Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [977]
Now the Pros and Cons took their case to the electoral marketplace, and the battleground widened. In Manhattan, among the forces calling for a yes vote were the City Club, the Good Government Clubs, the leading commercial associations, and most major papers, including the World, Herald, Sun, Tribune, and the Times. Adding to consolidation’s appeal among these wealthy and powerful men was the argument advanced by municipal efficiency advocates like Albert Shaw, who suggested—rather as Hamilton had a century earlier-—that creating a metropolitan-scale government, with at-large elections, would allow “representatives of the best elements of business life” to edge out the politicians who excelled at ward-level combat. Shaw pointed to the new London County Council as a model for Greater New York, noting that there “were no saloon keepers or ward bosses in this London council.”
Consolidation was thus presented as a device for achieving the circumscription of democracy that the “best men” had been seeking ever since the Tilden Commission—led by Green’s mentor back in 1877—had urged municipal power be vested in taxpayers only. Simon Sterne, a lawyer who had served on that body, was now in the forefront of consolidationist advocates, arguing that “we must stop organizing on the basis of arbitrary population and organize on the basis of interests, and let the elected few or the chosen few who are at the top of these interests ipso facto go into government.”
For the Manhattan masses, proponents stressed the benefits of lebensraum. Betteroff clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen, mechanics, and operatives, suggested the Real Estate Record, would be able to flee congested apartments to modest free-standing cottages available in Brooklyn at twenty-five dollars per month, or two-family houses at ten dollars per month. While this would not eradicate the slums, it would separate “the industrious and self-respecting poor” from “the less regenerate people by whom they are surrounded.”
This prospect also appealed to the development-minded in Brooklyn, but it terrified those who feared the unworthy might follow hard on the heels of the respectable. In part to soothe such fears, and win additional backing for a yes vote in the referendum, the city’s new Republican-Fusion leadership embarked on its own campaign of urban imperialism. In 1894, to extend the sway of Good Government over the rest of Kings County, Brooklyn called for annexation of the seventeenth-century Dutch and English towns that still retained their independence. Gaining control over Gravesend’s Coney was of particular concern, said the Eagle, for “the rescue of the island from barbarism, brigandage and bestiality requires that it be made part of the limits and jurisdiction of Brooklyn.” Gravesend, Flatbush, and New Utrecht became wards of the city that year, and in 1896 the last remaining town, Flatlands, would be gathered in, making Greater Brooklyn coterminus with Kings County.
Given the Brooklyn Consolidation League’s multidimensional and extremely well funded campaign, it appeared that even in Brooklyn the referendum was heading for easy passage. A BCL canvass of selected districts that spring showed 64 percent of voters in favor of consolidation.
Then came the Lexow investigation of corruption among Manhattan’s police and politicians, and many Brooklynites backed away from the idea. Between May and November of 1894, as the exposes dragged on, hundreds of columns and cartoons appeared in the anticonsolidation press warning of the horrors that would flow from incorporation into a Tammany-run super-city. Republicans, hi particular, took fright at the prospect of having their new-minted victory overridden and being forced to relinquish power to Democratic crooks and connivers.
In November 1894 the referendum went to the voters.
In Manhattan, 96,938 voted for consolidation, 59,959 against. The Pro forces did best in upper- and middle-class districts and among