W. T. (William Thomas) Stead - Satans Invisible World Displayed; or, Despairing Democracy

THE CITY HALL, NEW YORK.

SATANS INVISIBLE
WORLD DISPLAYED
OR,
Despairing Democracy.

A STUDY OF GREATER NEW YORK.

BY
W. T. STEAD,
AUTHOR OF IF CHRIST CAME TO CHICAGO!

Inasmuch as no government can endure in which corrupt greed not only makes the laws but decides who shall construe them, many of our best citizens are beginning to despair of the Republic. Ex-Governor Altgeld , Labour Day, 1897.

The Review of Reviews Annual, 1898.

EDITORIAL OFFICES:
MOWBRAY HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, LONDON, W.C.
PUBLISHING OFFICE:
125, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

For the past four years I have devoted the Annual of the Review of Reviews to a romance based upon the leading social or political event of the year. This year I intermit the publication of the Series of Contemporary History in Fiction in order to publish a study of the most interesting and significant of all the political and municipal problems of our time. To those who may object to the substitution of a companion volume to my Chicago book for their usual annual quantum of political romance, I reply, first, that changes are lightsome and a novelty is attractive, and, secondly, that nothing that the wildest imagination of the romance-writer could conceive exceeds in startling and sensational horror the grim outline of the facts which are set forth in this survey of that section of Satans Invisible World which was brought to light by the Lexow Committee.

The trite old saying that Truth is stranger than Fiction has seldom been better exemplified than in the story of the way in which the Second City in the World has been governed, unless it be in the consequences of the resulting despair. For if the revelations made before the Lexow Committee are almost incredible, the deliberate decision of the ablest and most public-spirited Americans that there is no way of escape save by the hamstrung Csarism of the Charter of Greater New York is still more marvellous as a confession of the shipwreck of faith. Sin, when it has conceived, bringeth forth Death, and the corruption that rotted the administration previous to 1894 has only brought forth its natural fruit in the adoption of a bastard Bonapartism of the Second Empire as the best government for the First City in the American Republic.

The election of the first Mayor for Greater New York, which is progressing while these pages are being written, gives a special actuality and interest to this study. But its permanent value does not depend upon the issue of the plbiscite which has decided who will sway the destinies of the Second City of the World at the eve and on the dawn of the Twentieth Century.

It will, I hope, render available to the whole English-speaking world the gist and essence of the evidence taken before the Committee appointed by the Senate of the State of New York to inquire into the Police Department of the City. This Committee, presided over by Senator Lexow, held seventy sittings in the year 1894, and ultimately published the Report of their inquiry in five stout octavo volumes of 1100 pages each. All their proceedings were public, and the New York papers published ample reports from day to day. Outside New York nothing but brief telegrams or occasional letters informed the world of what was taking place, and the final Report was never published in the British or Colonial press. Yet the lesson of the state of things revealed by the Lexow Committee was one which every great city would do well to take to heart. What New York was, London, Glasgow, or Melbourne maynay, will certainlybecome, if the citizens lose interest in the good government of their city.

When I was in New York in September, I tried in vain to purchase a copy of the Lexow Report. As for exhuming the files of the daily papers, one might as well try to resurrect Cheops. Fortunately, just as I was stepping on board the Teutonic, the five bulky volumes were handed over to me as a loan. Dr. Shaw had at the last moment succeeded in borrowing the office copy of the Report from the Society for the Prevention of Crime. It was apparently the only available set in the whole city. I deemed it well therefore to master the voluminous evidence in order to construct a readable and authentic narrative which would make this great object-lesson accessible to the world.

W. T. STEAD.

Mowbray House,
Norfolk Street, London, W.C.
November, 1897.

THE JANITRESS OF THE LAND OF LIBERTY.

SATANS INVISIBLE WORLD DISPLAYED;
OR,
DESPAIRING DEMOCRACY.

The Gateway of the New World.

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD.

The entrance to the harbour of New York is not unworthy its position as the gatewaythe ever open gatewayof the New World.

And the colossal monument raised by the genius of Bartholdi at the threshold of the gateway is no inapt emblem of the sentiments with which millions have hailed the sight of the American continent.

The harbour, though guarded by great guns against hostile intruder, and infested by the myrmidons of the Customs, is nevertheless an appropriate antechamber of the Republic, from whose never-dying torch stream the rays of Liberty enlightening the world.

Over the great lagoon-like waters flit the white-winged yachtsthe butterflies of the seadancing in the rays of the rising sun. On shore the luxuriant foliage of the trees betrays but here and there the hectic flush that portends the glories of the Indian summer. The islands, as emeralds in the setting of the sea, are a doubly welcome sight to eyes which for days past have seen nothing but the heaving billows of the broad Atlantic. Here and there, flecking with colour the sunlit scene, flutter the Stars and Stripes. Far away in the West, faintly audible in the distance, come the multitudinous sounds of the awakening seaport. The great Liner, which shuddered and throbbed for three thousand miles as it forged five hundred miles a day across the sea, is gliding smoothly and softly as a gondola towards the Venice of the Western World. Except when approaching the Golden Horn, no more beautiful scene greets the traveller on approaching a great capital than that presented by the entrance to the harbour of New York. And right in the centre of the fair vision stands the Bartholdi monument, with its gigantic figure hailing the pilgrims from the Older World with the glad welcome of the New. What more appropriate janitress of the Land of Liberty?