442 MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 



strike leaders, who, although they passed through much tribulation 

 because of the political interference, did not eventually lose control. 



The situation in the Chicago Stock Yards is an excellent epitome 

 of the fact that government so often finds itself, not only in oppo- 

 sition to the expressed will of the people making the demand at the 

 moment, but apparently against the best instincts of the mass of 

 the citizens as a whole. 



For years the city administrations, one after another, have pro- 

 tected the money interests invested in the Stock Yards, so that none 

 of the sanitary ordinances have ever been properly enforced, until 

 the sickening stench and the scum on the branch of the river known 

 as " Bubbly Creek " at times make that section of the city unen- 

 durable. The smoke ordinances are openly ignored, nor did the 

 city meat inspector ever seriously interfere with business, as a recent 

 civil-service investigation has demonstrated, while the water-steals 

 for which the Stock Yards finally became notorious must have been 

 more or less known to certain officials. But all of this merely cor- 

 rupted a limited number of inspectors, and although their corrup- 

 tion was complete and involved the entire administration, it did not 

 actually touch large numbers of people. During the recent strike, 

 however, twelve hundred policemen were called upon to patrol the 

 yards inside and out -- actual men possessed of human sensibilities. 

 There is no doubt that the police inspector of the district thoroughly 

 represented the alliance of the city hall and the business interests, 

 and that he did not mean to discover anything which was deroga- 

 tory to the packers, nor to embarrass them in any way during the 

 conduct of the strike. But these twelve hundred men themselves 

 were called upon to face a very peculiar situation because of the 

 type of men and women who formed the bulk of the strike-breakers, 

 and because in the first weeks of the strike these men and women 

 were kept constantly inside the yards during day and night. In 

 order to hold them there at all, discipline outside the working hours 

 was thoroughly relaxed, and the policemen in charge of the yards, 

 while there ostensibly to enforce law and order, were obliged every 

 night to connive at prize-fighting, at open gambling, and at the most 

 flagrant disregard of decency. They were there, not to enforce law 

 and order as it defines itself in the minds of the bulk of healthy- 

 minded citizens, but only to keep the strikers from molesting the 

 non-union workers, which was certainly commendable, but, after all, 

 only part of their real duty. They were shocked by the law-break- 

 ing which they were ordered to protect, and much drawn in sym- 

 pathy to those whom they were supposed to regard as public enemies. 

 An investigator who interviewed one hundred policemen found 

 only one who did not frankly extol the restraint of the strikers as 

 over against the laxity of the imported men. This, of course, was 



