Ansley Wilcox

Another Centurion in the group of successful business men to whom personal service in behalf of public welfare meant more than professional achievement was Ansley Wilcox. One of the foremost practicing lawyers of Buffalo, the greater part of his time and energy was devoted, during nearly half a century, to organized work for the good of the community. He was a leading spirit in the movement for Civil Service Reform, in days when politicians described such aspirations as an iridescent dream. How far from iridescent his own program was, may be judged from the fact that he personally carried contested leading cases to the highest state court, and won the verdict which settled forever the constitutionality of the New York reform law. Believing that, even so, the question of bad municipal government was still at issue, he fought insistently for separation of city elections from the date of the state or federal vote, and in the end imbedded that principle also in a new state constitution.

In the relief of distress from unemployment in hard times, Wilcox was far ahead of his generation. “Bread-line” and “soup-kitchen” embodied the popular idea of meeting such emergencies in the Nineties. Even political platforms, in their amiable way, described the “bread-line” as the objective of the rival party; their own party being sure to provide a “full dinner pail.” That view of things belonged to a simple era when a private motor-car and a “margin account” with the nearest banker had not yet been pictured as the workingman’s normal prerogative. But Wilcox rejected even the notions of his day. As far back as the grinding distress of 1894 he quietly introduced in his own community’s expedients the personal investigation, the immediate relief without degrading publicity and the strong effort to contrive emergency employment, which are today the recognized recourse of the whole country—from the White House to the local charity organizations.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1931 Century Association Yearbook