Seth
Low was born in Brooklyn, New York, on
18th January, 1850. After graduating from Columbia College in 1870,
Low joined his father's silk importing business.
A successful businessman, Low became involved in local politics and
was twice elected to the post of mayor of Brooklyn (1881-85) where
he developed a reputation for honesty and efficiency. He also served
as president of Columbia College (1890-1901), where he paid for new
buildings on the campus and supported higher education for women.
Low, with the support of Charles Parkhurst,
the president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, led the
campaign against corruption in New York City.
After a long struggle, Low became the new mayor of the city in 1901
when he defeated Richard Croker and the
Tammany political machine.
As well as serving as mayor of New York City
(1901-03), Low was chairman of the Tuskegee
Institute (1907-1916) in Alabama. Seth Low died on 17th September,
1916.
(1) Seth Low, American City
Government (1891)
It is estimated that the population
of New York City contains 80 per cent of people who either are foreign-born
or who are the children of foreign-born parents. Consequently, in
a city like New York, the problem of learning the art of government
is handed over to a population that begins in point of experience
very low down. It many of the cities of the United States, indeed
in almost all of them, the population not only is thus largely untrained
in the art of self-government but it is not even homogeneous; so that
an American city is confronted, not only with the necessity of instructing
large and rapidly growing bodies of people in the art of government
but it is compelled at the same time to assimilate strangely different
component parts into an American community. It will be apparent to
the student that either of these functions by itself would be difficult
enough. When both are found side by side, the problem is increasingly
difficult as to each. Together they represent a problem such as confronts
no city in Europe.
(2)
Lincoln Steffens, Autobiography
(1931)
The mayor of New York,
Seth Low, was a business man and the son of a business man, rich,
educated, honest, and trained to his political job. Seth Low and his
party in power and his backers were not radicals in any sense. Mr.
Low himself was hardly a liberal; he was what would be called in England
a conservative. He accepted the system; he took over the government
as generations of corrupters had made it, and he was trying, without
any fundamental change, and made it an efficient, orderly business-like
organization for the protection and the furtherance of all business,
private and public.
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