State Power—What Is The People's Power If That Is Not?

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STATE POWER—WHAT IS THE PEOPLE'S POWER IF THAT IS NOT?

In Brooklyn, as we supposed, the police dispute is ended for good, by the decision of the Court of Appeals.¹ But it is evidently not so in New York city. There, a desperate set of ruffians with a fit leader at their head, are making still further attempts to defeat the law.

Having done all the harm he could to the good name of the city, and to the personal interests of the late members of the Police, Mayor Wood, with his faction, are now about trying their hands on the patience of the tax-papers.² They seem disposed, in sheer spite (if not stopped by serious public disapproval) to put the city to the enormous expense of many large and new station houses—what then will they do with the old houses.

The whole of the fault-finding with the new law is on the assumption that the local inhabitants in Brooklyn and New York are overridden by the power of the State Governor. This assumption ignores the fact that the Mayors of those cities are intended by the new law directly to represent the local character of the people in the present Police Board; which of course they do. Besides the Mayors there are five other Commissioners; one withdraws, and a new one is appointed by the Governor and Senate, every year.

The law relieves the Police (or should relieve it, if carried out) in all its appointments, moves, and removes, from a petty and partisan character; and it has come to be high time. Both in Brooklyn and New York, men have obtained patrolmen's commissions almost solely from little miserable services, blowing for political shysters, boosting them up, and the like. A vast number of the patrolmen in New York, Wood's myrmidons, have been glaringly incompetent—certainly many of them were unable to speak the English language so as to be comfortably understood by Americans. In Brooklyn it is at this time, very much the same. In the different wards the newly elected Aldermen, as is well known, have put out all who didn't electioneer for them; and then they give the berths to those who did!

The talk about "subjecting the people to the State power," is quite absurd. As we said the other day, all these prerogatives derive from them the State power, the only life they have. Mayor Wood, Mayor Powell,³ all the departments, the Common Councils, the charters or the grant to make charters—all such things date back to the State power. That is itself the people's power. In none of its forms is the popular voice so true, so direct, so democratic, and so fairly and fully expressed.

Let the new law be fairly tested, in good faith. We are glad to see that this is the spirit which actuates Mayor Powell; and it is no more than was to be expected from his known candor and common sense. That the law can be improved, time will doubtless show. But that is easily done.

If Wood and his faction have the insolence to aggravate their long list of crimes and outrages on the people, the judiciary, and the bedraggled credit of "the democracy," what further scenes will this curious drama unroll? Will it be, for the Mayor, a felon's cell? Or will a vigilance committee be inaugurated in New York? Or will the calm and stern course of the laws be justified in their triumph?

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