The misgovernment of the cities is the prophecy of misgovernment of the nation; just as the paralysis of the great nerve-centres means the palsy of the whole body. There is graver danger to the republic in the failure of good government in our cities than arises from the moral corruption which accompanies that failure. The misgovernment of our cities means the break-down of one of the two fundamental principles upon which our political fabric rests. It is the failure of local self-government in a most vital part. It is as great a peril to the republic as the revolt against the Union. For the republic is organised upon two great political ideas, both essential to its existence. The first is the principle of federation, which is embodied in the Union; the second is the principle of local self-government, which places the business of the states and the towns in the hands of the people who live in them. Both of these are vital principles. The republic has survived the attempt to subvert one of them. It has just entered on its real struggle with a serious attack upon the other.
The misgovernment of the cities is the prophecy of misgovernment of the nation; just as the paralysis of the great nerve-centres means the palsy of the whole body. There is graver danger to the republic in the failure of good government in our cities than arises from the moral corruption which accompanies that failure. The misgovernment of our cities means the break-down of one of the two fundamental principles upon which our political fabric rests. It is the failure of local self-government in a most vital part. It is as great a peril to the republic as the revolt against the Union. For the republic is organised upon two great political ideas, both essential to its existence. The first is the principle of federation, which is embodied in the Union; the second is the principle of local self-government, which places the business of the states and the towns in the hands of the people who live in them. Both of these are vital principles. The republic has survived the attempt to subvert one of them. It has just entered on its real struggle with a serious attack upon the other.
The fate, therefore, of the American Republic may be bound up with the fortunes of Greater New York.
ST. TAMMANY AND THE DEVIL.
Hitherto, the city government of New York has not been a credit to the Republic; otherwise I should not be publishing a survey of the way in which New York has been governed as “Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.” The title, of course, is an adaptation, not an invention. The original holder of the copyright was one Hopkins, of the seventeenth century, who, having had much experience in the discovery of witches, deemed himself an expert qualified to describe the inner history and secret mystery of the infernal regions under that picturesque title. I have adopted it as being on the whole the most appropriate description of the state of abysmal abomination into which the government of New York had sunk before the great revolt of 1894 broke the power of Tammany—for a season—and placed in office a Reform Government charged to cleanse the Augean stable. The old witchfinder had no story to tell so horrible or so incredible as that which I have drawn up from the sworn evidence of witnesses exposed to public cross-examination before a State Commission in the City of New York. In the reports of the infernal Sabbats, for attending which thousands of old women were burnt or hanged in the seventeenth century, there always figures in the background, as the central figure in the horrid drama, a form but half-revealed, concerning whose identity even the witchfinders speak with awe. The weird women, with their incantations and their broomsticks, their magic spells and their diabolical trysts, are but the slaves of the Demon, who, whether as their lover or their torturer, is ever their master, whose name they whisper with fear, and whose commands they obey with instant alacrity. For the Master of Ceremonies in the Infernal revels, the Lord of the Witches’ Sabbat, is none other than Satan himself, the incarnate principle of Evil, the Boss of Hell!
In the modern world, sceptical and superstitious, these tales of witches and warlocks seem childish nonsense, unworthy of the attention of grown-up men. But although thedramatis personæhave changed, and themise-en-scène, the same phenomena reappear eternally. Here in the history of New York we have the whole infernal phantasmagoria once again, with heelers for witches, policemen as wizards, and secret sessions in Tammany Hall as the Witches’Sabbat of the new era. And behind them all, always present but dimly seen—the omnipresent central force, whose name is muttered with awe, and whose mandate is obeyed with speed—is the same sombre figure whom his devotees regard with passionate worship, and whom his enemies dread even as they curse his name. And this modern Sathanas—this man who to every good Republican is the most authentic incarnation of the principle of Evil, the veritable archfiend of the political world—is the Boss of Tammany Hall.
Among the many legends which have clustered round the beginning of the great association which has played so conspicuous a part in the history of New York, there is one which appeals specially to the sense of humour. Tammany, according to tradition, was the name of a Delaware Indian who in ancient days belonged to a Redskin confederacy that inhabited the regions now known as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. His name has been variously spelled as Temane, Tamanend, Taminent, Tameny, and Tammany.
Curiously enough, by a kind of metamorphosis by no means without precedent among more historical saints, his name has been attached to a locality which he probably never visited, and with the inhabitants of which he and his people lived in hereditary feud. This was not, however, due to any of his conflicts with the Mohicans, who in those days pitched their wigwams on the island of Manhattan. He owes it to a battle which he fought with no less a personage than the great enemy of mankind. In the days when St. Tammany, passed his legendary existence, there were no white men on the American Continent; but although the Pale-Face was absent, the Black man was in full force, and one fine day St. Tammany was exposed to the fell onslaught of the foul fiend. At first, as is his wont, the bad spirit, with honeyed words, sought to be admitted to a share in the government of Tammany’s realm.
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” rendered in the choicest Delaware dialect, was the Saint’s response to the offers of the tempter. But as a more illustrious case attests, the Devil is not a person who will accept a first refusal. Changing his tactics, he brought upon St. Tammany and his Delawares many grievous afflictions of body and of estate, and while the good Chief’s limbs were sore and his heart was heavy, the cunning deceiver attempted to slink into the country unawares.
St. Tammany, however, although sick and sore, slept with one eye open, and the Devil was promptly ordered to “get out of that,” with an emphasis which left him no option but to obey. Again and again the Devil, renewing his attacks, tried his best to circumvent St. Tammany, but finding that all was in vain, he at last flung patience and strategy to the winds, and boldly attacked the great Sagamore in order to overwhelm him by his infernal might.
UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, WITH THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT.
Then, says the legend, ensued the most tremendous battle that has ever been waged between man and his great enemy. For many months the great fight went on, and as Tammany and the Devil wrestled to and fro in mortal combat, whole forests were broken down, and the ground was so effectually trampled under foot that it has remained prairie land to this day. At last, after the forests had been destroyed, and the country trodden flat, St. Tammany, catching his adversary unawares, tripped him up, and hurled him to the ground. It was in the nick of time, for Tammany was so exhausted with the prolonged struggle that when he drew his scalping-knife to make a final end of the Evil One, the fiend, to the eternal regret of all the children of men, succeeded in slipping from Tammany’s clutches. He escaped across the river to New York, where—so runs the legend, as it is recorded by a writer inHarper—“he was hospitably received by the natives, and has ever since continued to make his home.”
Such, in the quaint but suggestive narrative of the ancient myth, is the way in which the Devil first came to New York, where, as if in revenge for his defeat, he seems to have christened the political organisation which has been his headquarters after the name of Tammany.
The Tammany organisation did not in the beginning take its rise in New York. It first sprang into being in the ranks of the revolutionary army of Pennsylvania. Tammany, or Tamanend, as he was then called, was adopted by the Pennsylvanian troops under General Washington as their patron saint. There were two reasons for this. In the first place, it was Hobson’s choice, for St. Tammany was the only native American who had ever been canonised; and, in the second place, nothing seemed more appropriate to the revolutionary heroes than to adopt as their patron saint a brave who had “whipped the Devil.” St. Tammany, therefore, came to be adopted by the American army as a kind of counterpart to our own St. George. St. Tammany and the Devil seemed to be a good counterpoise to the legendary tale of St. George and the Dragon. The 12th of May was Tammany’s Saint’s Day, and was celebrated with wigwams, liberty poles, tomahawks, and all the regular paraphernalia of the Redskin. A soldier attired in Indian costume represented the great Sachem, “and, after delivering a talk full of eloquence for law and liberty and courage in battle to the members of the order, they danced with feathers in their caps and buck tails dangling on behind.” The practice spread from the Pennsylvania troops to the rest of the army, and so popular did Tammany become that May 12th bid fair to be much more a popular national festival than July 4th.
It was not until this century had begun that the Tammany Society was domiciled in New York. It was introduced there by an upholsterer of Irish descent, named William Mooney. He didnot take much stock in St. Tammany, but preferred to call his Society the Columbian Order, in honour of Columbus. The transactions of the Society dated from the discovery of America. Besides the European head, who was to be known as the Great Father, there were to be twelve Sachems, or counsellors—“Old Men” being the Indian signification of the word; a Sagamore, or master of ceremonies; a Wiskinkie, or doorkeeper of the sacred wigwam; and a Secretary.
The Society from its outset appears to have been political, but in its early days it combined charity with politics. In the second year of its existence it undertook the establishment of a Museum of Natural History, and got together the exhibits which formed the nucleus of Barnum’s famous museum. It was a social and convivial club, which met first in a hotel of Broadway, then in a public-house in Broad Street, and finally in the Pig-pen, a long room attached to a saloon kept by one Martling. In 1811 it erected a hall of its own. Its present address is “Tammany Hall, Fourteenth Street.”
There is no necessity to do more than glance at the curious beginnings of a society which is perhaps the most distinctively American of all the associations that have ever been founded in the New World. A writer of “The Story of Tammany,” which appeared inHarper’s Magazinemany years ago, from which most of these facts are taken, says:—
The Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, is doubtless the oldest purely self-constituted political association in the world, and has certainly been by far the most influential. Beginning with the government, for it was organised within a fortnight of the inauguration of the first President, and at a spot within the sound of his voice as he spoke his first official words to his countrymen, it has not only continued down to the present time—through nearly three generations of men—but has controlled the choice of at least one President, fixed the character of several national as well as State administrations, given pseudonyms to half a dozen well-known organisations, and, in fact, has shaped the destiny of the country in several turning-points of its history.Few suspect, much less comprehend, the extent of the influence this purely local association has exerted. To its agency more than any other is due the fact that for the last three-quarters of a century New York city has been the most potent political centre in the world, not even Paris excepted. Greater than a party, inasmuch as it has been the master of parties, it has seen political organisation after organisation, in whose conflicts it has fearlessly participated, arise, flourish, and go down, and yet has stood ready, with powers unimpaired, to engage in the struggles of the next crop of contestants. In this experience it has been solitary and peculiar. Imitators it has had in abundance, but not one of them has succeeded in catching that secret of political management which has endowed Tammany with its wonderful permanency.What is that secret? It is unquestionably to be traced, in part, to the sagacity which Tammany’s leaders have at all times shown in forecasting the changes of political issues, or availing themselves of the opportunities afforded by current events as they have arisen. Tammany has not only furnished the most capable politicians the country has possessed, but has managed to ally itself with the shrewdest ones to be found outside of its own organisation. It has always shown a willingness to trade in the gifts at its command, and rarely indeed has it got the worst of a bargain.
The Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, is doubtless the oldest purely self-constituted political association in the world, and has certainly been by far the most influential. Beginning with the government, for it was organised within a fortnight of the inauguration of the first President, and at a spot within the sound of his voice as he spoke his first official words to his countrymen, it has not only continued down to the present time—through nearly three generations of men—but has controlled the choice of at least one President, fixed the character of several national as well as State administrations, given pseudonyms to half a dozen well-known organisations, and, in fact, has shaped the destiny of the country in several turning-points of its history.
Few suspect, much less comprehend, the extent of the influence this purely local association has exerted. To its agency more than any other is due the fact that for the last three-quarters of a century New York city has been the most potent political centre in the world, not even Paris excepted. Greater than a party, inasmuch as it has been the master of parties, it has seen political organisation after organisation, in whose conflicts it has fearlessly participated, arise, flourish, and go down, and yet has stood ready, with powers unimpaired, to engage in the struggles of the next crop of contestants. In this experience it has been solitary and peculiar. Imitators it has had in abundance, but not one of them has succeeded in catching that secret of political management which has endowed Tammany with its wonderful permanency.
What is that secret? It is unquestionably to be traced, in part, to the sagacity which Tammany’s leaders have at all times shown in forecasting the changes of political issues, or availing themselves of the opportunities afforded by current events as they have arisen. Tammany has not only furnished the most capable politicians the country has possessed, but has managed to ally itself with the shrewdest ones to be found outside of its own organisation. It has always shown a willingness to trade in the gifts at its command, and rarely indeed has it got the worst of a bargain.
FIRST TAMMANY HALL, ERECTED 1811.
The writer inHarper, however, while attempting to explain the secret of Tammany, only raises a still more difficult question. Howis it that Tammany should have been able to discern the signs of the times better than its rivals? How is it that Tammany has been able to furnish the most capable politicians the country has ever possessed, and how is it that it has displayed so much wisdom? There is one explanation, which, no doubt, commends itself to many of those who have spent their life in fighting Tammany Hall. Tammany has little regard for the innocence of the dove, but it has always displayed the wisdom of the serpent. Considering the place where the Author of all Evil found refuge after his discomfiture by St. Tammany, a Republican may be pardoned for suggesting that the wisdom of Tammany is due to the wisdom of the Old Serpent. Certainly, many innocent persons have been accused of dalliance with the foul fiend on much worseprimâ facieevidence than that which is furnished by the universal admission that Tammany, out of the most uncompromising materials, has succeeded in achieving exploits which antecedently would have been absolutely impossible. For Tammany, although preserving and maintaining from first to last a discipline which is the despair of all the other political machines in the country, has never been without fierce internecine fights. It has cast out leader after leader, and the ferocity of the feuds within Tammany has exceeded that of any of the combats which have been waged against the common enemy. Nevertheless,notwithstanding all schisms, all reverses, all exposures, Tammany remains to this day the strongest, the best disciplined, and the most feared political organisation in the world.
TAMMANY HALL, OPENED 1860.
Mr. Croker, in the series of interviews which I reported in the October number of theReview of Reviews, argued with much force and plausibility that it was contrary to the law of human nature that an organisation could live and last so long if it were composed of Thugs and desperados, and that witness no doubt is true. Even so stout and stalwart an opponent of Tammany as Dr. Albert Shaw has frequently felt himself constrained to admit that the insane fashion in which New York has been governed rendered even the rule of Tammany preferable to the constitutional and legal chaos which was the only substitute. Dr. Shaw, speaking of the system under which New York has hitherto been governed, said:—
To know its ins and outs is not so much like knowing the parts and the workings of a finely adjusted machine as it is like knowing the obscure topography of the great Dismal Swamp considered as a place of refuge for criminals.
To know its ins and outs is not so much like knowing the parts and the workings of a finely adjusted machine as it is like knowing the obscure topography of the great Dismal Swamp considered as a place of refuge for criminals.
Again he wrote:—
In New York, the absurdly disjointed and hopelessly complex array of separate boards, functions, and administrative powers, first makes it impossible for the community to focalise responsibility anywhere in the formal mechanism of municipal government, and then makes it possible for an irresponsible self-centred politicaland mercenary society like Tammany to gain for itself the real control, and thus to assume a domination that ought to be centred in some body or functionary directly accountable to the people. Government by a secret society like Tammany is better than the chaos of a disjointed government for which there can be no possible location of central responsibility.
In New York, the absurdly disjointed and hopelessly complex array of separate boards, functions, and administrative powers, first makes it impossible for the community to focalise responsibility anywhere in the formal mechanism of municipal government, and then makes it possible for an irresponsible self-centred politicaland mercenary society like Tammany to gain for itself the real control, and thus to assume a domination that ought to be centred in some body or functionary directly accountable to the people. Government by a secret society like Tammany is better than the chaos of a disjointed government for which there can be no possible location of central responsibility.
It is not for me to dogmatise where experts, native to New York, hopelessly disagree. But viewed from the outside the secret of Tammany’s success seems to lie chiefly in the fact that Tammany has from the first been really a democratic organisation. No one was too poor, too wicked, or too ignorant to be treated by Tammany as a man and a brother if he would stand in with the machine and join the brotherhood.
This secret of Tammany—the open secret—was explained to me in Chicago by a saloon-keeper of more than dubious morals who had been a Tammany captain in New York. I saw him the night after Dr. Parkhurst had scored his first great success over the politicians of New York. The ex-Tammany Captain shook his head when I asked him what he thought of Dr. Parkhurst’s campaign. He had no use for Dr. Parkhurst. For a time, he thought, he might advertise himself, which was no doubt his object, but after that everything would go on as before. The one permanent institution in New York was Tammany.
I asked him to explain his secret. “Suppose,” said I, “that I am a newly arrived citizen in your precinct, and come to you and wish to join Tammany, what would be required of me?”
“Sir,” said he, “before anything would be required of you we would find out all about you. I would size you up myself, and then after I had formed my own judgment I would send two or three trusty men to find out all about you. Find out, for instance, whether you really meant to work and serve Tammany, or whether you were only getting in to find out all about it. If the inquiries were satisfactory then you would be admitted to the ranks of Tammany, and you would stand in with the rest.”
“What should I have to do?”
“Your first duty,” said he, “would be to vote the Tammany ticket whenever an election was on, and then to hustle around and make every other person whom you could get hold of vote the same ticket.”
“And what would I get for my trouble?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said he, “unless you needed it. I was twenty years captain and I never got anything for myself, but if you needed anything you would get whatever was going. It might be a job that would give you employment under the city, it might be a pull that you might have with the alderman in case you got into trouble, whatever it was you would be entitled to your share. If you get into trouble, Tammany will help you out. If you are out of a job Tammany will see that you have the first chance of whatever isgoing. It is a great power, is Tammany. Whether it is with the police, or in the court, or in the City Hall, you will find Tammany men everywhere, and they all stick together. There is nothing sticks so tight as Tammany.”
Therein, no doubt, this worthy ex-captain revealed the great secret, of Tammany’s success. Tammany is a brotherhood. Tammany men stick together, and help each other.
The record of Tammany, however, hardly bears out the claim made for it by Mr. Croker as to the honesty and purity of its administration. From its very early days Tammany has had a bad record for dishonesty and utter lack of scruple. As early as 1837, two Tammany leaders, who had held the federal offices of Collector of the Port of New York, and of United States District Attorney for the Southern district of New York, skipped to Europe after embezzling, the one £250,000, the other £15,000. About twenty years later, another Tammany leader, who was appointed Postmaster for New York, advanced £50,000 of post-office money in order to carry Pennsylvania for Buchanan. These, however, were but bagatelles compared with the carnival of plunder which was established when Tweed was Tammany Boss.
It was not until about the middle of the century that Tammany laid the hand upon the agency which for nearly fifty years has been the sceptre of its power. A certain Southerner, rejoicing in the name of Rynders, who was a leading man in Tammany in the Forties, organised as a kind of affiliated institution the Empire Club, whose members were too disreputable even for Tammany. These men, largely composed of roughs and rowdies, who rejoiced in the expressive title of the Bowery Plug Uglies, were the first to lay their hand upon the immigrant and utilise him for the purpose of carrying elections. Mr. Edwards, writing inMcClure’s Magazine, says:—
It was the Empire Club, indeed, which taught the political value of the newly-arrived foreigner. Its members approached the immigrants at the piers on the arrival of every steamship or packet; conducted them into congenial districts; found them employment in the city works, or perhaps helped them to set up in business as keepers of grog-shops.
It was the Empire Club, indeed, which taught the political value of the newly-arrived foreigner. Its members approached the immigrants at the piers on the arrival of every steamship or packet; conducted them into congenial districts; found them employment in the city works, or perhaps helped them to set up in business as keepers of grog-shops.
“Politics in Louisiana,” General Grant is reported to have said on one occasion, “are Hell.” They seem to have been very much like hell in the days when the Plug Uglies with Rynders at their head ruled the roast at Tammany. Mr. Edwards tells a story which sheds a lurid ray of light on the man and manners of that time. Mr. Godwin, who preceded Mr. Godkin in the incessant warfare which theEvening Posthas waged against Tammany, had given more than usual offence to Rynders. That worthy, therefore, decided to assassinate the editor as he was taking his lunch at the hotel. Mike Walsh, however, a plucky Irishman, interfered,and enabled Godwin to make his escape. When the intended victim had gone out—
Rynders stepped up to Walsh and said: “What do you mean by interfering in this matter? It is none of your affair.”“Well, Godwin did me a good turn once, and I don’t propose to see him stabbed in the back. You were going to do a sneaking thing; you were going to assassinate him, and any man who will do that is a coward.”“No man ever called me a coward, Mike Walsh, and you can’t.”“But I do, and I will prove that you are a coward. If you are not one, come upstairs with me now. We will lock ourselves into a room; I will take a knife and you take one; and the man who is alive after we have got through, will unlock the door and go out.”Rynders accepted the challenge. They went to an upper room. Walsh locked the door, gave Rynders a large bowie-knife, took one himself, and said: “You stand in that corner, and I’ll stand in this. Then we will walk towards the centre of the room, and we won’t stop until one or the other of us is finished.”Each took his corner. Then Walsh turned and approached the centre of the room. But Rynders did not stir. “Why don’t you come out?” said Walsh. Rynders, turning in his corner, faced his antagonist, and said: “Mike, you and I have always been friends; what is the use of our fighting now? If we get at it, we shall both be killed, and there is no good in that.” Walsh for a moment said not a word; but his lip curled, and he looked upon Rynders with an expression of utter contempt. Then he said: “I told you you were a coward, and now I prove it. Never speak to me again.”
Rynders stepped up to Walsh and said: “What do you mean by interfering in this matter? It is none of your affair.”
“Well, Godwin did me a good turn once, and I don’t propose to see him stabbed in the back. You were going to do a sneaking thing; you were going to assassinate him, and any man who will do that is a coward.”
“No man ever called me a coward, Mike Walsh, and you can’t.”
“But I do, and I will prove that you are a coward. If you are not one, come upstairs with me now. We will lock ourselves into a room; I will take a knife and you take one; and the man who is alive after we have got through, will unlock the door and go out.”
Rynders accepted the challenge. They went to an upper room. Walsh locked the door, gave Rynders a large bowie-knife, took one himself, and said: “You stand in that corner, and I’ll stand in this. Then we will walk towards the centre of the room, and we won’t stop until one or the other of us is finished.”
Each took his corner. Then Walsh turned and approached the centre of the room. But Rynders did not stir. “Why don’t you come out?” said Walsh. Rynders, turning in his corner, faced his antagonist, and said: “Mike, you and I have always been friends; what is the use of our fighting now? If we get at it, we shall both be killed, and there is no good in that.” Walsh for a moment said not a word; but his lip curled, and he looked upon Rynders with an expression of utter contempt. Then he said: “I told you you were a coward, and now I prove it. Never speak to me again.”
Mike Walsh, the hero of this episode of the bowie-knife, is notable as having been the first man to publicly accuse Tammany of tampering with the ballot-box. He was not the last by any means; but Tammany seems to have begun well, for, says Mr. Edwards:—
Roscoe Conkling once said, chatting with a group of friends, that Governor Seward had told him that the Tammany frauds committed by the Empire Club in New York City in 1844 unquestionably gave Polk the meagre majority of five thousand which he obtained in New York State, and by which he was brought to the Presidency.
Roscoe Conkling once said, chatting with a group of friends, that Governor Seward had told him that the Tammany frauds committed by the Empire Club in New York City in 1844 unquestionably gave Polk the meagre majority of five thousand which he obtained in New York State, and by which he was brought to the Presidency.
FERNANDO WOOD.
It is not surprising that with this beginning things went on from bad to worse until Mike Walsh, a few years before the War, publicly declared in a great Democratic meeting in the city:—
“I tell you now, and I say it boldly, that in this body politic of New York there is not political or personal honesty enough left to drive a nail into to hang a hat upon.”
“I tell you now, and I say it boldly, that in this body politic of New York there is not political or personal honesty enough left to drive a nail into to hang a hat upon.”
There is a fine picturesqueness about this phrase which enables it to stick like a burr to the memory. It was not, however, until the Irish emigration began in good earnest that Tammany found its vocation. Fernando Wood was first elected to the Mayoralty in 1854. Fernando Wood was a ward politician who first became known to the public by a prosecution in which it was proved that he had cheated his partner by altering the figures in accounts. He did not deny the charge, but pleaded statutory limitation. Having thus succeeded in avoiding gaol, he promptly ran for the Mayoralty, and was duly elected. With him came what Mr. Godkin calls “the organisation of New York politics on a criminal basis.” The exploits of Fernando Wood, however, were thrown entirely into the shade by the lurid splendour of his successor.
This was William M. Tweed, the famous “Boss” Tweed, who began his life as a journeyman, and ended it in Ludley Street Gaol, after having ruled New York for years, as if he were a Turkish Pasha. After serving apprenticeship as a Member of the New York Senate, Deputy Street Commissioner, and President of the Board of Supervisors, he gradually made his way upwards until he was recognised as Boss of Tammany. It was not, however, until the year 1868 that he succeeded in giving the public a true taste of his quality. Even hardened Tammany politicians were aghast at the colossal frauds which he practised at the polls—frauds not only unique in their dimensions, but in the exceeding variety and multiplicity of their methods. On January 1st, 1869, Tweed and his allies began to plunder the city in a fashion which might have made the mouth of a Roman proconsul water. His ally, Connolly, was made Comptroller, while Tweed himself found ample scope for his fraudulent genius in the posts of Deputy Street Commissioner and Supervisor. In the first year he issued fraudulent warrants for £750,000. The money was spent fast and furiously. Tweed was a fellow of infinite variety, and he seemed almost to revel in the diversity of methods by which he could plunder the public. One very ingenious and simple fraud was his securing an Act of the Legislature, making a little paper which he owned the official organ of the City Government. In that capacity he drew £200,000 a year from the rates and taxes, as compensation for printing the report of the proceedings of the Common Council. Mr. Edwards says:—
He established a printing company, whose main business was the printing of blank forms and vouchers, for which in one year two million eight hundred thousand dollars was charged. Another item was a stationer’s company, which furnished all the stationery used in the public institutions and departments, and this company alone received some three millions a year. On an order for six reams of cap paper, the same amount of letter paper, two reams of notepaper, two dozen pen-holders, four small ink-bottles, and a few other articles, all worth not more than fifty dollars, a bill of ten thousand dollars was rendered and paid.The frauds upon which the conviction of Tweed was obtained consisted in the payment of enormously increased bills to mechanics, architects, furniture-makers,and, in some instances, to unknown persons, for supplies and services. It was the expectation that an honest bill would be raised all the way from sixty to ninety per cent. In the first months of the ring’s stealing the increase was about sixty per cent. Some of the bills were increased by as much as ninety per cent., but the average increase was such as to make it possible to give sixty-seven per cent. to the ring, the confederates being allowed to keep thirty-three per cent.; and of that thirty-three per cent. probably at least one-half was a fraudulent increase.
He established a printing company, whose main business was the printing of blank forms and vouchers, for which in one year two million eight hundred thousand dollars was charged. Another item was a stationer’s company, which furnished all the stationery used in the public institutions and departments, and this company alone received some three millions a year. On an order for six reams of cap paper, the same amount of letter paper, two reams of notepaper, two dozen pen-holders, four small ink-bottles, and a few other articles, all worth not more than fifty dollars, a bill of ten thousand dollars was rendered and paid.
The frauds upon which the conviction of Tweed was obtained consisted in the payment of enormously increased bills to mechanics, architects, furniture-makers,and, in some instances, to unknown persons, for supplies and services. It was the expectation that an honest bill would be raised all the way from sixty to ninety per cent. In the first months of the ring’s stealing the increase was about sixty per cent. Some of the bills were increased by as much as ninety per cent., but the average increase was such as to make it possible to give sixty-seven per cent. to the ring, the confederates being allowed to keep thirty-three per cent.; and of that thirty-three per cent. probably at least one-half was a fraudulent increase.
After a time the outrageous nature of his stealings provoked a revolt in Tammany itself. It is to this which Mr. Croker looks back with such proud complacency as marking the advent of reformed Tammany. Tweed was beaten at the elections, and his opponents secured a majority on the Board of Aldermen. Thereupon the resourceful rascal promptly went down to Albany, bought up a sufficient number of Congressmen and senators to give him control of the Legislature, and so secured a new Charter for New York, which legislated his opponents out of office. By this Charter a board of audit was created which consisted of Tweed, Connolly and Mayor Hall. What followed is thus described by theNation:—
The “Board” met once for but ten minutes, and turned the whole “auditing” business over to Tweed. This sounds like a joke, but is true. Tweed then went to work, and “audited” as hard as he could, Garvey and other scamps bringing in the raw material in the shape of “claims,” and he never stopped till he had “audited” about 6,000,000 dols. worth. Connolly’s part in the little game then came in, and that worthy citizen drew his warrants for the money, which that simple-minded “scholar and gentleman” the Mayor endorsed, without having the least idea what was going on. Tweed’s share of the plunder amounted to about 1,000,000 dols. in all. The Joint Committee, reporting on the condition of the city’s finances, declared that the discoverable stealings of three years are 19,000,000 dols., which is probably only half the real total.
The “Board” met once for but ten minutes, and turned the whole “auditing” business over to Tweed. This sounds like a joke, but is true. Tweed then went to work, and “audited” as hard as he could, Garvey and other scamps bringing in the raw material in the shape of “claims,” and he never stopped till he had “audited” about 6,000,000 dols. worth. Connolly’s part in the little game then came in, and that worthy citizen drew his warrants for the money, which that simple-minded “scholar and gentleman” the Mayor endorsed, without having the least idea what was going on. Tweed’s share of the plunder amounted to about 1,000,000 dols. in all. The Joint Committee, reporting on the condition of the city’s finances, declared that the discoverable stealings of three years are 19,000,000 dols., which is probably only half the real total.
Never was a more unblushing rascal, as Mr. Tilden said in his account of Tweed’s sovereignty. The Tammany Ring
controlled the State Legislature, the police, and every department or functionary of the law; several of the judges on the bench were its servile instruments, and issued decrees at its command; it secured the management of the election “machine,” and “ran” it at its own free will and pleasure; a large part of the press was absolutely at its disposal. In the course of three years it had paid to eleven newspapers the sum of 2,329,482 dols. (about £466,000) nominally for advertisements, most of which were never even published, or never seen. Not only the City government, but the lion’s share of the State government also had fallen into the hands of “Boss” Tweed and his confederates. Millions of dollars were stolen by the conspirators by means of “street openings,” “improvements,” new pavements, and other frauds. The Ring took from the public treasury a sum amounting to over £1,500,000 for furnishing and “repairing” a new Court-house. The charges for plastering alone came to about £366,000. For carpets, warrants were drawn for £120,000, although there were scarcely any carpets in the building. The floors were either bare, or covered with oil-cloth. Nearly £100,000 was alleged to have been paid for iron safes, and over £8,200 for “articles” not defined and never found. The total sum stolen was over £4,000,000.
controlled the State Legislature, the police, and every department or functionary of the law; several of the judges on the bench were its servile instruments, and issued decrees at its command; it secured the management of the election “machine,” and “ran” it at its own free will and pleasure; a large part of the press was absolutely at its disposal. In the course of three years it had paid to eleven newspapers the sum of 2,329,482 dols. (about £466,000) nominally for advertisements, most of which were never even published, or never seen. Not only the City government, but the lion’s share of the State government also had fallen into the hands of “Boss” Tweed and his confederates. Millions of dollars were stolen by the conspirators by means of “street openings,” “improvements,” new pavements, and other frauds. The Ring took from the public treasury a sum amounting to over £1,500,000 for furnishing and “repairing” a new Court-house. The charges for plastering alone came to about £366,000. For carpets, warrants were drawn for £120,000, although there were scarcely any carpets in the building. The floors were either bare, or covered with oil-cloth. Nearly £100,000 was alleged to have been paid for iron safes, and over £8,200 for “articles” not defined and never found. The total sum stolen was over £4,000,000.
WILLIAM M. TWEED.
Tweed’s brief but dazzling career—for he was indeed a hero clad in Hell-fire—is said by President Andrews to have cost the City of New York 160,000,000 dols. The fine levied by Germany on the City of Paris after the War of 1870-1 was only one-fourth that amount. Fraud may be more costly than War. The total directproperty loss occasioned by the great fire at Chicago in 1871, when three square miles of buildings were burned down, and 98,500 persons rendered homeless, was only 30,000,000 dols. above the plunder of Tweed and his gang. Thus Fraud can be almost as ruinous as Fire.
MR. TILDEN.
Tweed was a fellow, if not of infinite jest like poor Yorick, at least of infinite insolent humour. In 1871 he boasted that he had amassed a fortune of 20,000,000 dols. Nor did he in the least scruple to avow the means by which he acquired it. President Andrews, of Brown University, in telling the history of the last quarter century, says, “He used gleefully to show his friends the safe where he kept money for bribing legislators, finding those of the Tammany-Republican stripe easiest game. Of the contractor who was decorating his country place at Greenwich he inquired, pointing to a statue, ‘Who the hell is that?’ ‘That is Mercury, the god of merchants and thieves,’ was the reply. ‘That’s bully,’ said Tweed; ‘put him over the front door.’”
Tweed was to the last popular with the masses of the people. Even when the whole town was ringing with proofs of his guilt, he stood as candidate for the Senate of New York State, and was elected. He had distributed in the poorer districts some £10,000 worth of coal and flour, and one of his champions brought down the house by declaring that “Tweed’s heart has always been in the right place, and, even if he is a thief, there is more blood in his little finger and more marrow in his big toe than the men who are abusing him have in their whole bodies.”
This man, with this excessive development of marrow in his big toe, was ultimately run down by Mr. Tilden and the Committee of Seventy. Connolly, the Comptroller, weakened and made terms with his opponents by appointing Mr. Green as Deputy-Comptroller. Mr. Green had little difficulty in laying hands upon all that was necessary in order to secure the prosecution and conviction of Tweed. Tweed’s two infamous judges were driven from the bench, and he himself was clapped into gaol. He made his escape, and sought refuge in Spain. He was, however, delivered up to the Americanauthorities, and reconducted to prison, where he died. To the last Tweed retained possession of much of his ill-gotten wealth. An offer which was made to surrender the residue of his millions in return for his liberty was rejected.
Tweed thought himself on the whole, an ill-used man. The judge who tried Tweed declared that he had perverted the “power with which he was clothed in a manner more infamous, more outrageous, than any instance of a like character which the history of the civilised world afforded.” But Tweed himself declared that he believed he had done right, and was willing to “submit himself to the just criticism of any and all honest men.” From this it would seem that Mr. Croker is not alone in his imperturbable consciousness of public rectitude. Tweed on one occasion admitted that he had perhaps erred, but he explained he was not to blame. The fault lay with human nature in the first place, and with the system under which New York was governed in the second. Therein, no doubt, he was right. “Human nature,” he said, “could not resist such temptations as were offered to men who were in power in New York, so long as the disposition of the offices of the city was at their command.”
The most outrageous thing that Tweed ever did was to pass a bill through the State Legislature at Albany, giving the judges unlimited power to punish summarily whatever they chose to consider to be contempt. By this law, which was fortunately vetoed by the Governor, every newspaper in New York would have been gagged as effectually as the press of Constantinople.
After Tweed fell, Tammany was reorganised under Honest John Kelly and Richard Croker. Mr. Godkin declares that Honest John Kelly was only honest in name. He says:—
John Kelly practised the great Greek maxim “not too much of anything,” simply made every candidate pay handsomely for his nomination, pocketed the money himself, and, whether he rendered any account of it or not, died in possession of a handsome fortune. His policy was the very safe one of making the city money go as far as possible among the workers by compelling every office-holder to divide his salary and perquisites with a number of other persons.
John Kelly practised the great Greek maxim “not too much of anything,” simply made every candidate pay handsomely for his nomination, pocketed the money himself, and, whether he rendered any account of it or not, died in possession of a handsome fortune. His policy was the very safe one of making the city money go as far as possible among the workers by compelling every office-holder to divide his salary and perquisites with a number of other persons.
The same system had prevailed down to the year 1894, when Tammany, for the first time in many years, was driven from power. Just before the upset, the New YorkEvening Postpublished the records of the twenty-eight men who now or recently composed the Executive Committee of Tammany. It showed that they were all professional politicians, and that among them were one convicted murderer, three men who had been indicted for murder, felonious assault, and bribery, respectively, four professional gamblers, five ex-keepers of gambling houses, nine who either now or formerly sold liquor, three whose fathers did, three former pugilists, four former rowdies, and six members of the famous Tweed gang.Seventeen of these held office, seven formerly did, and two were favoured contractors.
By these men New York was governed down to the year 1894. All the efforts of the reformers seemed in vain. Mr. Godkin reluctantly confessed:—
The power of the semi-criminal organisation known as Tammany Hall not only remains unshaken, but grows stronger from year to year. Every year its management descends, with perfect impunity, into the hands of a more and more degraded class.
The power of the semi-criminal organisation known as Tammany Hall not only remains unshaken, but grows stronger from year to year. Every year its management descends, with perfect impunity, into the hands of a more and more degraded class.
But it is ever the darkest hour before the dawn. Although on the very eve of the November election of 1894 it was declared that “Mr. Croker held almost as despotic a sway over New York as an Oriental potentate over his kingdom,” one month after that statement had been made he was hurled from power by a great outburst of popular indignation. How that was brought about I will now proceed to tell.
MR. E. L. GODKIN, EDITOR OF THE “EVENING POST,” NEW YORK.The sworn foe of Tammany.
THE LEXOW SEARCHLIGHT.
Mr. Lowell good-humouredly chaffed John Bull when he declared that
He detests the same faults in himself he neglected,When he sees them again in his child’s glass reflected,
He detests the same faults in himself he neglected,When he sees them again in his child’s glass reflected,
and we only need to glance at current English criticisms upon American affairs to justify the poet’s remark. Especially is this the case with a vice which of all others is regarded as distinctively English. John Bull has plenty of faults, but of those which render him odious to his neighbours there is none which is quite so loathsome as his “unctuous rectitude.” That phrase, coined by Mr. Rhodes to express the contempt which he and every one who knew the facts felt on contemplating the hypocrisy and Pharisaism displayed in connection with the Jameson Raid, is likely to live long after Mr. Rhodes has vanished from this mortal scene. This tendency to Pharisaism and self-righteous complacency, which thanks God that it is not as other men are, is one of those vices which John Bull’s children seem to have inherited in full measure. We are pretty good at Pharisaism in the Old Country, but we are “not a circumstance,” to use the familiar slang, when we compare ourselves to some of the Pharisees reared across the Atlantic. This has nowhere been brought into such strong relief as when on the very eve of the exposure and discomfiture of Tammany their spokesmen took the stump and talked like very Pecksniffs concerning the immaculate purity of Tammany Hall.
The same characteristic is observable in all of them. Whether it is Boss Tweed, appealing confidently to the verdict of honest men upon a career of colossal theft and almost inconceivable fraud; or Mr. Croker, who, after surveying his whole life, declares that he has not discovered a single action which he has reason to regret, for he has not done anything but good all his life; or Bourke Cochran, who was at one time the Apollo and the Demosthenes of Tammany, the same unctuous rectitude oozes out of every pore. When Tammany was at its heyday of prosperity and power in 1889, it assembled in its thousands to cheer enthusiastically the impassioned oratory of Mr. Cochran, who declared, as among the self-evident truths which found an echo in every breast, that “if corruptionprevails among the people, liberty will become a blighting curse, subversive of order. Corruption once begun, decay is inevitable and irresistible; the destruction of the Republic is immediate, immeasurable, irredeemable; since history does not record a case of a popular government which has been arrested in its downward course.” Tammany listened to this with ecstatic admiration, cheered to the echo their eloquent oracle, and then went on using the proceeds of a system of blackmail for the perfecting of an engine of corruption to which it is difficult to discover a parallel in the annals of mankind.
In Mr. Croker’s case, his calm consciousness of incorruptible virtue seems to be based upon a curious inversion of a belief in a Divine Providence. Tammany is not strong in theology, but Mr. Croker, in talking to me, based his argument in favour of the excellence of Tammany on the postulate that the government of the universe was founded on the law of righteousness. This being the case, it was only possible to reconcile the continued existence of Tammany on one of two hypotheses. Either the domination of evil was permitted for a season for some sufficient cause hidden in the inscrutable mysteries of the Divine councils, or we must boldly assert that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Tammany rule was in accordance with the eternal law,Credo quia impossibile, rather than admit that so great an anomaly as a terrestrial Inferno could be permitted to exist by the good government of God. Mr. Croker, of course, adopted the latter hypothesis. There is much in it, no doubt, especially to those in Mr. Croker’s position. It is, however, open to the fatal objection that the same process of logic wouldà fortiorisecure a certificate of good conduct for the Great Assassin of Stamboul himself. The Ottoman Empire has lasted even longer than Tammany Hall, but even Mr. Croker would shrink from maintaining that Abdul Hamid was on that account the exemplary vicegerent of the Almighty.
This Pharisaic panoply in which Tammany was clad, as in a coat of mail, was no small element of its strength. The consciousness of wrong-doing is always an element of weakness. Not until a man can do evil and persuade himself that he is doing good can he silence that conscience which makes cowards of us all. Probably this unctuous rectitude on the part of Tammany and its Boss should be estimated as one of the chief obstacles in the way of the scattered and despairing band of reformers who, five or six years ago, confronted the stronghold of iniquity entrenched in their midst.
Its position, indeed, appeared almost impregnable. Tammany Hall commanded an annual revenue large enough to equip and maintain a small army. It had under its orders the whole of the executive force in its police—a body of men practically above the law, armed with powers hardly inferior to those of the police of St. Petersburg. Besides the police, all the persons on the pay-rollsof the City and County were under the thumb of the Boss. There was hardly a city official, from the highest to the lowest, who did not hold office by the sovereign will and pleasure of Tammany. As there are 27,000 names on those pay-rolls, all of whom were voters and were taxable to an almost unlimited extent whenever the Tammany exchequer needed to be replenished, it is obvious how enormous were the odds against the assailants of Tammany.
Photo by Tom Reveley, Wantage.RICHARD CROKER IN HIS GARDEN AT WANTAGE, BERKSHIRE.
But the unctuous rectitude of its leaders, the prompt obedience of the police Janissaries, and the discipline of the standing army of the twenty-seven thousand Pretorians on the city pay-rolls, were by no means the only difficulties which had to be overcome. Tammany Hall itself might be compared to a central citadel or keep of a Norman fortress. The outworks consisted of all the saloons, gaming hells, and houses of ill-fame in the City of New York. Some of these, no doubt, were by no means enthusiastic in support of the powers that be, but they resembled tribes which, having been subdued by force of arms, are compelled to pay tribute and use their weapons in support of their conquerors. In New York, just before the revolt against Tammany, the number of licences for the sale of intoxicants in New York City was over 6,000. The number of unlicensed drinking places was estimated at from 2,000 to 3,000. Each of these saloons might be regarded as a detached outwork, holding a position in advance of the main citadel, and covering it from the attack of its foes.
In those days it used to be said that licences were granted by the Excise Board to anybody who had not served a term in a penitentiary. One indignant divine declared that it was perfectly safe to say that, if the Devil himself should apply to the Excise Board for a licence to set up a branch establishment on the children’s playground in the Central Park, it would be granted. As to the other establishments of even worse fame than the saloon, there was an unwritten contract by which, in return for tribute paid directly or indirectly, they were shielded by the strong arm of Tammany from the enforcement of the law. It was calculated that if all the saloons in New York were placed side by side, averaging them at only twenty feet frontage each, they would form a line of circumvallation twenty miles long. To put it in another way, there was on an average one saloon for every thirty voters.
In addition to its control of the saloon, Tammany had two extremely important financial resources which have not yet been mentioned. The first was the control of the city contracts. A great city like New York, with an expenditure that exceeded that of the whole Federal Government of the United States fifty years ago, had an enormous means of influence at its disposal in the mere granting of contracts. But even this was a comparatively trivial element in the financial strength of Tammany. There existed in New York, asin almost every city, great corporations representing enormous capital, and dividing gigantic dividends, which, in the Tammany scheme of the universe, might have been created for the express purpose of furnishing an unfailing supply of revenue to the party chest. The corporations which enjoyed franchises from the city, giving them control of the streets, whether for the purpose of traction, of lighting, or of electrical communication, were Tammany’s milch cows. They all possess monopolies, granted to them in the first instance either by corruption or by negligence, which enable them to plunder the public. These monopolies can only be terminated or modified by the Legislature, and the Legislature can only act in obedience to the party machine. All that needs to be done when the campaign fund runs low is for the Boss to intimate to the various corporations that milking time has come, and that if they do not contribute liberally of their substance to the party treasury, Tammany will no longer be able to give them protection when the usual attack is made next session upon their monopoly or their franchise. Money is the sinews of war, and as the Tammany war chest was always full, Tammany snapped its fingers at all its enemies, and contemptuously declared that the reformers did not amount to a row of pins.
THE CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUND, CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK.
The outlook undoubtedly was very gloomy. From the point of view of practical politics it was simply hopeless; nevertheless, in a couple of years the fortress was stormed, and the government of New York placed in the hands of the Reformers. The story of the way in which this was brought about should never be forgotten by all those who are called upon to lead forlorn hopes against immense odds. As long as the world lasts, such narratives are among the most precious cordials which in times of danger and distress restore the courage and revive the faith of man. Dr. Parkhurst’s attack on Tammany is one of the latest of a long series of victories achieved by the leader of an outnumbered handful. When Gideon went forth against the hosts of Midian with only three hundred followers, he left a leading case on record for the encouragement of all who should come after. How many reformers and revolutionists who have helped the world forward in the path of progress have been cheered by the dream in which the Midianitish soldier saw a cake of barley bread smite and overturn the multitudinous camp of the conqueror, history does not record! But if ever a man needed the inspiration of that barley cake it was Dr. Parkhurst, when in 1892 he set himself to the desperate task of wresting New York City from the grasp of Tammany.
Dr. Parkhurst was a Massachusetts minister of Puritan ancestry, who, in 1880, at the age of thirty-eight, had been called to Madison Square Church, in New York. For ten years he went in and out among the people, quietly building up his church, ministering to his congregation, and learning at first-hand the real difficulties whichoffered almost insuperable obstacles to right living in New York. In 1890, on the eve of the November election, he preached a sermon on municipal politics, which, although it failed in influencing the polls, nevertheless marked Dr. Parkhurst out as the man to succeed Dr. Howard Crosby as President of the Society for the Prevention of Crime. He took office in 1891. In less than twelve months he began the campaign from which he never withdrew his hand until the government of the city was wrested from the control of Tammany.
Nothing is more characteristic, both of the state of things in New York and the uncompromising directness of Dr. Parkhurst, than the fact that he had no sooner assumed the control of the Society for the Prevention of Crime than he adopted as his motto the significant watchword, “Down with the Police!” That fact alone speaks volumes as to how utterly New York City had fallen under the control of the Evil One. For a society for the prevention of crime to adopt “Down with the Police!” as its watchword, seems to us of the Old World absolutely inconceivable. The police exist for the prevention of crime, yet here was a society of leading citizens, presided over by a doctor of divinity, putting in the forefront of its programme the formula “Down with the Police!”
Strange though it may seem to us, the best people of New York understood and appreciated what Dr. Parkhurst was after. But it was not till the 14th of February, 1892, that he put the trumpet to his lips and blew a blast the echoes of which are still sounding through the world. His sermon was an impeachment of the Government of New York, the like of which had seldom been heard before in a Christian pulpit. If any one questions the justice of the title of this volume, let him read what Dr. Parkhurst said in the sermon, of which the following sentence is a fair sample:—