You might think that the New York Bureau of Municipal Research that from 1906 struggled to bring a reform-minded rationality to inept and crooked city halls and state houses around the country would be universally acclaimed. [See our first post, Inventing a Science of Government.]

But you would be wrong.

There were lots of entrenched interests at the dawn of the 20th century that felt threatened by Progressive-era crusaders, and with good reason. The BMR espoused the radical belief that the people were entitled to honest and efficient government, free of the political bosses who ruled with cronyism and no semblance of a budget. This didn’t go over well with same, who dubbed the interlopers “The Bureau of Municipal Besmirch.” Good government advocates (goo-goos, as they became known) invited the BMR to send its experts to their cities and states for surveys and audits, but the teams often received a hostile reception from the reigning powers when they arrived.

That happened in the Old Dominion of Virginia, where BMR experts descended on Richmond in 1926.

The story is told in a witty ditty penned by a colorful newspaperman of the time  — Carter Warner Wormeley a/k/a “The Bishop,” as he proudly signed his name under his verses in this copy from the documents of records of the Institute of Public Administration, successor of the BMR.

Wormeley, who traced his lineage to a colonial member of Virginia’s pre-Revolutionary House of Burgesses, had been named Poet Laureate of Virginia while also serving as Director of Advertising and Publicity for Virginia. He died in 1938 at 64.

His poem, which singles out IPA director Luther H. Gulick and other BMR functionaries for particular scorn, begins:

“Municipal Bureau of Research,

Why do you dig so deep?

Why do you prod

In our books, by God!

Keeping us from our sleep?”

The verses consign the reformers to “…hell, where most ledgers are balanced”…and it concludes:

“Long, long in the Pit may you languish

‘Mid brimstone, which trickles in showers,

There, with other poor crooks,

May you cast up Hell’s books —

If ever you finish with ours.”