory and the district whose lines of 
traffic and of travel converge upon this point. Boston 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 97 

has led the way in industrial education, in the limited 
sense, by her splendid technical colleges, her specializing 
high schools, her continuation schools for working 
youths, and her evening schools, unsurpassed in the 
variety which they offer. In the larger sense, too, she 
has proven herself a pioneer. The Boston Chamber of 
Commerce, whose delegates have just returned from a 
tour through Europe, has no superior in its admirable 
organization, and, after all, organization, like publicity, 
is one of the prime factors in modern commercial success. 
This exposition itself, arranged by the Boston Chamber of 
Commerce to display the industries of all New England, 
is evidence both of the leadership which rightfully 
belongs to Boston and of the inter-dependence and 
mutual good will which must and should exist among 
the six states of New England. 



V 



/ 

/ 



98 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



THE IRISH LITERARY REVIVAL. 

Speech at First Performance of Abbey Theater 
Company, September 25, 19n. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — Like most of you I came 
here to-night as a learner and would prefer to listen 
rather than to speak. It has been my privilege to read 
some of the works of the remarkable group of Irish 
writers who have so recently won the enchanted ear of 
the English-speaking world. And I know from general 
report the claims and distinction of their writings. 
They have resurrected the ancient genius of Ireland 
and made again that music which was lost long ago in 
the cry of Ireland weeping for her children. This 
dramatic revival is only one phase of the many-sided 
renaissance in Ireland, but it is one of the most 
important. We who are of Irish blood offer, with the 
pride of kinsmen, a welcome to the Abbey Theater 
Company and the distinguished authors who have come 
to watch over the production of their plays. 

The appeal of these plays, however, is not confined 
to people of Irish origin. There will be many in this 
audience whose interest is not racial but artistic, and 
we, so proud to call ourselves Irish to-night, rejoice that 
this literary movement has been carried far beyond the 
boundaries of race to become one of the most significant 
events of the age. I am honored in presenting to a 
Boston audience the works of Mr. Yeats, who is here 
with us to-night. Lady Gregory, Mr. Synge, and others 
hardly less gifted, who have sought to portray the 
spirit and features of life in that mysterious western 
island, and I hope that this theater will be crowded at 
every performance so that there may be no doubt of 
Boston's appreciation of what this gifted group have 
done to release the imprisoned poetry of the people of 
Ireland. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 99 



STREET IMPROVEMENTS. 
January 27, 1912. 



Dear Sirs, — While the street plan of Boston has 
been commended for its picturesqueness and some 
experts have even professed to see in it a certain fitness 
to our particular needs, it is generally regarded as any- 
thing but a model in respect to comfort and convenience. 
The down-town streets are crooked, the roadways and 
sidewalks are narrow, and the whole scheme seems 
ill-adapted for the travel and traffic which it is compelled 
to bear. One of the melancholy features of our early 
municipal history is the failure of the authorities to 
adopt certain practical suggestions for highway improve- 
ment which, while costly at the time, if carried out 
would have left no occasion for future regrets. 

The congestion in the business section of this city is 
all but intolerable, and it is generally agreed that the 
remedies which should be applied are of a heroic char- 
acter. This year I have given definite shape, in the 
form of bills presented to the Legislature, to two ideas 
for street improvement which have been hovering in the 
air for a long time past and which have been informally 
discussed by several public bodies. My motive in 
addressing you at the present time is to crystallize 
opinion on these points so that the above-mentioned 
measures may stand before the Legislature backed, if 
possible, by the support of the entire business com- 
munity as well as the city officials. 

The principal improvements suggested by me are the 
widening of Avery street and its extension to Tremont, 
the widening and extension of Hamilton place, the con- 
struction of a teaming highway between the North and 
South Stations, and the laying out of a new street mid- 
way between Washington and Tremont streets, extending 



100 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

from Hanover to Boylston street. The extension of 
Avery street would provide relief for Boylston street, 
which is already congested, by furnishing a ready means 
of access to the business establishments on Washington 
street from the subway outlet, and the extension of 
Hamilton place would operate in a similar manner. 
The value of a great teaming thoroughfare between the 
North and South Stations need not be emphasized, and 
the street paralleling Washington and Tremont streets, 
midway between these two, has been urged as perhaps 
the most radical remedy of all for the congestion of 
traffic in this center of the retail trade and high valua- 
tions. Some of these measures are presented in two 
forms, so that if it is advisable advantage may be taken 
of the new constitutional amendment which permits 
territory to be acquired in excess of that actually needed 
for the street improvement. 

I believe that your body would render a public service 
by instituting an inquiry into these propositions. The 
effects of these improvements would be far reaching. 
This very circumstance, which justifies in my opinion 
the expense involved, makes it at the same time neces- 
sary to proceed with caution and to consult the business 
men whose interests are to be affected. 

I trust that you may find it convenient to give this 
your immediate attention and that I shall have the 
benefit of your advice in my appearances before the 
Legislature. 

Boston Finance Commission and Boston Chamber of Commerce, 
Boston, Mass. 



\ 
\ 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 101 



BOSTON CATHOLICS. 

At the Reception to Cardinal O'Connell, 

February 7, 1912. 



I sometimes wonder if the sons of the Puritans 
understand why we Catholics profess such an ardent 
affection for Boston. To some of them, I fear, we are 
still, I will not say intruders in the sacred precincts, but 
latecomers not yet fully acclimated. They cannot know, 
as we do, the personal memories that hallow this scene 
of our fathers' struggles. They, too, were Pilgrims, 
and we, as well as descendants of the Mayflower party, 
are the children of sacrifice and prayer. Our annals 
tell of villages emptied by famine, of crowded immigrant 
ships, of laborious lives in the new land, and the scanty 
reward of the laborers. 

But privation bred character in these exiles of Erin. 
Creature comforts were few in those days, but the 
immigrants received here the priceless gift of freedom. 
In the bracing New England air they paid their way in 
honest toil, prospered according to their talents and 
opportunities, and gave us, their offspring, the advan- 
tages of education which had been cruelly denied them. 
If we have climbed a little higher than our parents in 
worldly position it is because we were lifted up on their 
sturdy shoulders. For us they toiled and struggled; 
for us, above all, they preserved the faith which is 
higher than worldly advantage, higher than life itself. 
If we had no reasons of our own, — and we have many, — 
for loving the city of our birth, we should hold it in 
honor as the place where our fathers found a refuge in 
affliction and laid the foundations of our own prosperity. 

It is natural, when we tell the story of the Church in 
Boston, to lay stress on its dramatic phases, — not only 
its prodigious growth in numbers and influence, but its 



102 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

struggle with fanaticism and its glorious victory. I 
do not know, however, that any good purpose would 
be served to-night by recalling bygone differences. On 
this pleasant occasion, amid an era of harmony and 
good will, let us rejoice, as we have a right to rejoice, in 
our numbers and good name, but let us generously 
ignore the unhappy period of our purification by blood 
and fire. 

Whatever misunderstandings may have formerly 
existed, we now enjo}^, as individuals, the full rights of 
citizenship. There is daily contact with our neighbors, 
mutual tolerance and trust. The Church is no longer 
viewed askance as a menace to our institutions. On 
the contrary, most Americans recognize that without 
its cooperation the state itself would be weakened, if 
not endangered. Against certain perils that threaten 
society she alone offers potent safeguards. To the 
challenge of those who would subvert established forms 
and customs her answer alone rings clarion clear. 

Order, obedience, reverence for authority are the 
cornerstones of her system. In this age of revolution, 
when thought has become wanton and the red flag is 
waved from the housetops, who else enunciates so 
fearlessly the supremacy of the moral laws? The 
bayonets of the soldiery may exact a sullen submission, 
but it is only the Church that can quell the deeper riot 
in the human heart. The time may soon come when 
she will be summoned to this task and we may be sure 
that she will perform it with her accustomed firmness 
and forbearance. 

The same influences that would undermine the state 
are attacking the integrity of the Christian home. 
Society, as we know it, rests upon the family, and the 
very mortar that binds the foundation stones together 
is the Church, with its emphasis on affection and duty 
rather than passion and caprice. We do not say with 
Luther, '^Marriage is a mere worldly thing.'^ We con- 
secrate it as an inviolable sacrament, and invest it with 
the tenderest associations of life, — those of motherhood 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 103 

and the cradle. If discords arise, we seek to reconcile 
the estranged couple, instead of thrusting them farther 
asunder and tossing the children back and forth between 
them like playthings. To-day, when divorce has become 
respectable, and the trial marriage is publicly advocated, 
the tenets of the Church are more and more commanding 
respect and winning adherents. 

Poverty, the persistent shadow which dogs the figure 
of luxury, is embittered in America not only by the 
contrast with flaunting affluence but by a keen sense of 
disillusion. Politically we have proclaimed that all 
men are free and equal, but industrially many believe 
the chasm between rich and poor is widening every day. 
The nation seems to be reeling in an apoplexy of con- 
gested wealth that serves no economic purpose and 
only renders its possessors less human and less happy. 
It is true the annual roll of their benefactions cannot be 
matched in European countries. Perhaps they are 
themselves mere victims, to a certain extent, of the 
false standards of the age; but there still remains the 
spectacle of innumerable lives crushed out of the sem- 
blance of humanity beneath their feet, the underpaid 
workers, both men and women, spirit-broken on the 
wheels of the machinery they tend, the pallid children 
robbed of their flowering time, and worst of all, the 
pitiful army of the unemployed, subjected to the fierce 
temptations of idleness and despair. The Catholic 
Church, founded by Christ the Carpenter, has always been 
the friend of the poor. It is she who presents the cause 
of these sufl'erers with most sincere compassion, and 
admonishes Dives, at the height of his revel, that Lazarus, 
sitting on the threshold, is his brother. She alone 
takes the sting of condescension from the alms-gift and 
restores charity to its original, inoffensive meaning of 
love. 

In these respects, and in many others, the establish- 
ment of the Church in America seems providential. 
The instinct of the American people recognizes her 
mission and because they are a sound and conservative 



104 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

people the Church here enjoys an esteem not always 
granted to her elsewhere. But it is not only by her 
teachings that she is judged, and judged favorably. 
The fruit of those teachings in the lives of her children 
is the highest vindication of her claims to a divine 
origin. I do not think that we need blush at the com- 
parison of the Catholic people with any other element. 
Our men are honest, our women virtuous. The priest- 
hood, almost without exception, is of exemplary char- 
acter, and the list of our bishops is one of which any 
diocese might well be proud. The gentle and apostolic 
Cheverus, a man of remarkable mind and character, 
links hands with the resolute Fenwick and the stately 
Fitzpatrick, all three well adapted by their scholar- 
ship and social graces to the atmosphere of this cultured 
city. 

The image of Archbishop Williams still survives in 
our memories, a man so reserved that he seemed 
almost to direct his diocese by gesture rather than by 
speech, yet with a perfect correspondence of life and 
creed stamped visibly on his serene and exalted counte- 
nance. Physically and spiritually erect, youthful even 
in extreme old age, he committed the Church of New 
England, well organized and flourishing, to the hands 
of his successor. 

And what shall we say of him? Truly a great prince 
has arisen in Israel, and God has visited His people. 
Young, strong, vigorous, mighty in intellect, powerful 
in moral force, superb citizen, devoted churchman, 
kindly father of priests and laity alike, raised to the 
lofty dignity of a prince of the church, he has again 
lifted this beloved city of ours, placing it on a pinnacle 
where all the world may see, and has vindicated the 
intellectual and moral grandeur of Boston. We citizens 
of Boston to-night, your Eminence, congratulate you upon 
this newly conferred honor which we know will be so ably 
borne. We thank the Holy See for this new mani- 
festation of its love for our city and its fine discrimina- 
tion in raising to the dignity of a prince of the Church 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 105 

the acknowledged leader of religious thought in New 
England. We have followed your career with keen 
interest for years. We have loved to contemplate your 
rapid rise from the position of curate in a Boston parish, 
through the presidency of the American College at 
Rome, the bishopric of Portland, a bearer of a message 
of peace to the Eastern world, the archbishopric of 
Boston, to the cardinalate, and we can assure you that 
we have always rejoiced with you at every new exhibi- 
tion of Rome's appreciation of your abilities, and we 
thank you for the assurance that the great honor which 
has come to you, and in which we all rejoice, is in some 
measure due to the esteem in which Boston herself is 
held by the Holy See. 

The citizens of Boston pledge you anew their love; 
they promise a quickening of the public and private 
conscience and they pray that God may bless you for 
many years to come, to be a benediction to the people 
of this city and this archdiocese, who one and all affec- 
tionately greet you with the name of Father. 



106 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



THE IRISH IN NEW ENGLAND. 

At Charitable Irish Society Banquet, March 18, 

1912. 



• The date of the founding of this society reminds us 
how early the Irish were on the scene in America and 
what a part they played in the building of the American 
Republic. In compliment, we are told, to the number 
of Irish soldiers in his army during the siege of Boston, 
George Washington gave ^^ Saint Patrick" as the counter- 
sign on March 17, 1776, the day when the British, num- 
bering eleven thousand souls, weighed anchor and sailed 
out into the waters of Massachusetts Bay. Not only 
do the names of distinguished generals of the Revolution, 
such as Montgomery, Sullivan, Knox, Moylan, and 
Morgan, suggest the existence of a large Irish mixture, 
but the regimental rolls which have been compiled in 
New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hamp- 
shire and other states are sprinkled with patronymics 
indicating an Irish origin. 

There is no need, however, of expatiating on this 
topic. The subject is a familiar one. The stream of 
immigration rose rapidly until by the middle of the 
nineteenth century a great tide of rich, warm Irish 
blood was pouring into the country. While it spread 
far and wide, and every state in the nation received its 
share, no portion of the country was more thoroughly 
saturated with the Celtic influx than New England. 
We are all familiar with the bewilderment which naturally 
followed the impact of two dissimilar races, and with 
its manifestations in such forms as the Knownothing 
movement in the middle of the nineteenth century. 
There are living among us men old enough to remember 
the uphill struggle which they and their fathers waged 
to maintain the primary rights of citizenship and the 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 107 

dignity of their manhood. But a readjustment came 
about gradually. There were too many resemblances 
of character and too many substantial interests in com- 
mon to permit a permanent separation. Each genera- 
tion witnesses a closer conformity in accent, appearance 
and ways of thought, and to-day the assimilation is 
almost complete. 

New England is probably the most Irish section of 
the country and yet it is still New England, true to the 
traditions of its founders and conscious of no decay in 
mental or moral vigor. Gradually at first, and then at 
a more rapid pace, the Irish immigrants and their 
children overtook the descendants of the Pilgrims in 
prosperity and education. Their growth in numbers 
gave them political power. The wealth of the region 
assured them of commercial opportunities, and their 
own native gifts brought distinction in many fields. In 
this second decade of the twentieth century it is as true 
of New England as of the other parts of the country that 
Irish names appear in exceptional profusion among the 
leaders in the professions, in trade and commerce, 
manufactures, railroading and public life. 

The Irish in New England have at times found it 
necessary to assert rather vigorously rights which were 
denied them, and in some quarters further assertion 
may still be required; but on the whole, looking over 
the ground broadly, it is fair to say that we have now 
attained a position in which we may turn aside from the 
contemplation of our rights and wrongs to the larger 
question of our responsibilities. New England is still 
one of the brightest spots on the map of the nation, 
illuminated by its long record of distinction in patri- 
otism, industry and culture. It has given the nation 
presidents and mothers of presidents. Literature, art, 
commerce, the sciences, all flourish here. Our inven- 
tions, our humanitarian movements and our just laws 
have conferred no less honor upon us than our material 
success. 

Such is the inheritance of the Irish-Americans settled 



108 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

here. They have come to the bloom of their own 
prosperity at a turning point in the fortunes of New 
England, and if our section should witness a decline, 
coincident with this change in the population, rightly 
or wrongly the inference would be drawn that the heirs 
were unworthy of their ancestors; that the rugged, 
intellectual and intensely individual type that was 
developed here from early immigration and colonial 
conditions had given way to a feebler stock, unable to 
perpetuate the primacy which the Puritans had wrung 
from a none too fertile soil. 

New England cannot produce raw materials which 
feed the nation or enter into manufacturing industries. 
Her soil, by itself, would hardly sustain the people that 
live within her borders. She is wealthy, but her wealth 
arises, not out of the ground beneath her feet, but out 
of the active brains and skillful fingers of her children. 
About the only natural assets she has, now that the 
forests are exhausted, are the tumbling rivers, which 
give water power, and the ocean, bathing her shores 
and indenting them with innumerable harbors. 

Our manifest destiny is to apply a sort of intensive 
culture to manufactures and to develop the finer grades 
of goods in all the lines in which we now have the 
ascendency. Our boots and shoes, our paper, our 
textiles, our machinery, should all be so superior to 
rival products that the label ''Made in New England'^ 
would be recognized the world over as a guaranty of 
style and durability. The time is near at hand when 
we must cease to be a nation exporting agricultural 
products, as the increase of population makes it certain 
that we can barely support our own people with the 
products of our soil. The manifest destiny of this sec- 
tion of the country is to become one of the great man- 
ufacturing regions of the world and such a prospect 
affords a brilliant rainbow of hope to the people of Boston 
who have the inimitable advantage of a situation upon 
the world's great highway of commerce. With a 
proper development of the port we should see our 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 109 

waterfront crowded with factories and the whole city 
encircled with a belt of manufacturing industries. 
Besides this, the new trade routes that will be formed 
over the ocean when the Panama Canal is completed 
open up a bright prospect for the port of Boston. We 
are nearer to Rio de Janeiro than New Orleans or Balti- 
more, and if Yankee captains a hundred years ago 
carried our merchandise around Cape Horn to the coast 
of China and founded business houses in Canton and 
Pekin, there is no reason why a large percentage of the 
growing trade on both coasts of South America and in 
the Orient should not be captured by the young men 
who are coming out of our High School of Commerce 
with the best equipment that the city can give. 

There is one field in which I hope to see the Irish- 
Americans distinguish themselves particularly. Whether 
by accident or design the doors of our financial houses 
do not seem to open readily to applicants of Irish blood. 
Their keen minds and vigorous characters fit them 
particularly for these strenuous activities, and I see no 
reason why, when the barriers give way, as they finally 
must, and the newer blood receives its due recognition, 
our financial institutions should not show a larger num- 
ber of Irish names among their directorates, without 
sacrificing any of the strength and integrity which has 
caused them to weather so many panics w^ithout loss to 
their clients and depositors. I plead for this not only 
for the sake of the young men of my own race, but 
because I believe it is a detriment to the community if 
the reins of power in the banking business are gathered 
in the hands of any particular group or class. 

In forecasting thus favorably, and I trust without 
undue optimism, our fortunes in the near future, we 
should not forget that we are more than New Englanders, 
more even than Americans. We are part of the Irish 
race taken as a whole and now spreading over the five 
continents of the globe. In a thousand cities, amid 
peoples whose tongue is alien to ours, the virtues of that 
race are celebrated to-night and the hymns to Saint 



110 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

Patrick are sung by his loyal disciples. Our prosperity 
in New England raises the average level of the entire 
race, united to-day in a bond of spiritual brotherhood. 
It must react favorably upon the Irish in Ireland, where 
our blood is purest, where our ancestral language is still 
spoken in many districts, and where the ancient traditions 
of the race are preserved. 

I have purposely struck the note of optimism rather 
than of protest and lamentation. The causes of protest, 
as I have intimated, are disappearing and there is no 
reason whatever for despair. The Irish race in New 
England has retained all its familiar qualities, its 
vivacity and humor, its religious habit of mind, its keen 
political faculty, its gifts of tongue and pen, and its 
pre-eminence at the post of danger. But it has imbibed, 
— let us frankly admit, and pay tribute where tribute 
is due, — it has imbibed from the air of Puritan New 
England an appreciation of certain values which may 
have escaped the men of the generation immediately 
preceding us, absorbed as they were in simpler tasks 
and aims. Our people have become versatile. They 
follow a wider variety of pursuits. We find Irish names 
cropping out in fields in which formerly we did not look 
for them. This discovery affords unexpected pleasure, 
testifying to the breadth of talent of the race, and show- 
ing that we have mental and spiritual resources that 
have not been fully developed. For New England 
itself this is a happy augury and puts a quietus on the 
cry of the alarmists that with the decline in numbers of 
the Puritans' descendants the glory of our section is 
bound to depart. The new races, the Irish, French, 
Jew and Italian, have their gifts as well as the first- 
comers. Let us all join hands and supplement one 
another's efforts by our special contributions to the 
common welfare. If we go forward in this spirit, with 
a friendly emulation but no mean jealousy, the twentieth 
century will witness even brighter fame and more splendid 
deeds than those which during the past three hundred 
years have rendered the name of New England illustrious. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. Ill 



TITANIC MEMORIAL. 
At Faneuil Hall, April 22, 1912. 



We are here, first of all, to record our admiration for 
the men and women who met death bravely on that 
terrible night. Several of them were our fellow citizens: 
Timothy J. McCarthy, Herbert H. Hilliard and A. W. 
Newall, Boston men who stood aside with the others, 
observing that law which, for all true Americans, is the 
law of the land as well as of the sea, — the law that bids 
the strong give of their strength for the protection and 
preservation of the weak. 

It is our privilege also, without intruding on the 
sanctity of private grief, to express our sympathy for 
the survivors, many of whom suffered not only physical 
hardship, but the irreparable loss of those with whom 
they would have been glad to die. Words are weak 
comforters on an occasion like this, but we hope that 
this outpouring of compassion from all the nations of 
the civilized world may allay the anguish that wrings 
their hearts and afford them some measure of distraction 
and relief. 

Finally, we have come together to read as best we 
may the lessons of this castastrophe, and to draw such 
healing medicine as we may out of these poor, crushed, 
human lives, to emphasize again the courage and 
chivalry of those who let others pass them by on the 
path to safety. We apprehend once more the truth 
which we are so prone to forget, — that there are knights 
in shoddy and knights in broadcloth, and that under all 
the external differences of accent, apparel or social 
position, the man is the man for all that. Just now 
when the voices of arrogance and envy seem unwontedly 
loud, and class consciousness is taught as the basis of a 
social creed, such a lesson seems almost providential. As 



112 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the Spanish- American War removed the last vestiges of 
sectional hatred and drew the north and south together 
in one reunited country, so may the common heroism 
displayed by millionaire and wireless operator, officer 
and steward, cabin passenger and steerage immigrant, 
remind us that the same red blood flows in the veins 
of all of us and that we are the sons and daughters of 
a common Father. 

One other image rises over the scene. It is the form 
of humanity itself, which seems to emerge from that 
sinking craft and hover over the waters. Whatever 
may be said of the imperfections and even cruelties of 
our modern civilization, never before has human life 
possessed the sanctity which it has to-day. What are 
all the remedies that have been proposed but accu- 
mulated testimony to the preciousness of the human 
cargo which these vessels bear. It is because we feel 
that other considerations less important may have pre- 
vailed over this paramount one that a great wave of 
protest has gathered, and indignation has been directed 
against the conditions that have been permitted to 
exist. It is for this reason that we demand that the 
governments of the world shall assume strict control 
over ocean travel. The speakers who follow me will 
voice this protest more effectively than I can, and will 
give emphasis to the measures that may be taken, so 
that never again shall an ocean steamer bearing more 
than two thousand souls go down on a sea of glass, 
under a starlit sky, with other vessels speeding to her 
rescue, and leave less than one-third of her human cargo 
to tell the tale. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 113 



ADDRESS TO GOSPEL MISSION. 
At the Park Street Church, May 13, 1912. 



Gentlemen, — In performing the agreeable duties of 
hospitality I am called upon to face many gatherings 
and to extend the welcome of the city to workers in a 
hundred different fields, but of all the conventions that 
I have addressed I do not know any which is brought 
together by a higher motive than this. 

In every large city the pressure of competition brings 
discouragement to many men, and temptation, as we 
all know, lurks just around the corner from the poor 
man's home. Thousands fall by the wayside and sink 
into the depths of despair. There is perhaps more real 
loneliness in the heart of a great city than out in the 
wilderness itself. 

It is against conditions like these that the Christian 
churches have organized their missions and their armies 
of rescuers. Behind the wretched figure crawling along, 
taking the by-ways and avoiding notice, — a visible 
wreck of self-respecting manhood, — they see what might 
have been under other conditions and what still may be 
if the spirit of regeneration enters into that man's soul; 
they see the home behind him, and the wife and children 
whose whole future depends upon his return to the ways 
of righteousness. They believe, as all Christians must, 
that the most powerful motive for reform is the relig- 
ious motive, and while not neglecting other methods of 
approach, they place before him, as the Founder of our 
religion himself did, first of all the direct personal 
problem of his own salvation. 

I am sure that whether we look at this problem of 
the redemption of unfortunate men from the religious 
or the merely social point of view, your activities are 
of incalculable benefit to society. People may say that 



114 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the life of the outcast is useless, that he has impaired 
his physical strength as well as his moral nature, and 
that the energy expended in reforming him might be 
better applied in other ways. But this was not the 
preaching or the practice of Him whom we accept as 
our model, and such views issue from the same source, 
the same materialistic philosophy, which condemns all 
our modern activities in behalf of the weaklings of the 
race. Like the Spartans, who exposed their delicate 
children on the bleak slopes of Mt. Taygetus, or the 
Eskimos, who ruthlessly slaughter the aged members of 
their tribes when they are no longer able to support 
themselves, the modern Malthusians and their kin 
would have us close the tuberculosis hospitals, as well 
as the rescue missions, and let the weaker brethren 
perish in order that the race as a whole may be beauti- 
ful and strong. You and I, who have been taught to 
see the ethical beauty in the work of a Father Damien, 
who himself contracted leprosy while ministering to those 
afflicted with that disease, will continue to think that 
the beauty which is the result of starving our own 
finest instincts is the beauty of cold marble and such 
strength merely the strength of animals. For their 
example and influence upon the world in softening and 
refining the hard substances of our nature these institu- 
tions will not only be permitted to exist but will, I am 
sure, as mankind becomes better and better, be multi- 
plied and extended. The instinct of the common man 
is sometimes a better guide than the sophistries of the 
wise, and the reverence that is paid to the uniform of 
a Salvation Army worker or a Sister of Charity testifies 
to the decision which the mass of mankind has made 
upon this issue. From this point of view I bid you 
welcome and Godspeed in the noble work to which you 
have devoted your lives. 

As the cities grow larger there is a greater and greater 
accumulation of human misery at the bottom. We 
have had warnings of late that all the elements of a 
profound social upheaval are lying beneath our feet, 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 115 

and unless such counteracting agencies as those which 
you employ are brought into the field a new revolution 
may soon be upon us. 

As the Mayor of the city, standing for civic order and 
the laws of the land, I feel it my duty to commend in 
the highest terms the conservative force which you are 
exerting in the very quarters where danger is most 
imminent. 



116 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



PREFERENTIAL VOTE. 
May 27, 1912. 



Dear Sir, — Some months ago, when the question of 
primary voting for presidential candidates was being 
discussed in the Massachusetts Senate, you called upon 
me for aid in securing Democratic support for this 
measure, and I very gladly joined with you in the 
movement. You remember that on the day the bill 
finally passed, there was some doubt in your mind as 
to whether certain Democratic Senators from Boston 
would be on hand because of efforts that were being 
made to keep one or more of them away. I told you 
at that time that I did not think any Democratic Senator 
would be found either voting against this progressive 
measure or staying away from the Senate when it was 
being considered. My surmise proved true because, on 
the final passage of the measure, every Democrat was 
recorded in favor of it. 

To-day the bill calling for preferential voting for the 
United States Senate comes up before the Massachu- 
setts Senate. I learned with some surprise that Senator 
Brown of Medford, who led the vote for preferential 
voting for president, will propose an amendment limit- 
ing the preference choice to the primary of each party, 
and that Senator Pearson of Brookline will introduce 
another amendment providing that no member of one 
party shall be under any obligation to vote for the 
candidate of another party, no matter how much the 
preference may be shown by the voters for that partic- 
ular candidate. 

If either one of these amendments were passed the 
effect would be to stifle the popular will in Massachu- 
setts, and knowing that you have no sympathy with 
any such movement, I write to ask you to use your 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 117 

influence with the men who aided in securing the passage 
of the preference vote on presidential candidates for a 
measure similar to the Oregon law, which directs mem- 
bers of the Legislature to vote for the candidate who 
has received the largest number of votes at the previous 
election. In view of the fact that the whole country- 
endorses the popular vote for United States Senate, 
Massachusetts being in the lead, this measure should 
receive the vote of every legislator who is desirous of 
seeing the popular will prevail. 

Matthew Hale, Esq., 15 State Street, Boston, Mass. 



118 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



FORSYTH DENTAL INFIRMARY. 
Speech of Acceptance, June 4, 1912. 



The gift of this beautiful building to the people of 
Boston is one of the signs that encourage us to believe 
that the old spirit of private initiative and personal 
independence has not entirely died out from our midst. 
There is an unmistakable tendency at the present 
time to rely more and more upon the government, 
which means that the common people, who ultimately 
pay most of the taxes, are bearing the burdens which 
formerly were borne by those who had acquired riches. 
Yet such magnificent foundations as those made by 
Mr. Rockefeller for the promotion of education and 
health, and Mr. Carnegie for the establishment of 
libraries, increasing the pay of college professors, and 
the spread of the movement for universal peace, remind 
us that the wealth of our day is less divorced from a 
sense of responsibility than some would have us believe. 

In Boston we have seen a long list of princely bequests 
or gifts for the public welfare. I need only mention 
the names of Gordon McKay, Peter Bent and Robert 
Bent Brigham, Arioch Wentworth, Henry L. Higginson, 
Eben D. Jordan, Mrs. R. D. Evans and the various 
benefactors of the Institute of Technology, to prove 
that we are still true to the traditions of our city. In 
this group the Messrs. Forsyth belong by their splendid 
vision of a Dental Hospital incarnated in this monu- 
mental structure. Their kindly forethought will make 
their names illustrious as long as this building stands 
and its beneficent activities are maintained. 

Its outlines, substantial and imposing, fittingly express 
the spirit which gave it birth, and testify to the dignity 
and importance of the work that is to go on within its 
walls. It springs up at a time when child hygiene has 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 119 

become more and more recognized in the department of 
Medical Science. We realize now that the health of 
the adult is based upon the environment and experiences 
of childhood. The school room of to-day is incomplete 
without frequent visits from the doctor and the nurse, 
and lately we have gone further and undertaken to 
educate the people to a knowledge of the laws of health 
by visitation at their homes. The recent examination 
of school children in this city disclosed a serious percent- 
age of dental defects, and modern science warns us that 
this condition, formerly regarded as negligible, affects 
more than we realize the general health as well as the 
facial beauty and expression of the population. Degen- 
erate conditions of city life impair vitality and bring 
about that early decay of the teeth which, I am told, 
renders the population in certain European capitals so 
displeasing to the visitor. Fortunately in this country 
we have not progressed so far on the downward path, 
and the establishment of a specialized hospital like the 
Forsyth Dental Infirmary, in which unsound teeth can 
be preserved and facial irregularities corrected, promises 
much for the welfare of the coming generations. 

At present preventive dentistry hardly exists. Only 
the more enlightened members of the community visit 
the dentist until after the mischief is done. This 
institution will, I understand, address itself particu- 
larly to childhood and forestall that tendency to decay 
and irregularity which in a minor way, perhaps, has 
contributed to ill health and unhappiness in tens of 
thousands of lives. The motto of the infirmary indi- 
cates that it is ''Dedicated to the Children,'' and in 
these four words knowledge and kindness find a perfect 
union. Science, as I have said, tells us that the care 
expended upon the health of the child is an investment 
that can never be equaled at a later period. 

The Forsyth Brothers have not only added this superb 
building to the group which is rising along the Fenway, 
but they have set us an example more precious than 
the wealth which they have devoted to this purpose. 



120 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

They have exemplified anew the ideal of the superior 
minds in all ages that it is more praiseworthy to give 
than to acquire and that happiness is best obtained by 
serving others. They may pass from this ceremony 
assured that they have done much to raise the standard 
of health and beauty here, to elevate the dental pro- 
fession, to enhance the good name of Boston, and to 
stimulate and renew our faith in the essential goodness 
of mankind. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 121 



PORT OF BOSTON. 
At Navigation Congress Dinner, June 5, 1912. 



I do not think I exaggerate in saying that Boston is 
recognized as one of the great seaports of the world. 
If we include the suburbs we have a population of 
1,500,000, which places us tenth in rank among the 
cities of the globe, and our position in commerce is at 
least as high as that. This is due primarily to our 
natural advantages and secondarily to the character of 
the people who have settled here. As the nearest port 
to Europe and one of the first to be settled, already 
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we had 
established connections with the Orient, and our fleet 
of square rigged vessels sent out under resolute captains 
bred one of the finest types of seafaring men that the 
world has ever known. As time went on and steam 
navigation increased the size of vessels it became neces- 
sary to provide deeper and wider channels. Already 
the National Government has spent nearly $8,000,000 
on the channels in Boston Harbor, and we offer the 
largest ships in the world a roadway 1,200 to 1,500 feet 
wide and six miles long from the outer harbor to the 
docks. Our roadsteads are safe, and the waterfront, 
forty miles in length, presents an opportunity for cheap 
manufacturing sites not equaled in any part of this 
country. The total valuation of our docks and piers 
is about $70,000,000. Behind the city proper the 
immediate hinterland represents perhaps the highest 
average of individual wealth and productive capacity 
in any part of the United States. So that we should, in 
the natural course of things, have a large volume of 
products to export, and this, with our ability to absorb 
foreign goods through the high per capita wealth of 



122 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the region, furnishes the basis for an active interchange 
of commodities and the highest commercial prosperity. 

The machinery for transacting this business, while 
not all that it will be in a very short time, is still ample 
to care for an immense volume of trade. Some of our 
docks and piers are among the finest on the Atlantic 
coast, and their loading and unloading facilities compare 
favorably with those to be seen in European ports, 
though under this head I think there is still wide room 
for improvement. We have warehouse facilities, a 
large fleet of tugs and lighters, splendid teaming accom- 
modations and street connections, which, while not all 
that could be desired, are still equal to the demands 
made upon them. The labor supply is ample and highly 
intelligent. In the ship yards at Fore River some of 
the largest vessels in the world have been built. As the 
second fishing port in the world and the center of an 
immense coastwise trade, we are now able to furnish 
sailors for the enlarged fleet which we hope to see 
entering our harbor in the near future. 

But while we have achieved this desirable position 
and maintained our rank as the second or third port 
for foreign and coastwise commerce in the United 
States, there is a general feeling that we are on the eve 
of a great awakening which will make the record of 
the nineteenth century seem as small, compared with 
that of the twentieth, as the adventures of the little 
1,000 ton brigs and barkentines of our ancestors in the 
Revolutionary days seem to the voyages of the great 
ocean liners that cross the 3,000 miles between Europe 
and America in less than a week. The Panama Canal 
will soon be opened and wall place Boston within easy 
striking distance of the west coast of South America 
and all the Pacific ports. The promise of a direct line 
to Texas shows that the thoughts of our master minds 
in commerce are turning southward. At the same time 
there is, as you know, an agitation for better rail- 
road connections with Canada and the northwest. We 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 123 

hope that the differentials which have proved a handi- 
cap to us in competition with other ports will soon be 
equalized. The movement for inter-coastal waterways 
includes a canal or series of canals connecting Boston 
with Narragansett Bay and this means a great deal for 
the development of our port. The one difficulty here 
has been the ownership of a large percentage of the 
waterfront by private capital. The creation of a board 
of directors of the port, with a fund of $9,000,000 at 
their disposal, is expected to bring the entire waterfront 
under the direct control of the public authorities, and 
the experience of New York, Hamburg and other cities 
shows that this means an immediate quickening of 
activity. As further evidences of life we may point 
to the appraisers' stores which are about to be built at 
a cost of SI, 000, 000; the new immigration station and 
the extension of the custom house; an improved belt 
line giving all roads approaching Boston equal access 
to the docks and piers has long been discussed and must 
sooner or later be brought about. The building of a 
dry dock, at which large steamers could make necessary 
repairs, has also been proposed. With our Chamber of 
Commerce, consisting of 4,500 members, the largest 
and best organized body of its kind on this side of the 
water, urging and promoting such measures the out- 
look for a great commercial advance in this city is 
certainly promising. 

While the city government, as such, does not take 
part directly in some of these measures, it is after all 
the party most affected, and its influence is felt through 
the Chamber of Commerce, through its representatives 
in the Legislature, in Congress and in other ways in 
all the improvements which I have recited. 

I trust that you gentlemen may be able to return 
sometime and witness the fulfillment of these proph- 
ecies and the consummation of our wishes. If our 
hopes are realized, and I am sure they will be, this city 
will within a decade take its place beside Hamburg 



124 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

and Liverpool and New York as one of those great 
seaports whose harbor Hghts are famihar to the mariners 
of every nation and the figures of whose annual trade 
represent the valuation of a respectable city. All of 
this increase in exchange means of course a growth of 
friendship and a better mutual understanding between 
the peoples of the world, and I am sure that your visit 
at the present time will mark another chapter in the 
story of international amity. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 125 



GENERAL FORBES. 
Address at Banquet, June 21, 1912. 



Gentlemen, — I am very glad to be here to-night to 
add my tribute of praise for Mr. Forbes. We knew 
him a few years ago as a young member of a family 
whose names were household words for patriotism and 
public spirit. He has in his veins the best blood of 
New England, combining literature, seamanship, sol- 
dierly courage, public service and distinction in finance. 
He was attached to one of our chief banking houses 
and seemed destined to follow the routine path of the 
citizens of his class. 

During the agitated period that followed the taking 
of the Philippines and the readjustment of our relations 
toward the Orient, Mr. Forbes became a member of 
the Philippines Commission, and after several years of 
apprenticeship in that service he was finally appointed 
Governor General of the archipelago. The prosperity 
and peace in the island since then, and the unreserved 
confidence of the native leaders which he has won, are 
the best evidence of the wisdom of his selection by 
President Taft. The tasks which he has undertaken 
have not been military in their character. The insur- 
rections in remote portions of the country have died 
down to local uprisings which are easily kept in check 
by the constabulary. The problems which he has had 
to meet are perhaps more difficult because more subtle 
and complex. They have been educational, industrial, 
financial, political and social in their character; ques- 
tions of building railroads, of restoring the live stock 
depleted by the wars but necessary for the carrying on 
of agriculture, of sanitary reform with the purpose of 
checking epidemics and reducing the death rate. There 
is also the ever present problem of reconciling the differ- 



126 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

ences of the various tribes and removing the vestiges of 
their resentment against the white intruder. The 
introduction of democratic forms of government in an 
Oriental country is an experiment which can only be 
successful in the hands of wise and prudent adminis- 
trators. I am sure that if the native provincial gov- 
ernors and native commissioners were in Boston they 
would sit with us this evening and join in this testimonial 
to Governor-General Forbes. 

The remarkable feature of Mr. Forbes' career in our 
Eastern possessions is that he had had no political 
experience. His interests as a banker had no doubt 
brought him in touch with the large movements of 
trade, and his studies had taught him the principles of 
government and the philosophy of history. His success 
only proves the large amount of available material we 
have in our midst, — citizens whose inherited capacity 
and natural gifts would be of the utmost value to the 
government if they could only be called upon. I think 
it is a pity that such men as Mr. Forbes do not enter 
public life more, and that it requires the summons of 
a great national need to draft their energies into the 
service of the country. We may hope that having 
tested his mettle in this difficult field he will be inclined 
to give his own state or the nation at large the benefit 
of the experience which he has accumulated. I feel con- 
fident that higher honors are in store for Mr. Forbes. 

Why should the Filipinos be the sole beneficiaries of 
Mr. Forbes' high character and trained intelligence? 
We owe a certain debt to ^Hhe little brown brother," 
but all of the white man's burden is not located on the 
other side of the Pacific. We see on every hand the 
evidence of an impending social revolution. New 
political parties are forming and there is a new align- 
ment in the old. If those who are prepared by experi- 
ence and familiarity with large affairs to lead the 
people and maintain order amid the chaos that threatens 
us shirk their duty and take refuge in the mere pursuit 
of private gain or personal indulgence, no matter how 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 127 

refined it may be, the people will be deprived of their 
natural leaders and the body politic will be without a 
head. Governor-General Forbes has set us an admir- 
able example which I hope will be followed by many 
others of his class. The mere fact that America is no 
longer occupied solely by descendants of the original 
settlers ought not to deter men of that origin from 
giving the best that is in them to the country. On the 
contrary, it ought to be an added stimulus to exertion 
because there is no doubt that the coming in of tens of 
thousands of foreigners from southern and eastern 
Europe, people of different standards of living and 
different political training from our own, but who have 
in them the making of good citizens, complicates social 
relations here and presents a most exacting problem for 
the statesmanship of the nation. These considerations 
hold good of state and city as well as of national politics. 
If the example of Mr. Forbes incites other men of his 
environment and capacity to shoulder the burdens of 
public life and render yeoman service for the common 
good, his influence at home will be far greater and more 
beneficial than any that he has exercised in the far dis- 
tant province which he has so ably administered. I 
hope that this will be one result of his return to Boston, 
where serious-minded men know well how to appreciate 
the services of a faithful citizen. 



128 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



IN FAVOR OF WILSON. 

Speech at Rockland, Maine, September 5, 1912. 



That for years the Republican party has been con- 
trolled in the interest of combined capital has long been 
known by many. It is now known by all. That its 
tariff policy and all its policies affecting industry and 
commerce have been based upon the demands of the 
trust rather than upon the welfare of the people will no 
longer be disputed. The disruption of the Republican 
party, which has been brought about by Colonel Roose- 
velt's personal ambition, will prove a blessing to the 
country, for it has made as clear as sunlight the rela- 
tions of the trusts to the Republican party. 

Let no intelligent citizen hug the delusion that he can 
obtain a betterment of conditions through the election 
of Roosevelt. Let him remember that for many years 
Roosevelt was a Republican politician and an astute 
Republican leader. Let him remember that Roosevelt's 
relations with those whom he now denounces were 
intimate and practical. The trusts contributed to his 
campaign in 1904 with his knowledge and consent, and 
they contributed to Taft's campaign in 1908 with his 
knowledge and consent. If Colonel Roosevelt had been 
nominated for the Presidency at Chicago in June, 1912, 
by the Republican National Convention, the relations 
between Roosevelt and the trusts would be as intimate 
and practical to-day as they were eight and four years 
ago. He would not have seen the slightest necessity 
for substituting Flinn for Penrose in Pennsylvania or 
Woodruff for Barnes in New York. 

For him who believes that now is the time to strike 
a final and a fatal blow at the trusts which hitherto 
have directed legislation and controlled the very govern- 
ment; for the honest citizen who is ready to demand 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 129 

that the professional stock waterers loosen their grip 
upon the people, there is but one course to follow. His 
only hope of obtaining what he seeks is to give his 
support to the Democratic candidate for President, 
Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. 

Let it be remembered that behind Colonel Roosevelt 
to-day, as he attacks certain interests and carefully 
refrains from attacking others, there are combinations 
of capitalists whose interests are not the interests of 
honest, self-respecting citizens. There is no trust in 
the world more rapacious and unscrupulous than the 
Harvester trust, which has received his approval and 
which contributes George W. Perkins as his financial 
backer. The methods of the Harvester trust in dealing 
with the people of the West have been almost beyond 
belief. In spite of its efforts to stifle competition and 
to place every farmer at its mercy, and even while 
maintaining in the state of New York industrial estab- 
lishments which in their treatment of women and 
children are a disgrace to modern civilization, it does 
not hesitate to assume a smug hypocrisy and prate of 
its welfare work. 

The leader of the so-called Progressive Party, which 
has for its one actual purpose the election of Roosevelt 
for a third term, differentiates between good and bad 
trusts. Let it be remembered that all of the big trusts, 
whatever may be their degrees of excellence or badness, 
were formed and fostered and pampered during Repub- 
lican administrations, and that in no administration 
were more trusts organized than during the adminis- 
tration of Theodore Roosevelt. His dealings with the 
steel trust, when he gave special sanction to its attempt 
to swallow its largest competitor, is written large in 
financial and political history. 

Let no true Progressive, whatever his political desig- 
nation may have been, confuse the present issue. The 
Roosevelt of 1912 is the Roosevelt of 1904. The Repub- 
lican party of 1912 is the Republican party which under 
Roosevelt and other presidents turned the actual con- 



130 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

trol of this country over to criminal combinations of 
capital. There is one remedy for existing conditions. 

That remedy lies in the election of Woodrow Wilson, 
a man of honor and honesty; a man not in open nor in 
secret political alliance with criminal trusts; a man 
absolutely free from entangling associations and one 
whose platform is reared upon the strong foundation of 
true democracy and genuine progressiveness. I know 
that on Tuesday next the voters of Maine will send 
such a message to other states as will aid inestimably 
in the conflict now in progress against the interests 
which, for the time being, are divided into hostile 
camps, but which are not divided in their purpose to 
retain at all hazards a control of government that was 
given to them by the Republican party and would still 
be retained by them should either faction win the 
victory in November. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 131 



THE WINNING TEAM. 
Reception to Red Sox, October 17, 1912. 



This demonstration is the greatest I have ever wit- 
nessed in Faneuil Hall. It shows what people think of 
those who fight for Boston and win. Your fame is not 
Boston's alone. In every part of the United States 
you are heroes and this same tumultuous greeting would 
be extended to you from Maine to California. 

It is not my purpose to pick out individual players 
for praise. It seems that every man, at one time or 
another, showed himself worthy of membership in the 
championship team. But to you. Manager Stahl, speak- 
ing for the people of Boston, I extend the congratulations 
of the city. I hope all of your team will long remember 
the pride that Boston takes and has shown to-day in 
their success. 

The series ended as all the friends of this great national 
sport wished it to end, with the best of feeling on both 
sides, and the best club winning. 



132 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



STEAMSHIP LINE TO TEXAS. 
Letter to Banking Houses, October 26, 1912. 



On October 27, 1910, the Chamber of Commerce 
passed a resolution favoring the proposed steamship 
line from Boston to Texas. In a special report, dated 
November 18, 1910, the manager of its transportation 
department, D. C. Ives, after a thorough study of the 
problem, stated that "a, direct steamship line between 
Boston and Texas is essential to our commercial welfare. '^ 
He added that "U established on a sound financial basis 
and well managed it will be a safe and reasonably profit- 
able investment." An exhaustive presentation of the 
case was submitted by Mr. Robert Rantoul, as chairman 
of a committee of experts sent to Texas for an investi- 
gation at first hand. 

The reasons for such an extension of our transporta- 
tion system are so familiar and obvious that a brief 
summary will suffice to remind you of their importance. 

Texas, with its 4,000,000 inhabitants and 265,000 
square miles of territory, is an empire rather than a 
state. It is the North American Argentina, excelling 
in agricultural and grazing products, such as cotton, 
wool, and hides, which are the raw materials of the 
staple industries of New England. Its hinterland em- 
braces the vast and fertile territory of the Southwest 
from Oklahoma to Southern California. The popula- 
tion is enlightened and progressive. No one questions 
that the future of this state and its neighbors is as 
brilliant as that of any section of the Union. Moreover, 
the agricultural opportunities are so great that they are 
likely to absorb the energies of the people for decades 
to come and the state will continue to afford a market 
for the manufactured products of New England. 
Already there is a demand for our boots and shoes, dry 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 133 

goods, bags and bagging, of which over 20,000 tons are 
consumed annually in the baling of cotton alone, as well 
as our paper, iron, steel and brass manufactures, chem- 
icals and other commodities. 

The distance by water from Boston to Galveston is 
2,400 miles. This is equivalent in rate charges to 500 
miles by rail, the proportionate cost on long voyages 
being about one to five in favor of water. St. Louis, 
which is our chief competitor for the delivery of manu- 
factured goods by rail to Texas, is 850 miles from Gal- 
veston and the advantage in distance is all on our side. 
At present, owing to the lack of a direct line of steamers, 
the traffic is carried on by way of New York, which has 
such connection, and even Chicago and the intermediate 
railway centers. Under these conditions it is naturally 
far less than it should be, and the freight charges con- 
stitute a burden upon the manufacturers at one end and 
the producers at the other. Here is business already 
in existence, an estimated tonnage sufficient to justify 
two sailings a week, with ample cargoes each way, and 
with opportunities for a stop at Baltimore for increase 
of freight and coaling at cheaper rates. The committee 
of investigators, of which Mr. Rantoul was the chair- 
man, found the sentiment in the southwest highly favor- 
able to this enterprise, and the only obstacle thus far 
has been the failure of the financial forces of Boston to 
respond to the appeal of men who have shown them- 
selves in this respect possessed of genuine leadership 
and foresight. 

Now that the strength of our commercial position as 
the nearest point to Europe and the center of a huge pop- 
ulation unexcelled in its producing and consuming power 
has been recognized by one of the greatest steamship 
lines in the world, it seems timely to suggest that we 
should bestir ourselves in our own interest. The national 
government has built the Panama Canal at a cost of 
$400,000,000, making possible a water route from Boston 
to San Francisco. This must inevitably affect the trans- 
continental rates and stimulate the growth of these two 



134 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

cities, which may be called the terminal ports of the 
entire country. Our city already supports steamship 
lines to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston and Savan- 
nah. A line to Galveston should follow and must follow 
if we are not to forfeit our chance of capturing a good 
part of the southwestern market. In establishing such 
a line we should be merely availing ourselves of our 
natural advantages as a seaport over the inland cities. 
Here is something which we can do to prove that the 
maritime instinct, which gave a great race of merchants 
to the city in the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
is still strong among their descendants and successors. 
With port development in the air and our claim of 
superior facilities attested by the recent act of the Ger- 
man company, the iron is hot for a ringing blow. It 
will be a reproach to Boston capital if after all our dis- 
cussions and resolutions the shares of the Boston to 
Galveston line, requiring only $1,000,000, are not 
eagerly taken up by local financiers. 

I earnestly request that you use your influence to 
circulate a knowledge of this enterprise and to persuade 
investors of its advantages. A diligent campaign car- 
ried on among the banking houses as well as the shipping 
and manufacturing interests of Boston and New England 
in general, ought to result in a subscription many times 
over the amount required, moderate compared with the 
prospect of gain to this section, and far less than has been 
sunk in more than one speculative enterprise without a 
tenth of the merit and substantial backing of this 
proposition. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 135 



THE SENATORSHIP. 

Speech at Faneuil Hall, October 26, 1912. 



Henry Cabot Lodge, senior Senator from Massachu- 
setts, and boss of the Repubhcan state machine, has 
not yet condescended to tell the people whom he intends 
to select as the Republican candidate for the high honor 
of following his advice and footsteps in Washington. 
We know, all of us, that three prominent Republicans 
are already seeking Mr. Lodge's approval, and we are 
all told this week that should the Republicans control 
the General Court of 1913 the national council of 
Republican statesmen, of whom Senator Lodge, Senator 
Penrose, Senator Smoot, and Senator Warren of Wyoming 
are members, would undoubtedly decide to compromise 
the contest in Massachusetts by inducing Senator Crane 
to succeed himself. 

That, as I understand it, is the program already 
decided upon, but from Senator Lodge comes not a word 
as to the name and quality of the United States Senator 
whom he would select for Massachusetts should the 
voters of Massachusetts permit him to make the selec- 
tion. He has told us of four Democrats whom he would 
approve as Democratic candidates before a Republican 
Legislature, and he has warned us first against the 
sinister influences which would control a Democratic 
Senator, and later against '' fastening on the state for six 
years any man to whose name our children and our 
children's children would wish to close their eyes when 
they read the history of the times." 

I will not deny exact knowledge of the candidate whom 
Senator Lodge has in mind. His scholarship, his breed- 
ing, his ancestry, permit him to attack me only by 
indirection. But his political upbringing in Massa- 



136 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

chusetts, his political associations in Washington, and 
the character of his political methods as the Republican 
boss of the state, induce him to go up and down the 
Commonwealth uttering his warning against sinister 
influences and painting pictures of a dismal future should 
one particular name be added to the roll of statesmanship 
on which is now the name of Henry Cabot Lodge, and 
on which until lately were the dishonored names of his 
friends and associates in statesmanship, Lorimer and 
Foraker. 

The Democrats of Massachusetts have been willing 
to do what Mr. Lodge has never been willing to do. 
They have been willing to submit the choice of senators 
to the people, but Senator Lodge would not now be 
senator if the members of his own party or the people 
could have passed upon his candidacy two years ago. 
But it was not the purpose of Senator Lodge, and it is 
not now his purpose to permit the people to make their 
own decisions. 

Senator Lodge has been confident always that he 
could control any legislature when necessary, and he 
has always been fearful that he could never control the 
people. 

Methods which have been pursued in this state for years 
whenever the people have shown a disposition to revolt 
are being used now. The interests are making their last 
stand. Weeks, Draper, and their friends, candidates 
of wealth, have made large contributions, and already 
there are the unerring signs of an attempt to buy what 
cannot be obtained in just debate. The public is being 
told by the subsidized portion of the Press that the 
Boston machine is endeavoring to control the General 
Court. It was argued two years ago that the Boston 
machine, if Mr. Foss should be elected, would control 
the Governor. To what extent has the Governor been 
so controlled in his public service? In what way, by so 
much as a hair's breadth, has he swerved from the path 
of duty because of the fact that the Boston machine 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 137 

supported him for nomination and election? This cry 
is raised solely to divert attention from the fact that the 
Republican interests are even now flooding the state 
with money. 

In ^^Scribner's" for November Mr. Lodge tells us 
that in his four years at college he never studied anything, 
never had his mind roused to any exertion or to anything 
resembling active thought, until in his senior year he 
stumbled into a course in mediaeval history. He has 
never emerged from that course in mediceval history. The 
robber baron is still his highest ideal and his dearest 
friend. His work at Washington has been for a very 
few, and they, let us be thankful, are not to name the 
United States Senator next year. 

The political career of Senator Lodge is instructive. 
To-day he poses, for purposes of his own, as one whose 
political pathway lies along a higher level than that of 
the average man and especially that of any Democrat 
who may be mentioned. Are there any here who remem- 
ber his efforts to break into Congress as a member of the 
House? Are there any here who remember the methods 
employed in his behalf in Charlestown and in Lynn? 
If sinister methods were not resorted to by him, and with 
his approval, then it is because the word sinister is not 
black enough to do justice to the subject. 

But it is not necessary to dwell on what Mr. Lodge 
did to obtain and retain a seat in the National House. 
Turn to his first campaign for the United States Senate. 
That would seem to be a proper subject for brief con- 
sideration, in view of his tender and almost pathetic 
solicitude at this time for the standing of that body which 
has been recently deeply stirred by the rejection of 
Senator Lodge's companions in high senatorial circles. 
May I call the attention of the people of Massachusetts 
to an editorial utterance by ''Harper's Weekly " of New 
York on January 21, 1893, after he had achieved his 
heart's desire: 

He (Lodge) pressed upon the Legislature a gerrymandering 
scheme from the shamelessness of which even his followers 



138 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

recoiled; he laid the wires for the election of members of the 
Legislature favorable to himself; he brought about the holding 
of a snap caucus, outdoing our own Hills and Murphys. Had 
he devoted the ability and time and labor he squandered on 
this miserable business to the earnest study and treatment of 
pubUc questions and to the establishment of a soHd reputation 
as a statesman, the senatorship would have come to him as a 
free offering by a state proud of him instead of his running after 
it like a man who would steal it if he could not get it honestly. 

That is not the charge of a Democratic newspaper 
intent on making political capital. It is the opinion of 
an independent Republican weekly which compared 
Lodge with Hill and Murphy and decided that he had 
outdone them. What was true then has been true ever 
since, as every impartial, intelligent citizen knows full 
well. Possessing ability, education and family prestige, 
he has preferred to sacrifice the interests of the people of 
the Commonwealth to interests that were not those of 
the people; he has sneered at every man, Democrat or 
Republican, who has dared to insist that he shall try to 
represent the people, and he has split in two the Repub- 
lican party of Massachusetts because he carried his 
autocracy in behalf of private interests into all his 
methods and purposes as a political leader. 

I am willing to compare my record with that of Senator 
Lodge. I have tried to do something for the people of 
Boston, and I think that I have done something. I have 
not been afraid to give my time and energy in order that 
Boston may be made ''bigger and better and busier," 
and even while I have been doing it Mr. Lodge has used 
that incomparable sneer. If I should be nominated for 
and elected to the United States Senate I would do what 
I could for the people of the Commonwealth and their 
interests. I believe thoroughly in waterway develop- 
ment. What has Senator Lodge ever done, except 
sneer, when it has been proposed to bring relief to the 
cities of Springfield and Holyoke on the Connecticut, to 
Lawrence, Low^ell and Haverhill on the Merrimac and 
Brockton on the Taunton river, from the exactions of 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 139 

transportation monopoly? The projects of waterway 
development are feasible and business-like, the govern- 
ment can amply afford to finance them, and from every 
standpoint except that of the corporate interests which 
Senator Lodge consistently represents they are eminently 
desirable. 

I will admit that I lacked the opportunities which 
Senator Lodge had to prepare myself for public service. 
I was born in a humble section of the city and with an 
environment that did not make for culture, though it 
made for ambition. I did not get a college education. 
What I have been able to do I have been able to do 
because of my ow^n energy and my own desire to accom- 
plish something. What Senator Lodge has failed to do 
he has failed to do in spite of all the advantages of fortune. 
In contact with the people he becomes an aristocrat; 
in contact with those who represent unworthy interests 
he becomes their ally, their friend, yea, even their 
servant. 

Senator Lodge should come into the open in his refer- 
ences to '^ sinister influences.^' I am not controlled by 
sinister influences. I have not as my political repre- 
sentative and adviser such a man as J. Otis War dwell, 
who for twenty years represented the corporate bribers 
on Beacon Hill until he became so notorious that he was 
driven forth. He has never become so notorious as to 
forfeit the confidence and esteem of Senator Lodge. In 
Washington, as in Massachusetts, Wardwell has been at 
the elbow of Senator Lodge, and during the considera- 
tion of tariff schedules, affecting the corporations which 
control the Lodge machine, Wardwell, representing the 
trusts and the machine, has made his headquarters in 
the rooms furnished by the government for Senator 
Lodge. Can Senator Lodge deny this? 

Sinister influences? What influence was so close to 
Senator Lodge that his own private secretary, indicted 
and convicted of a serious offence in connection with his 
activities as a cog in the Lodge machine, forfeited his 
bail and departed hence? His whereabouts are known 



140 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

to Lodge and other Republican leaders. Have they 
made efforts to apprehend him and thus uphold the fair 
fame of the Commonwealth about which, on occasions, 
Senator Lodge is so deeply concerned? I refer to such 
subjects with reluctance. But I refer to genuine and 
very palpable influences which have been close to 
Senator Lodge ever since he decided to represent the 
corporations, and to give occasional oratory to the 
people instead of continual and patriotic service. 

To what future of shame will Massachusetts be con- 
demned if it is again to be delivered into such hands? 
Elsewhere all over the country the people are coming 
into their own. In New England they are taking charge 
of their own concerns. Hale of Maine saw the coming 
of the storm and took to cover. In New Hampshire 
the people put Bass at the head of their affairs and are 
still on the road of progress. Aldrich no longer misrep- 
resents Rhode Island. Depew and Piatt no longer 
misrepresent New York. Foraker is gone; Lorimer is 
gone ; everywhere the senators of the people are ousting 
the senators of the interests. Penrose and Lodge and 
Smoot remain. Let the people assert their right to 
choose their own representatives, to the end that ''we 
may have a just government of laws and not of men.'' 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 141 



THE TARIFF. 

Speech, October 31, 1912. 



President Taft says, and the Republican banners float 
the sentiment to the wind: ''The Constitution must be 
preserved.'^ It must, but not in alcohol or embalming 
fluid. Our Constitution must be a living, vital declara- 
tion of principles which can and shall be applied to the 
conditions of 1912. 

The central issue of this campaign is the tariff. When 
President Taft signed the Payne-Aldrich bill he com- 
mitted the one act that has made his re-election impos- 
sible. I shall not discuss the schedules of this tariff, for 
all of you men of business affairs know how the schedules 
of that tariff, in protecting the monopolists of this 
country, control prices and are responsible for the high 
cost of living. But I shall tell you how the Payne- 
Aldrich tariff bill was made. It was passed by the 
House of Representatives under Speaker Cannon. It 
was passed through a loaded Cannon. Then it went 
to the Senate. 

Aldrich took it under his arm. The finance committee 
was not organized, and Aldrich organized it. He 
placed thereon Smoot, of Utah, who represents the 
Guggenheim smelting interests, and Penrose, of Penn- 
sylvania, who worships at the shrine of the steel trust 
and burns the midnight Standard Oil. As chairman 
could be found Aldrich, whose voice has always echoed 
the steam whistle of the railroads. 

This group of patriots took that bill, which had been 
satisfactory to Joe Cannon, and in forty-eight hours 
after it had been received in the Senate it was reported 
back, raising 600 items in the Payne bill from 15 to 300 
per cent. The bill was jammed through the Senate 
without a change and promptly signed by the President 
of the United States. 



142 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

That bill was passed by fraud and corruption by men 
whose oaths run to the treasury of the trusts and not to 
the patriotism of the people. 

In the incipient days of this nation our people voted 
against unjust taxation as you in Boston, famous for its 
tea party, know full well. There is no difference in 
principle between taxation without representation and 
taxation by fraud. In those early days the people of 
America won their battles. In 1912 they shall not fail. 

It is eminently proper that we should continue the 
campaign where we left off a week ago, since Mr. Roose- 
velt is better and urges us to continue a discussion of 
the issues. Mr. Roosevelt has shifted his ground again. 
He and his platform both called for regulated and legal- 
ized monopoly, but now he says he has been misunder- 
stood and that he is in favor of a law for the regulation 
of competition. 

Mr. Roosevelt has merely adopted another Democratic 
idea, for Woodrow Wilson had already convinced the 
American people that his program of regulated compe- 
tition was the soundest proposition for the business of 
America. 

Mr. Roosevelt says he is at Armageddon with the 
Lord. I am advised that the correct translation of the 
scriptural Hebrew of Armageddon means ''cliff hills of 
the robbers." Mr. Roosevelt means that he and his 
followers are at the foot of these hills to drive out the 
robbers of privilege. He and his troops have only 
arrived, the Democratic hosts having been there for 
nearly sixteen years, carrying on the siege, and many of 
Mr. Roosevelt's friends, notably Mr. Perkins and Mr. 
Gary, will be found within the citadel of the trust 
magnates' stronghold. 

The Republican elephant can never climb its rocky 
heights. The Bull Moose can never reach this elevation. 
The only safe animal for transportation through these 
passes to the hills and strongholds of vested privilege 
is the good old sure-footed Democratic donkey. 

When Mr. Roosevelt controlled the Republican con- 
vention of 1908, which selected Mr. Taft as its nominee, 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 143 

Mr. La Follette made several proposals for the Repub- 
lican platform. No one man ever dominated a conven- 
tion as Theodore Roosevelt dominated that. La Follette 
proposed a plank for the publicity of campaign funds; 
it was beaten by a vote of 880 to 94. La Follette 
proposed a plank to ascertain the value of railroads. 
It was beaten by a vote of 917 to 63. La Follette 
proposed the election of United States Senators by the 
people, and this convention, controlled by Roosevelt, 
rejected this plank by a vote of 866 to 114. 

Mr. Bryan in the Democratic party and Mr. La 
Follette in the Republican party are the original Pro- 
gressives. Both men are opposed to the election of Mr. 
Roosevelt and President Taft on the ground that neither 
of these two candidates is a real Progressive. Woodrow 
Wilson has the silent indorsement of Senator La Follette 
and the open and vigorous support of Mr. Bryan. 

There is no doubt of the result. The light is breaking 
across the crested hills, and the progressive spirit of a 
great people will make practically unanimous the elec- 
tion of Woodrow Wilson as the next President of the 
United States. 



144 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES, 



SOUTH AMERICAN TRADE. 
Statement, April 27, 1913. 



The trip of the Boston Chamber of Commerce to 
South American countries, which begins Thursday, is 
of the greatest importance to Boston, and I am very 
glad that I am to have the opportunity to accompany 
them part of the way. My experience in Europe, when 
I accompanied the Chamber two years ago, makes me 
beheve that the presence of the mayor of a big city like 
Boston in foreign countries is of great advantage to 
Boston, and although I cannot take the whole journey, 
I think the fact that the Mayor of Boston journeys to 
Panama, and that his presence is noted there, and spread 
through the newspapers of the South American world, 
will add much to the prestige of Boston. I think the 
opportunity a psychological one to impress Boston's 
commercial position upon South American countries. 

New York has gone ahead fast in the last twenty-five 
years. Steamships sailing from its docks go into nearly 
every port in the civilized world; it has reaped much 
greater advantage than it is entitled to from its natural 
position. There is no reason for the tremendous differ- 
ence between the growth of Boston and of New York. 
Ninety-five per cent of the passenger business of the 
country is carried by New York; 25,000,000 tons of 
cargo leave that port, while only 5,000,000 are shipped 
from Boston. Yet less than 100 years ago Boston was 
ahead of New York. There is no such tremendous 
difference among the ports of Europe. There it is a 
neck and neck race, not $5,000,000 between the six or 
seven principal harbors. There should be no more 
difference in the United States. 

Although we are now at a disadvantage in foreign 
trade relations we can more than make up the loss 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 145 

entailed by the complacency of our predecessors if 
the business interests only awake to the opportunity 
offered by South America. With the opening of the 
Panama Canal we will have easy access to both coasts of 
that great continent. There we will find gold, silver, 
copper, tin and platinum in abundance, the food 
products we no longer have the space to cultivate, and 
the raw materials, wool and leather that we need in our 
manufactures. In return that vast country needs the 
things we make. They are a wealthy and highly culti- 
vated people; the very best that we can manufacture is 
what they want. But owing to our lack of enterprise 
Europe has to some extent pre-empted this market. If 
we are to make our way there we must use every atom 
of that commercial intelligence and astuteness which 
is our present boast and past pride. 

Our exports of boots and shoes to South America in 
1911 were valued at barely more than a million dollars, 
— a ridiculously low figure compared with three millions 
to Cuba and nearly four millions to Europe. We sold 
Europe more than seventeen millions of agricultural 
implements in 1911, while we sold but seven millions to 
South America. According to the bureau of Latin 
American affairs, conducted by the state department, 
South America is buying more than six hundred million 
dollars worth of goods annually from Europe, fully five- 
sixths of which could well be supplied by the United 
States. The foreign commerce of South American 
countries last year amounted to over two billion three 
hundred thousand dollars, an increase of more than a 
billion dollars in the last ten years. This shows how 
these countries are growing. The twenty countries lying 
south of Rio Grande and Key West, and reaching to 
Cape Horn, Cover an area of nine million square miles, 
or three times the area of the United States. When it 
is considered that nearly all of these countries are south 
of the great east and west routes of travel and trade, we 
can figure for ourselves, handicapped as they have been, 



146 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

the trade that will develop in South American countries 
during the ten years following the opening of the Panama 
Canal. 

It seems to me providential that the Panama Canal 
is opening at the time that the lowest tariff that this 
country has witnessed for years goes into operation. 
What this means for a community like Boston, with the 
ocean at its feet, is simply impossible to determine. For 
years the high protective tariff of this country has 
operated to prevent commercial friendship with the 
peoples of other countries. Now that we can get their 
raw products free, iron, coal, lumber, wool, sugar, food 
products, and things essential for our manufacturing 
and living conditions, and can send to them boots and 
shoes, clothing, automobiles, manufactures of iron and 
steel, as well as cottons and woolens and kindred products, 
it should mean a stimulus both to our trade and theirs. 
For the past fifty years the manufactures of the country 
have been built up on the home market idea. Now we 
are to look for trade, not to the ninety millions of people 
in this country but to the more than ten hundred millions 
of people throughout the civilized world. Boston is 
situated on the ocean and will not be hampered as 
inland cities will be through the failure of adequate 
railroad facilities to handle the commerce and business. 

This is what the opening of the Panama Canal and 
the adoption of the Underwood bill means to this city, 
and the men who are traveling under the direction of the 
Boston Chamber of Commerce have conferred a great 
blessing upon this city and are entitled to the thanks of 
every citizen in the community. The boys and girls 
who are getting Spanish in our schools, learning the 
commercial geography and getting commercial ideas 
into their heads, are going to be the beneficiaries of this 
great movement. As in the early days ^Hhe sea'' was 
the slogan in Massachusetts, so will ^Hhe ocean" be the 
slogan of Boston's business future. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 147 



MISAPPREHENSIONS. 

At the Gambol of Chamber of Commerce, 

May 20, 1913. 



Fellow Gambolers, — There seems to be a misappre- 
hension of some importance in the vicinity of Copley 
square. Somebody, laboring under a temporary hallu- 
cination, has assumed that I am unwilling or unable 
to speak for the City of Boston. 

There are many things, brethren, which we are per- 
mitted, and even directed to believe, without calling for 
legal evidence, but do not at any time, or under any 
condition, allow yourselves to believe that, as Mayor of 
Boston, it is my purpose, desire, or willingness to allow 
somebody else to represent this municipality when I am 
also present. 

As you very well know, I have represented this city at 
home and abroad for more than five years. I expect to 
represent this city at home or abroad, as the fates may 
direct, for some months to come, and whenever you are 
told that I am not able or willing to represent Mother 
Boston at any formal or informal gathering to which I 
may be invited, it will be safe for you to wager your 
New England railroad stock that it is because of my 
absence or illness. 

Representing, as I do, the City of Boston, and rep- 
resenting, as I have, on occasions the Chamber of Com- 
merce, it is a pleasure for me to-night to bring to the 
Chamber in its lighter moments the greetings of the 
city, and with those greetings a heartfelt wish that at 
all times the Chamber could be as wide-awake, as timely 
and effective as it is on this exceptional occasion. 

Far be it from me, as the Chamber's Mayor, to ques- 
tion its good intentions, or to reduce the chest measure- 
ment of those who are permitted to guide the Chamber, 



148 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

and make reports in behalf of that body which its 
members first hear about through the Press, but my 
reputation for unswerving veracity on all occasions 
compels me to tell you the plain truth at this time con- 
cerning a subject of some importance to the Chamber, 
to South America and myself. 

I have been asked why I did not lead the Chamber of 
Commerce expedition along the whole route of its 
journey to the tropics, and to-night I will tell you 
frankly why I did not : I desired the Chamber to receive 
some attention from potentates and people on its own 
account. Being, as you very well know, a modest man 
and mayor, it was an unspeakable sorrow for me during 
the short time that I was with your brethren to learn 
that there was not the slightest chance in the world to 
obtain for them the recognition that was their due as 
long as I was of their party. I think there may be some 
of those present here to-night who were present when 
we first landed under a foreign flag, and who remember 
the cheers that went up from the assembled multitude: 
^^ Three cheers for John F. Fitzgerald, our next President. 
Three times three for Fitzgerald and his suite." 

You see that they meant well. They knew and 
appreciated me, but they had taken a very small portion 
of one chamber for a suite. 

But the pilgrims became used to that, and before we 
parted it delighted them as much as it annoyed me to 
see my lithograph in every window, to see the papers 
carrying my name at the head of their editorial columns, 
to hear the school children singing ''Sweet Adeline,'' 
and to read that the Citizens' Municipal League of 
Kingston, Jamaica, had recommended that Jamaica 
proclaim its independence in order to take advantage 
of the fact that a modern George Washington was on 
the spot. 

I have only pleasant recollections of my trip, in spite 
of the remarkable efforts put forth by my friends in this 
city to diminish the zeal and enthusiasm of those who 
welcomed me. Messages signed, or purporting to be 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 149 

signed, by '^Bottomly, G. G. A./' ''Sullivan, Boston 
Fin. Com.,'^ and ''Fee, P. S. A.?" were received by 
public officials wherever we stopped for an hour or a 
day. This is a sample: 

Is one John F. Fitzgerald in your midst? Beware of him! 
He is a menace to tropical vegetation and a promoter of discord. 
Restrain him! On second thought, turn him loose. If you 
keep him he will be running your country and annexing others 
within a year. On third thought, don't turn him loose as we 
want to keep him out of this country long enough to pull off 
and win an election without his presence. Maroon him. 

That was signed "Bottomly," and yet it did not 
diminish the warmth of my welcome. I received cordial 
invitations to visit Mexico and had offers of the presi- 
dency from at least three great parties. Fearing that 
if I told any of them that I would accept the nomina- 
tion I would receive what is known in Mexican Munic- 
ipal League circles as the "Stephen O'Meara" treat- 
ment, I declined to run. But I don't wish you to 
understand that declining has become chronic in my 
case. 

In the Canal Zone, where they keep in touch with 
what is going on in Boston, the chief city of the world, 
I found that my fame had preceded me. One prominent 
statistician said to me: 

"They tell me that you are the most expensive mayor 
in the United States.'' "How is that?" I asked. "It's 
like this," he replied. "You receive ten thousand dollars 
a year salary; they pay John A. Sullivan five thousand 
dollars a year; Robert J. Bottomly four thousand dol- 
lars a year, and James E. Fee three thousand dollars a 
year to watch you, as representatives, respectively, of 
the Finance Commission, the 'Goo Goos' and the P. S. A., 
that makes the total $22,000 a year." 

"I should think," added my Canal Zone friend, 
"that it would pay those organizations to keep you 
down this way or out of the country somewhere and 
thus save money." 

But I explained to him that the men who draw the 



150 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

salaries are the organizations, and that they would not 
have me quit because that would mean the loss of their 
positions and salaries. 

However, I suppose that you have heard people tell 
how nice it would be to run the City of Boston on a busi- 
ness basis, — on the business basis of the big corpora- 
tions. You have heard it, haven't you? It's a familiar 
text with the editors when they desire to say something 
safe without treading on the corns of the railroads or 
the other supporting interests. That is why I am 
thinking of asking the Finance Commission to make a 
special report on the desirability of having the City of 
Boston conducted as the biggest railroad corporation 
in New England is conducted, and to award big con- 
tracts as contracts are awarded by that corporation, — 
on a business basis. Sometimes I think that I ought 
to be president of the New York, New Haven & Hartford 
Railroad, and sometimes I think that Mr. Mellen ought 
to be mayor of the city. Just imagine dear old Boston 
after a dose of Mellen's food. You all know it would 
be better to have ^'Fitz" any time. 

I am glad to be with you this evening and to express 
my appreciation of your activities. If the Chamber of 
Commerce in big and serious undertakings will put the 
same enthusiasm and the same directness into its work 
that you have put into this, the effect upon Boston will 
be wonderful and it will relieve me of some of my own 
duties. 

May I close with a poetical address which was read 
to me on the wharf at Kingston by a delighted and 
appreciative delegation of former citizens of the North 
End now employed in picking bananas off the trees: 

Though Joshua in Bible times 

Performed a first-class feat, 
When he induced the sun to stop, 

You've got the Josh game beat. 
You've issued orders that the sun 

Must travel twice as fast, 
And that is why we say to-day 

That John has Josh outclassed. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 151 



EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

Speech at the Memorial, May 22, 1913. 



The honorable duty of accepting this statue, erected 
by the people and dedicated to the loving memory of a 
distinguished son of Boston, is one which I assume with 
much pride. 

Born almost a century ago, a graduate of our Latin 
School and of Harvard University, the life of Edward 
Everett Hale for almost three-quarters of a century 
largely influenced the history of this city. His sym- 
pathies and interests were bounded only by the needs 
of humanity, but Boston is the city that he loved. 

He grew up among family traditions of high public 
service and to the end he devoted himself, as a lover of 
mankind, to the uplifting of men and women wherever 
a cry from the oppressed could be heard. 

His ancestors had learned the value of peace from the 
rough experiences of war; he devoted his great genius 
to the promotion of the acts of peace with all the deter- 
mination and consecrated zeal which his forefathers had 
shown in the struggle for liberty, and from which alone 
they knew that the reign of peace could come upon 
earth and endure. 

Poet, journalist, historian, preacher of the word, 
promoter of good will among mankind, comforter of the 
afflicted, implacable foe to the oppressor, he might 
indeed say: ^'I put on righteousness and it clothed me; 
I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame; I was a 
friend to the poor and the cause which I knew not I 
searched out." 

If the cause of humanity was his fate, love of country 
was his foible. What boy or girl has read '^The Man 
Without a Country," written in the darkest day of the 
republic, and not burned with patriotic fire, not been 



152 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

moved to lay down life itself on the altar of country? 
Can you not hear him proclaiming through that story 
of Philip Nolan, written in the simple language of the 
seer, that patriotism is not mere pride in an area of land, 
but an idea transfigured into an ideal towards which 
the youth of the land, holding country sacred next after 
God, constantly moves. 

Sirs, there is a singular charm and fitness in these 
exercises this afternoon. The man whom we here com- 
memorate was remarkable for the number and breadth 
of his activities, for the many causes which he espoused, 
but there was no cause that caught his heart and pos- 
sessed his being more than the great cause of peace, to 
which he devoted long years and which he abandoned 
only with life itself. It is the cause of the Master 
who has declared that He came to bring peace on earth 
and whose teachings Edward Everett Hale reverently 
followed according to his own spiritual philosophy. 

A short time ago, Mr. President, you made the happy 
suggestion that instead of erecting fortifications at the 
entrance to the great waterway that is to connect the 
two oceans, the statue of Christ should be set up, a 
suggestion hailed by the nations of the world with joyous 
acclaim. Is it not singularly fitting that he who made 
this suggestion should be here this afternoon, when we 
are gathered together to do honor to one who was 
devoted to the cause of peace? 

Edward Everett Hale knew through his fighting 
ancestors the inspiration of battle; he was formed in 
the same heroic mold with Nathan Hale, whose only 
regret was that he had but one life to lose for his country. 
But he knew that war for war's sake is sin, and that the 
end of all human effort should be peace. So wherever 
and whenever the chance came to use his mighty voice 
in the cause of peace, he thundered as has no other 
American of his day and placed on the brow of his 
beloved country the crown of peace to which 'Hhe 
laurels that Caesar reaps are weeds." 

It scarcely seems that he is dead. Only yesterday 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 153 

we saw him on the city streets, towering above the 
mass of men, just as in soul he touched the clouds. 
Happy his end. He lagged not superfluous. 

The city of his love is here united to place this statue 
among the other silent but eloquent memories which, 
while keeping alive the glorious past, inspire the future 
to high enthusiasm and noble deeds. The city accepts 
this statue with gratitude to those who gave it and with 
deep affection for him whom it commemorates. It 
shall remind the generation that knew him of his pure 
devotion, and teach the generations to come that cities 
are not ungrateful but that their proudest possessions 
are the memories of the good and great among their 
children. 



154 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



BOSTON COLLEGE. 
Dedication of New Buildings, June 15, 1913. 



Right Reverend Sir, Reverend Fathers, Ladies 
AND Gentlemen, — While I am from my official position 
the recipient of many invitations which courtesy prompts, 
I can assure you that I have received none which gives 
me greater pleasure than that which bade me to these 
ceremonies attending the dedication of the first of a 
great group of buildings to mark the second founding 
of Boston College. Yes, it is Boston College and it ever 
will be. True, the institution has removed to the fringe 
of another city, but neither Boston nor Boston College 
will ever forget that the city which I have the honor to 
represent is the cradle in which the college was rocked 
and furnished the educational atmosphere which has 
nurtured it for now a full half century. So, while I 
congratulate the Garden City of the Commonwealth 
upon this precious new possession, I warn the honored 
mayor of Newton that his city but shares the honor 
with her who gave it birth and reared it, receiving in 
return a rich contribution to its citizenship that justifies 
the truth of the fine utterance of O'Reilly that ''Boston 
is a living university in the streets.'' Yes, sir, it will 
ever remain Boston College, and while a graduate of 
this honored institution lives he will defend the claim of 
Boston and have the claim allowed. 

I have often thought of the small beginnings of 
Boston College. I know her history well. I was a 
pupil there in 1879 and left only because failing health 
compelled me to do so. And when I think how it has 
outgrown its narrow limits and demanded expansion, I 
wonder if the pious souls who founded it in 1863 thought 
for a moment of the tremendous task upon which 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 155 

they were entering and could even have dreamed 
that in the short space of a half century it could reach 
the proportions in which we glory to-day. When I 
think of the sainted Bapst, the apostolic McElroy, 
and the scholarly Fulton, all of honored memory, I 
wonder if, even in vision, they could have foreseen the 
consummation in which we delight and which is a matter 
of pride not only to the college and her sturdy alumni 
but to the city which I have the honor to represent, 
and that other city which claims partnership with us, 
now for the first time, in an institution that has been a 
nursery of the priesthood of the archdiocese of Boston, 
the alma mater of the good bishop whose kindly presence 
cheers us to-day, and which has upon her honored roll 
the name of a prince of the church, now happily adminis- 
tering the affairs of this most successful metropolitan 
See. 

When as a boy I used to pass the rectory of the 
Church of the Immaculate Conception, my attention 
was arrested by the legend on the lintel over the door- 
way, ^'Religioni et Bonis Artibus/^ and as I passed the 
same place the other day and saw the motto still facing 
me, I asked myself if this was not a complete summary 
of education. What is education? Who will gainsay 
me when I define it as the cultivation and improvement 
of the spiritual principle in man. It is more to be sure, 
but this is the important factor. I said it is more. 
It is the harmonious development of man in a threefold 
manner — athletically, esthetically and ethically — and 
to these three factors this institution has contributed in 
so large a measure that I am sure there is no one not 
blinded by prejudice who will not say that she has 
done her work well. 

The college has always taken the right view of educa- 
tion. It early put itself in harmony with the time 
spirit. It realized that while the humanities should 
keep their wonted place of honor, this was a commercial 
age and institutions of learning, if they are to do their 
full duty from generation to generation, must study the 



156 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

conditions of the particular time and arrange their 
courses of study accordingly. The college saw, too, 
the necessity of unity in the plan of education. It 
realized that the college could not stand alone, but 
that it depended largely upon the tone and character 
of the work of the preparatory school, and hence the 
organization of a Boston College High School, wherein 
provision is made for the vocational training which is 
so necessary for institutions of learning to insist upon 
unless we are content to send our children out into the 
world with no particular end in view and with the word 
^' drift '^ in too many cases written over their lives. 

I have spoken of the beginnings of this college. 
Why, I remember distinctly the hope and prayer of 
Father Fulton that the college might have at some time 
two hundred pupils. It now numbers more than 
twelve hundred. I have expressed wonder at the 
boldness of the pioneers who conceived this great work, 
and I have marveled to see this day when we fondly 
ponder the result, not of princely donations but of pious 
poverty. I naturally look back over the history of 
education in New England and contemplating the 
careers of what were at one time called the twin sisters, 
Harvard and Yale, I am reminded that the beginnings 
of Harvard were a small library and an earnest hundred 
pounds bequeathed by a clergyman, and that the great 
university of Connecticut owes its origin to ten worthy 
fathers who assembled in Banford in 1700, and laying 
each a few volumes upon the table said, ^'I give these 
books for the founding of a college in this colony" — 
and these two universities were born in a wilderness. 
What inspiration you must get from the history of these 
two institutions; what encouragement when you think 
that the founders of Boston College knelt in prayer and 
dedicated this institution ad majorem Dei gloriam — to 
the greater glory of God. How could they fail? ''God 
and one are a majority" said Wendell Phillips, and we 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 157 

know and we hold it to be an axiom that religion is the 
great and solid foundation of a prosperous state, and 
that 

The thirst that from the soul doth rise 
Demands a drink divine. 

But shall I bring my greetings to you only because 
of your splendid past? Must I in the proud contem- 
plation in which I am indulging over the work already 
done forget the present? Certainly not. I congratu- 
late Father Gasson, the president of this college, upon 
the boldness of his conception and the wonderful achieve- 
ment which he has scored in the face of many difficulties. 
I charge him not to falter now, but to go on with his 
work until the vision of a group of magnificent build- 
ings with '^storied windows richly dight" be completed 
and a great institution of learning takes its seat on 
University Heights, to be a blessing to the community 
in which we live. I hail Father Gasson as the second 
founder of Boston College, the man who dared, who saw 
the future in the instant, who has happily brought to 
naught the predictions of those who, though interested 
in his work, felt that it was too ambitiously planned. 
No, it was not too ambitiously planned. The need of 
such an institution appealed to him with such compel- 
ling force that he had naught in conscience to do but 
undertake it and carry it through. When some one 
said to him '^It is impossible, '' he answered like another 
Cobden, ''Then there is all the more reason why we 
should get at it at once.'' May his successors be 
worthy of him and the good great men who have pre- 
sided over this institution in the past; may it never 
forget its dedication to religion and the liberal arts; may 
it always carry on its work beneath 

The great ensign of Messiah, 

Aloft by angels borne, their sign in Heaven; 



158 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

may it ever be said of those who come out from these 
halls that they are ^'Learned without pride, and not too 
wise to pray^'; may they recall that it was not intelli- 
gence that Mephistopheles lacked but goodness, and 
may they never forget that Boston College is an institu- 
tion like unto the temple of virtue which Marcellus 
erected at Rome, through which alone lay the path to 
the temple of honor. 

I say to the generations that are to throng these 
halls, '^Emancipated from the past you are responsible 
only for the present and the future, but, thank God, 
you need not blush for your cradle,'' and as this institu- 
tion takes its place like a '^ city set upon a hill," may it 
look down in benediction upon the beloved city from 
which it takes its name, and from whose atmosphere 
it has derived much wholesome nutriment, and may 
both go down the ages contributing each to the other 
the best that is in her for the good of the city, the state, 
the nation and our common humanity. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 159 



METROPOLITAN PLANNING. 

At First City and Town Planning Conference, 
State House, November 18, 1913. 



I am particularly glad to welcome this convention to 
Boston. It marks the beginning of that cooperation 
among the cities and town of the Commonwealth which is 
SO important for our common good. It testifies to the 
fact that in many things our union in interest is stronger 
than the separation maintained by distance and local 
governments, for we are not here merely to gain wisdom 
one from the other, but in some sort to make a common 
plan to secure the finest possible communities for the 
State of Massachusetts. 

As far as the planning of Boston is concerned, I feel 
that the other cities have a right to give something more 
than advice. We realize that our hotels and theaters 
and big stores depend on the communities outside our 
political limits, growing with their growth and prosper- 
ing with their prosperity. Furthermore, as a shipping 
port and as a market we are closely related to all your 
fortunes, both good and bad. It is therefore with some- 
thing more than dispassionate interest that the repre- 
sentatives of Boston will listen to your discussions. 

But if all the cities of the Commonwealth are bound 
in some sort to Boston, what shall we say of the forty 
communities physically united to her? It is a curious 
fact that for Boston alone of all the cities of the world 
there should be actually more people, within a radius 
of ten miles, outside the city limits than inside. It is 
ridiculous that these forty separate units, making up 
the milhon and a half people of greater Boston, cannot 
get together on all matters of serious importance. 

We have a Metropolitan Park Commission and a 
metropolitan water supply, but we should also have 



160 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

closer relations with the fire and police service of the 
Metropolitan district. If we cannot protect Chelsea, we 
cannot protect East Boston; if we cannot protect 
Somerville, it is useless to elaborate our schemes for 
Charlestown. We are an immense industrial and com- 
mercial community, visibly one in physical continuity 
and in many common needs. I do not advocate political 
union with Boston, but I do advocate some form of 
loose federation among these cities and towns already 
so closely bound, if they would only recognize it, by 
intimate economic ties. 

There is a distinguished precedent for this federation. 
Metropolitan London has a much less tangible organiza- 
tion; only the drainage, police and water departments 
cover the whole area of 700 square miles, including 
London city, London county and much more; yet 
London gets universal credit for 7,530,000 people. 

A plan for a federation of this sort was rejected not 
because of any political opposition but through the 
hostility of the suburban places, Newton being the 
leader, which claimed to have all the intelligence and 
most of the virtue abiding in the neighborhood. Whether 
they feared that it might lead to closer political union 
with Boston or not I cannot say, but I submit that their 
attitude shows very little enlightenment. The plan 
outlined was too broad and farsighted for a group of 
men accustomed to deal with problems that are purely 
local in their character and affecting only small popula- 
tions. That is the difficulty you will have to meet in 
endeavoring to bring about a more enlightened form of 
city planning. You must first get out the blackboard 
and give a few primary lessons and in this way inculcate 
the Metropolitan spirit as against the parochial attitude 
which now prevails; yet some union must come soon. 
I believe it to be a necessary preliminary to any effective 
city planning in Boston. We cannot even secure that 
most rudimentary of city plans — the circumferential 
thoroughfares — when any such proposed thoroughfare 
runs in and out of the jagged fringe of political Boston 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 161 

like a weaver's shuttle in a Jacquard pattern. Much 
less can we hope to attack with any prospect of success 
the question of housing reform. 

The various indirect ways of attacking the slums 
through taxes on unimproved land and through legal 
restriction may some day be within the power of the 
City of Boston. But would it seem quite fair to lay 
a burden on the real estate men five miles from the 
State House in one direction and leave those a mile away 
in another, under perfectly similar conditions, entirely 
free? There are sections outside the city limits having 
all the characteristics of the city slums which any regula- 
tion in Boston proper would only tend to aggravate. 
If we are to reform the slums, Metropolitan Boston must 
conspire to do it; sectional attack will only aggravate 
and confuse the issue. 

How much more true is this of an attempt to solve 
the problem through the development of suburban 
sections. To the north of Boston there are no suburbs 
within the city limits; Somerville, Everett, Maiden, 
Medford, Arlington, are separate towns, yet I venture 
to say half of the people of Boston and most of the 
people outside of the Metropolitan district regard them 
as a part of the city life. Indeed, if you meet a citizen 
of any of these towns abroad you will always find that 
they claim to come from Boston; the same is true even 
of our aristocratic sister, Brookline, for, charming as 
Brookline is, it is unknown in Berlin, except perhaps as 
a suburb of the great city which so nearly surrounds it. 
These are towns to which the people of Boston return 
at night. How can we of political Boston attempt to 
secure '^garden suburbs" in districts which in spite of 
that fact hold themselves alien? We have a very 
interesting suburb in West Roxbury, in which homes of 
beauty, even of distinction, are given to the people at 
the lowest price profitable to the investor. But that 
district contains most of the undeveloped land within 
the city limits. It is not enough, not nearly enough, for 
our people; if we are to develop the new sections of 



162 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

Metropolitan Boston attractively and economically, we 
must attack the problem together. 

Especially is this true of the ''pest of three-deckers'' 
now spreading over all the suburban sections. Dor- 
chester, twenty years ago picturesque and beautiful, 
with old houses and wide shady streets, is to-day overrun 
with these shabby, unkept substitutes for homes. This 
type of building answers the demand for cheap con- 
struction and consequent low rent. But it is a danger 
and a disgrace to the community which tolerates it. 
Yet how can the three-flatters be eliminated in East 
Boston and allowed in Chelsea, forbidden in Dorchester 
and welcomed in Somerville and Medford? If we are 
to get rid of it — and surely this is the most elementary 
of reforms — Metropolitan Boston must unite for the 
effort. 

Some solution of the housing problem is vital to real 
Boston. If we set to work at it forty different groups 
in forty different ways, the best intentions in the world 
will not pull us out with anything but confusion and 
cross purposes. But if this convention is, as I hope, the 
beginning of a recognition of the common needs and 
purposes of the cities of the state, and the beginning 
of some form of federation for the cities and towns 
already closely united in interest, there is no good hope 
that I would not be sanguine enough to entertain. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 163 



THANKSGIVING. 

Statement, November 27, 1913. 



An ancient tradition bids us follow the example of 
those early settlers who once more garnering a sufficient 
harvest set apart a day to thank the great Power which 
had led them out of famine. To-day we are gathering 
greater harvests, the fruits of their suffering and stern 
self-sacrifice. On the site of their terror-haunted forests 
and meager corn fields we have built our cities and our 
farms, and where they walked in daily dread of a fearful 
death we have built secure and happy homes. It is 
right that we,^ too, should now consider our benefits 
and thank the Power which has led us out of those days 
of fear to these of prosperity and safety, and it is a 
happy custom which yearly reminds us of our debt to 
those who hewed the way for us and to Him who eter- 
nally guides our several lives as well as the destiny of 
nations. 



164 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 



GOVERNOR GENERAL FORBES. 
At City Club Banquet, December 2, 1913. 



It is a particular pleasure to welcome Governor 
General W. Cameron Forbes. For a great many years 
I have lauded just those virtues which distinguish him 
among the leaders of men. We do not credit him with 
genius, though perhaps that also is his due, but we do 
bow to his superiority over common men in kindness, 
perseverance, ability to work hard all day and every 
day, and in his infinite capacity for taking pains. These 
are qualities which, in combination at least, are more 
rare and more valuable than genius itself. 

I hope that the return of this man to Boston will stir 
in the young people here some realization of the inherent 
greatness of just these qualities. By them, in this man 
and in his predecessor, a country has been transformed; 
a turbulent people made over into a people orderly in 
the beginning of self-government; a hungry population 
taught how to make two crops grow where one grew 
before; a miserable humanity, scourged with disease, 
suddenly lifted up to the benefits of health. Genius 
can lay waste a country, can burn homes and wake 
desolation, but it takes something more than genius 
to put together these embittered fragments and out of 
them build a nation. 

I can say with Sydney Smith: ^'The vigor I love con- 
sists in finding out wherein subjects are aggrieved, in 
relieving them, in studying the genius and temper of 
a people, in consulting their prejudices, in selecting the 
proper persons to lead and manage them, in the labo- 
rious, watchful and difficult task of increasing public 
happiness by allaying each particular discontent.' ' And 
this is the vigor with which General Forbes has governed 
the Philippines. 



MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 165 

It is unfortunate that even this enlightened govern- 
ment could not escape attack, but it comforts me to 
have such distinguished companionship in supporting 
the comment of political enemies and a biased Press. 
General Forbes is happily able to regard calumny with 
indifference. His record of distinguished service abroad 
and his life here in his youth combine to make his posi- 
tion impregnable. 

My quarrel with certain Boston newspapers is not 
concerned with their attitude toward any one person. 
It is with a settled policy that has sown dissension where 
none should exist. For a great many years the City of 
Boston has been divided against itself — Ward 11 and 
Ward 13, Ward 6 and Ward 23, regarding each other 
with mutual distrust. Recently there has been a 
gradual change in the temper of the people. The City 
Club and the Chamber of Commerce, two of the most 
powerful organizations in the city, as well as other 
agencies, have ignored ward, race and class lines in their 
endeavor to help Boston on toward its great victory. 
This movement has not secured the cooperation of the 
so-called conservative newspapers, which fan the flame 
of race and class antagonism whenever an opportunity 
offers. Practically the only time one of these news- 
papers ever commended the action of a Democrat of a 
certain type was when it praised Congressman Murray 
for his defence of our present guest. General Forbes, 
against the attack of his enemies on the floor of Congress. 

This offence of certain newspapers would be less 
serious if the City of Boston were less important. But 
when we consider her past, her powerful influence over 
the history of this country, her achievements in literature 
and in art, it is difficult to understand them. Moreover, 
such disloyalty does not end with the false impression 
it creates. The future of Boston is not that certain 
prosperity that we so fondly imagine. It depends on 
our union, on the strength we can muster to combat 
inertia within and rivalry without. The cities that grow 
in power and beauty have always been those where a 
common devotion has inspired the whole population. 



166 MAYOR FITZGERALD'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. 

This is the spirit we need. There is no question that 
Boston can be a city first in every great fine of human 
endeavor. Like the Florence of the free cities, we should 
combine a revival of commerce and of the arts. Here, 
if anywhere in this country, literary tradition has been 
continuous, and here, if anywhere, with this new influx 
of life, we should look for the long awaited American 
Dante. Painting, music and sculpture are fields in 
which the American spirit has still to find its perfectly 
adequate expression. We know that the material and 
the spiritual are closely interrelated, and if we want to 
see this revival of the arts we must encourage a com- 
plete awakening in every phase of human activity. No 
true son of Boston can sit back in cynical indifference 
at this time. 

The achievements of General Forbes in the Philippines 
showed that he was a man who could be invaluable here. 
Out there he developed commerce through building 
roads and protecting shipping, and through encourag- 
ing the development of industrial education. He pro- 
tected the sugar growers from a combination of sugar 
buyers, and secured legislation for irrigation and artesian 
wells. In these and in innumerable other ways he 
showed that he had at heart the development of that 
country. 

If he will take an active interest in the commercial 
development of his native city it will help us greatly in 
our present task of welding it into a powerful and pros- 
perous whole. His grandfather, with Russell and Per- 
kins, was one of the controlling factors in our eastern 
trade up to 1840. His uncle, Robert M. Forbes, was in 
command of the vessels bearing relief to Ireland in 1847. 
We ask General Forbes now to follow up his distinguished 
service abroad by helping to put Boston again where it 
was when his grandfather and uncle were important 
factors in its commercial prosperity — first among the 
cities of the United States.