SATAN’S INVISIBLE WORLD DISPLAYED
THE CITY HALL, NEW YORK.
SATAN’S 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 corruptgreed not only makes the laws but decides who shall construethem, many of our best citizens are beginning to despair of theRepublic.”—Ex-Governor Altgeld, Labour Day, 1897.
The “Review of Reviews” Annual, 1898.
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PREFACE.
For the past four years I have devoted the Annual of the Review of Reviewsto a romance based upon the leading social or political event of the year.This year I intermit the publication of the Series of Contemporary Historyin Fiction in order to publish a study of the most interesting andsignificant of all the political and municipal problems of our time. Tothose who may object to the substitution of a companion volume to myChicago 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-writercould conceive exceeds in startling and sensational horror the grimoutline of the facts which are set forth in this survey of that section of“Satan’s Invisible World” which was brought to light by the LexowCommittee.
The trite old saying that “Truth is stranger than Fiction” has seldom beenbetter exemplified than in the story of the way in which the Second Cityin the World has been governed, unless it be in the consequences of theresulting despair. For if the revelations made before the Lexow Committeeare almost incredible, the deliberate decision of the ablest and mostpublic-spirited Americans that there is no way of escape save by thehamstrung Cæsarism of the Charter of Greater New York is still moremarvellous as a confession of the shipwreck of faith. Sin, when it hasconceived, bringeth forth Death, and the corruption that rotted theadministration previous to 1894 has only brought forth its natural fruitin the adoption of a bastard Bonapartism of the Second Empire as the bestgovernment for the First City in the American Republic.
The election of the first Mayor for Greater New York, which is progressingwhile these pages are being written, gives a special actuality andinterest to this study. But its permanent value does not depend upon theissue of the plébiscite which has decided who will sway the destinies ofthe Second City of the World at the eve and on the dawn of the TwentiethCentury.