Charles Carleton Coffin
Copyright© 2025 by William Elliot Griffis
Chapter 25: Citizen, Statesman, and Reformer
One can hardly imagine a better school for the training of a good American citizen than that which Carleton enjoyed. By inheritance and birth in a New Hampshire village, he knew “the springs of empire.” By actual experience of farming and surveying in a transition era between the old ages of manual labor and the new æon of inventions, he learned toil, its necessity, and how to abridge and guide it by mind. In the acquaintance, while upon a Boston newspaper, with public men, and all kinds of people, in the unique experiences as war correspondent, in wide travel and observation around the whole world, in detailed studies of new lands and life in the Northwest, in reading and research in great libraries, and in the constant discipline of his mind through reflection, his knowledge of man and nature, of society and history, was at first hand.
Intensely interested in politics from boyhood, Carleton sought no public office.
When, in his early manhood, he revolved in his mind the question of attempting this or that career, he may have thought of entering the alluring but thorny path of office-seeking and “practical” politics. It cannot be said that his desire for public emolument lasted very long. He deliberately decided against a political career. Even if the exigencies of the moment had not tended to forbid the flight of his ambition in this direction, there were other reasons against it.
He was a school commissioner in Malden, faithfully attending to the details of his duty during two years. The report of his work was given in a pamphlet. As we have seen, before the breaking out of the war, when in Washington, he sought for a little while government employment in one of the departments, but gave up the quest when the larger field of war correspondent invited him. He never sought an elective office, but when his fellow citizens in Boston found out how valuable a member of the Commonwealth he was, so rich in public spirit and so well equipped to be a legislator, he was made first, for several terms, a Representative, and afterwards, for one term, a Senator, in the Legislature of Massachusetts. Carleton sat under the golden codfish as Representative during the years 1884 and 1885, and under the gilded dome as Senator, in 1890.
Faithful to his calling as a maker of law, Carleton was abundant in labors during his three terms, interested in all that meant weal or woe to the Commonwealth; yet we have only room to speak of the two or three particular reforms which he inaugurated.
Until the year 1884, Boston was behind some of the other cities of the Union, notably Philadelphia, in requiring the children in the public schools to provide their own text-books. This caused the burden of taxation for education, which is “the chief defence of nations,” to fall upon the men and women who reared families, instead of being levied with equal justice upon all citizens. Carleton prepared a bill for furnishing free text-books to the public schools of Boston, such as had been done in Philadelphia since 1819. Despite considerable opposition, some of it on the part of teachers who had severe notions, —bred chiefly by local Boston precedent, which had almost the force of religion, —Carleton had the happiness of seeing the bill passed.
The administration of municipal affairs in the “Hub of the Universe,” during the seventies and early eighties of this proud century, was one not at all creditable to any party nor to the city that prides itself on being distinctive and foremost in fame. The development of political life in New England had been after the model of the town. Municipal organization was not looked upon with much favor until well into this century. While the population of the Middle States was advancing in the line of progress in government of cities, the people in the Eastern States still clung to the model of the town meeting as the perfection of political wisdom and practice. This was done in the case of Boston, even when several tens of thousands of citizens, dwelling as one political union, made the old system antiquated.
Before the opening of the 19th century, all the municipally incorporated cities of the Northern United States, excepting Albany, lay along a line between the boundaries of Manhattan Island and Philadelphia. It was not until 1830 that “Boston town” became a city. For fifty years afterwards, the development of municipal enterprise was in the direction of superficial area, rather than according to foresight or genius. It is very certain that the fathers of that epoch did not have a very clear idea of, certainly did not plan very intelligently for, the vast growth of our half of the century. Added to this ultra conservatism, came the infusion, with attendant confusion, of Ireland’s sons and daughters by myriads, a flood of Scotch-Irish and other nationalities from Canada, and the flocking of large numbers of native Americans from the rural districts of New England. Nearly all of the newcomers usually arrived poor and with intent to become rich as quickly as honesty would allow, while not a few were without limit of time or scruple of conscience to hinder their plans. The Americans of “culture and character” were usually too busy in making money and getting clothes, houses, and horses, to attend to “politics,” while Patrick was only too glad and ready to develop his political abilities. So it came to pass that a ring of powerful political “bosses”—if we may degrade so good and honest a Dutch word—was formed. Saloons, gambling-houses and dance-halls multiplied, while an oligarchy, ever grasping for more power, nullified the laws and trampled the statutes under its feet. The sins of drunkenness and bribery among policemen, who were simply the creatures for the most part of corrupt politicians, were too frequent to attract much notice. That conscientious wearer of the blue and the star who enforced the laws was either discharged or sent on some unimportant suburban beat. The relations between city saloons and politics were as close as hand and glove, palm and coin. The gambler, the saloon-keeper, the masters of houses of ill-fame, were all in favor of the kind of municipal government which Boston had had for a generation or more.
An American back is like the camel’s, —able to bear mighty loads, but insurgent at the last feather. So, in Boston, the long-outraged moral sense of the people suddenly revolted. A Citizens’ Law and Order League was formed, and Charles Carleton Coffin, elected to the House of Representatives for the session of 1885, was asked to be their banner bearer in reform. With the idea of destroying partisanship and making the execution of the laws non-partisan, Carleton prepared a bill, which was intended to take the control of the police out of the hands of the Mayor and Common Council of the city, and to put it into the hands of the Governor of the Commonwealth.
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