Photography Courtesy of the St. Louis Public Library
Whatever you think of the idea of merging St. Louis city and county, you’ve got to love the fire in the mayor’s words on the subject.
“It gives to the citizens of St. Louis an opportunity to extend their activities to bounds that were never reached before,” the mayor declared to an audience in Forest Park, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “How in the world any person living in St. Louis County, after thinking the matter over, leaving aside all prejudice and analyzing the different angles, can oppose [the merger] is something I cannot understand.”
The mayor said he was confident that most city residents would vote to bring the city and county together, and he boldly directed his passion to skeptics on the other side of the border. “What I am going to talk about are the benefits to the county residents.”
But before getting to specifics, the mayor’s mood quickly turned dark, as he addressed the forces that wanted to keep the city and county separate.
“I do not know of a campaign, political or otherwise, where there has been more malicious misinterpretation of facts than in this,” he said.
And then, one by one, he shot down the arguments against a city-county merger—the same arguments that you’ve heard many times before.
No, the county need not fear that the city was at the limit of its bonded indebtedness. Yes, there would be a dramatic reduction of costs: A merger would mean a wide range of governmental activities could be absorbed “without the expenditure of a cent, with the possible exception of police and fire departments.”
No, education would not suffer. And yes, reuniting city and county would make a serious dent in our local crime problem. And on this point, the mayor was blunt be-
yond belief.
“They talk of police protection. Let me tell you something. If [the merger] goes over, Tony Foley won’t be running his crap joint. I have found that no dive-keeper or gambler ever sets up a place without a written or oral agreement that his activities would be protected,” he said. “I maintain that if this merger goes through, we won’t have a situation where a murderer and gangster like Dinty Colbeck could exercise approximately as much power as the sheriffs and constables.”
Tony Foley’s crap joint? The gangster Dinty Colbeck running the town? Has the mayor lost his mind?
No, all of the above quotes regarding the need for a city-county merger came from Mayor Victor J. Miller, and the Post story reporting them was dated October 22, 1926. That would be some 88 years ago. It was also four days before a merger vote that passed by a 7-to-1 margin among city voters while losing by more than 2-to-1 in the county. Even that far back, the city and county were divided by more than a line. It was more like a psychological wall.
Talk about déjà vu all over again.
Miller served as mayor of St. Louis from 1925 to 1933. Twice during his tenure, in 1926 and 1930, he and city business leaders fought unsuccessfully for public referenda in which the city would have annexed the county. At the time, St. Louis was just half a century removed from what became known as the Great Divorce of 1876, wherein the city froze its borders to keep the farmers and small-town folk out, among other reasons, after a public vote apparently riddled with fraud.
That infamous decision has been the gift that keeps on giving to St. Louis. Unable to expand or annex more prosperous neighboring areas—in stark contrast to almost all other large American cities—the urban core known as the city of St. Louis has withered when measured against its expanding counterparts in almost any category. Miller’s St. Louis, population 821,960, was the nation’s seventh most populous city in 1930. Eight decades later, it ranked 58th at 319,294 and was still declining.
In 1926, the city of St. Louis spanned 61 square miles. In 2014, the city of St. Louis spans 61 square miles. Just about everything else about the world has changed since then—but not the borders of St. Louis.
It’s not about the numbers, though. It’s the words from 1926 that should chill the civic spine today. The jealousies and distrust of yesteryear might as well be from yesterday.
Miller wasn’t one of St. Louis’ famous mayors. He isn’t remembered as a towering statesman or a great visionary. They didn’t name a major boulevard for him like they did for Mayor Raymond Tucker, who would help lead successful opposition to merger attempts in 1959 and 1962 (the only other times it was on the ballot).
But give Miller this much: He gave a speech in 1926 that literally would apply, with only minor edits, to Mayor Francis Slay’s and others’ efforts to revive the city-county merger today. It’s astounding. And it’s nuts.
Only in St. Louis could people use the same arguments in 2014 that their forebears used in 1926 to settle a score from 1876. Your great-great-great-grandfather was wrong, and you know it, pal!
In the past several decades, the city and county have learned to collaborate—often grudgingly—with regard to many specific areas of governance. There’s cooperation on some aspects of transportation, tourism, cultural institutions, sewers, and the like. Seemingly random acts of regionalism have broken out over the years.
But a great many residents of the city and county—and in the latter case, its 90-plus municipalities—continue to place provincial loyalties above any broader sense of community when it comes to the governance of St. Louis. And by “St. Louis,” I mean the region as a whole, not just the city, nor the city and county. St. Louis is a metropolitan area, whether it acts like it or not.
Miller seemed genuinely perplexed that people could reject the notion of a unified city and county “after thinking the matter over, leaving aside all prejudice and analyzing the different angles.” But those are three things that people in the St. Louis region just aren’t conditioned to do on regional issues. Maybe it’s genetics by now.
Provincialism stifles progress across the full spectrum of civic life. From education to transportation to economic development to politics to environmental and growth policies to asking where you went to high school, the balkanization of St. Louis is among its most defining characteristics, just as it was in Miller’s era.
And of course, let’s not forget the eternal race issue, the prism through which so many civic issues are viewed. It, too, was part of the story in 1926. The following passage from the Post article fits the nothing-has-changed-much-in-88-years narrative as well.
“The Rev. Montgomery Williams, a Negro, pastor of Second Baptist Church, Kinloch Park, said the Negroes of the county were enthusiastic for the merger. The county has been promising high schools for Negroes and sewers for 50 years, but has not provided them, he said, so his people had about given up hope.”
Oh well.
I believe that I’ve become a cynic on this subject. I’ve favored unification of the city and county for as long as I can remember, but it’s hard to get excited watching the civic elite try to tiptoe their way to a finish line that offers nothing more than the city entering the county as a counterpart to municipalities such as University City, Clayton, and the like. I especially love it when advocates of this innocent idea hasten to explain that they’re only trying to start a conversation and that of course they aren’t actually advocating anything before all voices are heard. Still, give Slay and company credit for trying.
The city joining the county would be a fine thing, although not a regional game changer by any stretch of the imagination. It might eliminate a fair amount of government waste—a prospect that strangely hasn’t managed to energize the Tea Party in this case—but the best benefit ultimately would be to put a dent in the psychological wall between city and county. At least the two entities would seem less like foreign countries.
In a more perfect world, the city and county would reboot as one big city of St. Louis, with 1.3 million people (a top-10 city in the nation, with great education numbers and an average crime rate), governed by boroughs similar to that of New York City. That idea was proposed in 1962 as a state constitutional amendment and lost in every county in the state, including the city of St. Louis. I’m certain that would happen again if such a measure were introduced today.
So time marches on, or in the case of St. Louis governance, doesn’t. Miller has long since passed away, but his words remain eerily relevant—except for the references to Foley and Colbeck, which are far more interesting than the merger issue itself.
In case you’re wondering, Foley was a gangster who operated a casino in Wellston and helped lead opposition to the merger in 1926. He would continue to enjoy a long career as a prominent gambling boss for decades. Colbeck, considered St. Louis’ most powerful gangster in the early ’20s, was safely in prison when Miller called him out. His claim to fame was that he would become cellmates and pals with Al Capone. He was paroled in 1940, only to be machine-gunned to death in his car three years later in the city.
For his part, Miller didn’t get to realize his dream of a merger or take down either Foley or Colbeck as a result. But even if the city and county stay separate forever, Miller should be remembered for the vision that he showed in the Roaring ’20s and for writing a great script that lives on nearly a century later.
Too bad St. Louis still isn’t ready to follow it.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Commentary by Ray Hartmann
