[248] ROBERT MUCCIGROSSO joined with the People's Municipal League, several of its members— Bernheim, Delafield, Hayes, Pryor, and Welling—actively assisted the League's campaign. Welling was chairman of the League's committee on meetings and speakers. Not only was he personally responsible for securing speakers on behalf of the League's ticket, but he also contributed to the election campaign with his own invectives against Tammany misgovernment. The young lawyer proved so successful as chairman of this committee that he headed committees on meetings and speakers for every New York City reform campaign through the La Guardia years. In September the People's Municipal League distributed, by the thousands, a four-page pamphlet entitled To the Voters of the City of New York which set forth the goals of the organization. Essentially, the pamphlet called for municipal elections to be divorced from state and national politics and for the electorate to choose officials on the basis of "ability and personal integrity!' Neither principle was original. The City Reform Club as well as a host of individual reformers and reform groups throughout the nation had previously demanded these same standards. However, the League realized that civic improvement involved much more than replacing corrupt officials with honest ones. In its pamphlet the League demanded a concerted attack on the abuses of certain private franchises, which it believed should be converted to public ownership, improvements in the city's public schools and Board of Health, and closing all houses of prostitution. Perhaps most important, the League strongly protested against the city's slums, which had been strikingly brought to the public's attention by Jacob Riis, Lillian Wald, and others.29 The People's Municipal League thus became the first major political reform organization in New York City to inject this issue into an election campaign. Urban reform had begun to broaden. Despite a spirited campaign and the active support of numerous prominent New Yorkers as well as that of the Republican party, the People's Municipal League was decisively defeated in the 1890 elections. Hugh J. Grant, the Tammany candidate, received 115,843 votes; 29 To the Voters of the City of New York (National Municipal League, New York: 1890), 1-4.