The City Reform Club A STUDY IN LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY REFORM By ROBERT MUCCIGROSSO* X here is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States" wrote Lord Bryce after his visit to this country in the 1880s. He added: "The deficiencies of the National government tell but little for evil On the welfare of the people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption, and mismanagement which mark the administrations of most of the great cities!' Though the perceptive Englishman was commenting on American cities in general, he singled out New York City because it "displayed on the grandest scale phenomena common to American cities, and because the plunder and misgovernment from which she has suffered have become notorious over the world!'1 Indeed, many of the problems New York faced were endemic to all large American cities at this time. The tremendous national increase in manufacturing and industry since the Civil War had accelerated the shift in population from rural to urban areas. In 1870 the census revealed that New York City, which encompassed Manhattan and approximately one-half of the Bronx until the late 1890s, had a total population of roughly 950,000. By 1880 the city's number of inhabitants had soared to i,20o,ooo.2 In the 1880s the advent of immigrants largely from southern and eastern Europe had appreciably swelled the metropolis' numbers by 300,000. With this * The author is Assistant Professor of History at Brooklyn College. 1 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (3rd ed.; 2 vols.; New York: 1895) I, 637; II, 377. 2 A Compendium of the Ninth Census (June 1,1870) (Washington, D.C.: 1872), 271; Compendium of the Tenth Census (June 1,1880) (2 vols.; Washington: 1883), 1,396-97. [235]