. . . The physical condition of the sewers" is
"dangerous to the health and most offensive to the comfort of our
people. Public work has been done so badly that structures have
to be renewed almost as soon as finished. Others have been in
part constructed at enormous expense and then permitted to fall
to decay without completion." This is a graphic and faithful
description of the result which follows government of the Ring,
for the Ring, with the people's money. The legislature in 1885
granted Philadelphia a new charter, called the Bullitt Law, which
went into effect in 1887, and which greatly simplified the
structure of the government and centered responsibility in the
mayor. It was then necessary for the Ring to control primaries
and win elections in order to keep the city within its clutches.
So began in Philadelphia the practice of fraudulent registering
and voting on a scale that has probably never been equaled
elsewhere in America. Names taken from tombstones in the
cemeteries and from the register of births found their way to the
polling registers. Dogs, cats, horses, anything living or dead,
with a name, served the purpose.
The exposure of these frauds was undertaken in 1900 by the
Municipal League. In two wards, where the population had
decreased one per cent in ten years (1890-1900), it was found
that the registered voters had increased one hundred per cent.
From one house sixty-two voters were registered, of sundry
occupations as follows: "Professors, bricklayers, gentlemen,
moulders, cashiers, barbers, ministers, bakers, doctors, drivers,
bartenders, plumbers, clerks, cooks, merchants, stevedores,
bookkeepers, waiters, florists, boilermakers, salesmen, soldiers,
electricians, printers, book agents, and restaurant keepers.
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