Lane noted the violence inherent in the city during the decades prior to the Civil War. Blacks were often the victims as the volunteer fire companies squared off and
the neighborhood gangs fought everyone who was not from the area. He viewed the war as a stabilizing influence on the cities, solidifying to some degree municipal pride and spirit as citizens of all persuasions marched off to fight. The
industrial strike became the most popular pasttime in the post-war years. Reformers who had condemned the police as being represenative of the lower classes did not hesitate to support their efforts at strike-breaking. The performance of
the department in the rail strike of 1877 exhibited beyond a doubt that the Philadelphia Police were in control of the city's streets. "From that time on the police department's annual reports took special pride in the fact that the force was
able to keep the peace, protecting anti-union workers and company property whenever a major strike broke out."1
Lane recognized the importance of the municipal control which had tamed Philadelphia and other big cities. Schools, churches and the workplace served as vehicles of socialization, modifying the
external and internal behavior of immigrants and natives alike. The police, also an agency of socialization, were a prime factor in the equation.
...the victory of the police was even more important in terms of the routines of city living. Down through 1870 every fire had been an occasion for a small riot, with officers afraid to make arrests on the scene. As late as
the spring of that year it was not uncommon for a raiding party to be repulsed by small-arms fire when attempting to crack down on a gambling house. By the middle of the 1870's, when the fire companies had been abolished and the Rangers
broken up, such incidents were rare. By the middle of the 1880's they had become almost unimaginable. Firecrackers, fights and the sound of pistol shots remained as much a part of the street scene as cobblestones and horse manure, but they
had a greater tendency to fade at the approach of heavy boots. The police in Philadelphia and elsewhere had in effect established a practical monopoly on the use of collective force.2
Philadelphia, being the lead manufacturing city in America, was a hotbed of economic activity. Workers averaged a 35 percent increase in wages in the thirty year period from 1870 to 1900. It was home to more building and loan
associations than any other city in America. Miles and miles of rowhouses, built for industrial workers, saved Philadelphia from the "high-rise density" that created the tenements of New York City.3
The new industrial order, along with the economic benefits it brought, "was also mainfest in a change in behavior. People drank less, committed fewer crimes, and generally lived more sober and rational lives than they had earlier in the century."4
In addition to the impact of industry and economics, the new public school systems in American cities served as a socializing influence on the behavior of Americans, perhaps even accounting for the lower violence levels. Lane felt that their instructional value went far beyond
the area of academics.
The most important instruction that these new schools gave was not in literacy. Americans had always learned somehow the rudiments of reading and writing, whether at home or as apprentices, singly or in small groups. What differed now was
that they learned in big, heavily disciplined classrooms, where they were taught to sit still, take turns, hold their water, mind the teacher and listen for the bell. All of this was perfect training for the new kinds of work into which most of them would graduate. And like
the work itself, the training was precisely the kind that would tend, over time, to raise the proportion of suicides among them and reduce the risks of homicide.5
"Philadelphia Police Platoon-1915"
While White Philadelphia was undergoing the social metamorphosis described by Lane, Black Philadelphia was left to its own devices. "And if the white world was one of increasing order and predictability, the black world was not. Legally,
socially and economically it was a world of varying degrees of discrimination, full of unpleasant surprises and dead ends, which had important consequences for social behavior."6 Philadelphia's blacks
had long feared for their very lives in the city.
The word "prejudice" scarely conveys the intensity of hatred that whites directed, often violently, against the Afro-American population of Philadelphia.
Some of this violence may be explained in terms of the nearly universal tendency of young men to join gangs in defense of their turf...Yet there were real differences between
the ways in which young white men fought each other and the ways in which they attacked across the color line...Since before the Civil War the business of "hunting the nigs" had often been aggressive rather than defensive, not so much a question of
protecting white neighborhoods as of invading and even destroying black ones...During antiblack riots...gang members beat women as well as men. And it was not uncommon
for small bands to attack aged, inoffensive black men found alone.7
Lane compared the lives of two 19th century black Philadelphians, Octavius V. Catto and Gilbert A. Ball, both being from totally different segments of black society.
Catto was a founder of Pennsylvania's Equal Rights League and a long time champion of black suffrage. He was well known and respected in the middle and upper levels of Phiadelphia society. He was killed by a mob of angry whites during a racial riot in 1871. Gilbert Ball, a speakeasy operator
who controlled gambling, liquor and prostitution in the city's black community, died a natural death in the 1890's, having had much more of an impact on local politics than Catto. Lane explained that Catto was a player on the national political scene of racial politics, the quest to improve overall conditions
for Black Americans. Ball's influence, localized but much more pragmatic, strove to attain a place for blacks within the everday life of Philadelphia's streets. It was within this context of urban politics that the blacks of Philadelphia interacted with those who policed their communities.8
In October, 1864 the Equal Rights League decided to take on the issue of Philadelphia's segregated streetcar lines. Their tactics were simple. Defy the laws which required segregation on the cars.
Women, sometimes pregnant, mingled with white crowds, climbed into streetcars, and had to be ejected. Clergymen in collars did the same. Black men sometimes gathered at stops and rushed to fill the cars
before anyone else could enter...Catto urged men "to vindicate their manhood, and no longer suffer defenseless women and children to be assaulted or insulted by ruffianly conductors and drivers."9
The protest brought on violence in some areas, angry crowds of whites, supported by police, evicting blacks from the cars. It was not until 1867 that the Pennsylvania Legislature outlawed streetcar segregation.
"Philadelphia Police-Broad Street-early 1900's"
Gilbert Ball traveled a different route to influence in Philadelphia. He operated a saloon at 720 Lombard Street, where he also ran a gambling and prostitution business. It was one block
away from the 19th District Police Station. Ball appreciated his close proximity to the police. Officers sometimes worked as bouncers in his establishment, and on one occasion the entire reserve force of the 19th district assisted
him in preventing New York gangs from tearing up his club.10
On August 5, 1881, Mayor Samuel King, a newly elected Democrat reformer, appointed the first four blacks to Philadelphia's department. Alexander Davis, Charles Draper, Lewis Carroll and Richard Caldwell
all had impeccable credentials, having college experience or Civil War service. The hiring was not without controversy, as several officers quit the force in protest. The officers were assinged to black areas, and Officer Draper was especially harassed.
He was assigned to the 8th and Walnut area, and he had a crowd of a thousand people of every color follow him around his assigned beat. King was defeated in the 1884 election, but by that time he had added 35 blacks to a force of over 1400 officers. 11
Lane revealed that blacks, though discriminated against in many areas, were not shortchanged by Philadelphia's criminal justice system of the 19th century. He described it as "incapable of the systematic suppression of any
particular group." He also felt that the police department did not dominate the process.
Nineteenth century policemen got little of the respect and none of the prestige that their successors have enjoyed over the past generation. The men worked alone; it was difficult to summon help; and any arrest might be an invitation to a fight and later
a lawsuit. Officers were routinely judged guilty of assault and sometimes of murder committed in the course of duty...courts were loath to admit, and juries to believe, the testimony of policemen...12
The department was smaller in proportion to population than the forces in Boston and New York. Only fifteen detectives worked with the force
as late as the 1890's. Though patrol officers made tens of thousands of arrests each year, most were for simple drunkenness. Patrolmen rarely acted on their own, most often responding
to requests for help in breaking up fights or addressing petty-theft issues. Of the 242 arrests made in January 1880, over forty percent had not been made by the police. Many arrests resulted
from a citizen obtaining a warrant from a magistrate which would be served by a constable.13
Lane also discovered that the criminal justice system in Philadelphia, and other Northern cities, was surprisingly color-blind.
If blacks had a higher ratio of conviction to arrests than whites, this might indicate a greater likelihood of guilt or, aternatively, bias on the part of judges and juries. If on the contrary
their ratio of convictions was lower and blacks experienced many more arrests than convictions, it might indicate bias by police or prosecutors, who stopped blacks for trivial reasons or on little
evidence. If after conviction black sentences were longer, treatment would have clearly been harsher than for whites, while if black sentences were shorter, perhaps blacks were being patronized, their
crimes against other blacks not being taken seriously. But the Philadelphia records show no consistent differences of any kind.14
Lane viewed criminal activity as being very important to the black community in Philadelphia. Being cut off from the advantages of the opportunities afforded by industrialization, crime
helped to shape much of the black community's culture and its relations with the outside world. Viewed as economic in nature, theft and vice could bring more resources into black areas, especially if the
victims of theft or the customers of vice establishments happened to be white. Within this framework, black society in Philadelphia did not undergo the socialization and behavioral modifications that
swept every major city in the Western World during this time frame. The nurturing of this criminal subculture, fueled by denied opportunity and decades of disriminatory practices, has guaranteed continual
and controversial contact between the police and black society in America.15
