beginning. In thinking over
what I should talk about at the first dinner, I decided to get
some fun out of the municipality of Brooklyn by a picturesque
description of its municipal conditions. It was charged in the
newspapers that there had been serious graft in some public
improvements which had been condoned by the authorities and excused
by an act of the legislature. It had also been charged that the
Common Council had been giving away valuable franchises to their
favorites. Of course, this presented a fine field of contrast
between ancient and modern times. In ancient times grateful
citizens erected statues to eminent men who had deserved well of
their country in military or civic life, but Brooklyn had improved
upon the ancient model through the grant of public utilities.
The speech caused a riot after the dinner as to its propriety,
many taking the ground that it was a criticism, and, therefore,
inappropriate to the occasion. However, the affair illustrated
a common experience of mine that unexpected results will sometimes
flow from a bit of humor, if the humor has concealed in it a stick
of dynamite.

The Brooklyn pulpit, which is the most progressive in the world,
took the matter up and aroused public discussion on municipal
affairs. The result was the formation of a committee of one hundred
citizens to investigate municipal conditions. They found that
while the mayor and some other officials were high-toned and
admirable officers, yet the general administration of the city
government had in the course of years become so bad that there
should be a general reformation. The reform movement was successful;
it spread over to New York and there again succeeded, and the
movement for municipal reform became general in the country.

The next anniversary dinner attracted an audience larger than
the capacity of the club, and every one of the thirty has been
an eminent success. For many years the affair has received wide
publicity in the United States, and has sometimes been reported
in foreign newspapers. I remember being in London with the late
Lieutenant-Governor Woodruff, when we saw these head-lines at
a news-stand on the Strand: "Speech by Chauncey Depew at his
birthday dinner at the Montauk Club, Brooklyn." During this nearly
third of a century the membership of the club has changed, sons
having succeeded fathers and new members have been admitted, but
the celebration seems to grow in interest.