FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTES[1]Document No. 8, p. 102.[2]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 682-98.[3]Ibid., 733, andIbid., Vol. II, p. 1693.[4]Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol. CLXXV, pp. 237-39.[5]Alderman Arthur J. McQuade’s testimony before Recorder Smythe, November 19, 1886.[6]Alderman Fullgraff’s additional testimony before Recorder Smythe.[7]Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol. CLXXVI, pp. 777-84.[8]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 706-7.[9]Ibid., Vol. I, p. 752.[10]Ibid., p. 744.[11]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. III, pp. 2667-68.[12]Testimony of Hugh J. Grant,Ibid., Vol. I, p. 739.

[1]Document No. 8, p. 102.

[2]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 682-98.

[3]Ibid., 733, andIbid., Vol. II, p. 1693.

[4]Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol. CLXXV, pp. 237-39.

[5]Alderman Arthur J. McQuade’s testimony before Recorder Smythe, November 19, 1886.

[6]Alderman Fullgraff’s additional testimony before Recorder Smythe.

[7]Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol. CLXXVI, pp. 777-84.

[8]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 706-7.

[9]Ibid., Vol. I, p. 752.

[10]Ibid., p. 744.

[11]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. III, pp. 2667-68.

[12]Testimony of Hugh J. Grant,Ibid., Vol. I, p. 739.

Upon the death of Kelly, the twenty-four leaders of the Assembly Districts, comprising the executive committee of Tammany Hall, announced individually that there would be no further “boss,” and that the organization would be ruled thenceforth by a committee of twenty-four. However, cliques immediately arose, and soon four leaders—Richard Croker, who had been a sort of deputy “boss” under Kelly; Hugh J. Grant, Thomas F. Gilroy and W. Bourke Cockran—arranged a junta for administering the organization’s affairs. By securing the support of 17 of the 24 leaders, Mr. Croker began concentrating power in his own hands, and for about fourteen years remained the absolute ‘boss’ of both society and organization.

Mr. Croker was born near Cork, Ireland, November 24, 1843. His father was a blacksmith, who emigrated to America in 1846, and settled in a squatter’s shanty in what is now the upper portion of Central Park. From his thirteenth to his nineteenth year young Croker worked as a machinist. At a very early age he distinguished himself in the semi-social fist-fights which were a part of the life of the “gang” to which he belonged. He became, tradition has it, the leader of the “Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang,” and fought a number of formal prize-fights, in which he came out victor.

At the beginning of the Tweed régime, according to his testimony before the Fassett Committee, he was an attendantunder Judge Barnard and other Judges in the Supreme Court. Upon leaving that place, for some reason not known, he served as an engineer on a Fire Department steamer.[1]In 1868 and 1869 he was elected an Alderman. With a majority of his fellow-members, he sided with the Young Democracy against Tweed, and was accordingly, with the rest of the board, legislated out of office (April, 1870). But he must have made his peace with the “Boss” soon after, for Controller Connolly appointed him Superintendent of Market Fees and Rents. In 1873 he was elected Coroner. On election day, November 3, 1874, during a street row growing out of a political quarrel between Mr. Croker and James O’Brien, John McKenna was shot dead. Bystanders maintained that Mr. Croker fired the shot, and the Grand Jury indicted him for the crime. The trial jury, after being out for seventeen hours, failed to agree. Public opinion at the time was divided, but it is the preponderance of opinion among those who are in a position to know, that Mr. Croker did not fire the fatal shot.

In 1876 he was reelected Coroner. In 1883 he ran for Alderman, with the understanding that if elected, thus establishing the fact of his constituents’ approval, Mayor Edson would appoint him a Fire Commissioner. During the canvass, a Police Captain, one of Croker’s protégés, was responsible for a brutal clubbing, the feeling over which had the effect of reducing his plurality to about 200. Mayor Edson, however, gave him the appointment, and he was reappointed by Mayor Hewitt. His alleged connection with the fund of $180,000 to be used in behalf of Hugh J. Grant, in 1884, has already been mentioned. In 1885 he caused the nomination of the latter for Sheriff. Mr. Grant, while in that office, according to Mr. McCann’s testimony, gave $25,000, in five presents of $5,000 each, to Mr. Croker’s two-year-old daughter Flossie.[2]

Neither Mr. Croker nor Mr. Grant denied this transaction, though both declared the sum was $10,000 and not $25,000.[3]Mr. Grant furthermore declared that he gave it in consideration of Flossie being his god-child.

Mr. Croker showed the sagacity common to a long line of Tammany chiefs in the municipal campaign of 1886. It was a time of great excitement. The labor unions, including the Knights of Labor, had reached the highest point in organization and in solidarity of feeling ever attained by them in the history of the city. Knowing their strength, they were ripe for independent political action, and they were rendered all the more ready for it by the earnest social propaganda carried on at the time by Single-Taxers, Socialists and social reformers generally.

The conviction of certain members of a union for carrying on a boycott against the Thiess establishment, on Fourteenth street, proved the one impulse needed for the massing together of all the various clubs and unions into one mighty movement. The convictions were believed to be illegal, and moreover to have been fraudulently obtained—and Tammany was held responsible. Before long the nucleus of an independent political party was formed. Henry George, then at the height of his popularity, was looked upon as the logical leader, and he was asked to become the new party’s candidate for Mayor. To this request he gave an affirmative answer, contingent upon the securing of 25,000 signatures to his nominating petition.

Mr. Croker saw the danger, and he took immediate steps to avert it. According to the open letter of Henry George to Abram S. Hewitt, October 17, 1897, Mr. Croker, in behalf of Tammany Hall and the County Democracy, tried to buy off George by offering him a nomination regarded as equivalent to an election.George, of course, refused; the 25,000 names, or a great part of them, were secured; a nominating convention was held; George was formally nominated, and the United Labor party was launched. A spirited campaign in George’s behalf was at once begun, and was responded to by the masses with remarkable enthusiasm.

Mr. Croker was equal to the crisis. The agitation among the masses must be met by the nomination of a representative of the conservative interests, and a general appeal be made for the “saving of society.” Accordingly he chose as the Tammany candidate the County Democracy’s choice, Abram S. Hewitt.

The Republicans nominated Theodore Roosevelt. His candidacy, however, was not regarded so seriously as otherwise it might have been, for the contest narrowed down at once to a class struggle between George and Mr. Hewitt. Anarchy and every other social ill were prophesied by the conservatives as the certain results of the former’s election, and Republicans were openly urged to support the latter.

The result proved the keenness of Mr. Croker’s foresight. The vote stood: Hewitt, 90,552; George, 68,110; Roosevelt, 60,435. Yet it would be difficult to name a time in recent years, if the reiterated statements of reputable eye-witnesses are to be believed, when frauds so glaring and so tremendous in the aggregate have been employed in behalf of any candidate as were committed in behalf of Mr. Hewitt in 1886. There are few living men among the earnest band who supported George’s interests at the polls on that election day who do not believe that their candidate was grossly “counted out.”

Mayor Hewitt revealed an independence of character that astonished the Wigwam. Before many months he had antagonized its powerful leaders. By 1888 the United Labor party had dwindled into a faction, and there being no such compelling reason, as in 1886, for choosing a candidate outside of the organization, thechiefs selected one of their own number, Hugh J. Grant. Mr. Hewitt was nominated by the County Democracy, Joel B. Erhardt by the Republicans, and James J. Coogan by the remnant of the United Labor party. The vote was as follows: Grant, 114,111; Erhardt, 73,037; Hewitt, 71,979; Coogan, 9,809. For Grover Cleveland, whom Tammany had this time supported at the nominating convention, the city gave a plurality of 55,831, out of a total vote of about 270,000.

One of the Tammany men elected was James A. Flack, Grand Sachem of the society (1888-1889), who assumed the duties of Sheriff the following January. During the same year Flack surreptitiously and fraudulently obtained a divorce in order to remarry. His wife was the ostensible plaintiff, but it was shown that she knew nothing of the suit. Flack and his accomplices were indicted by the Grand Jury, whereupon he was tried and sentenced to two months in the Tombs prison, and to pay a fine of $500. The Supreme Court later affirmed the sentence. Some others implicated also went to prison. The scandal was such that Flack was removed from the Sheriff’s office, and was forced to resign as Grand Sachem of the society.

Tammany was now in practically complete control, and carried things with a high hand. Most of the departments had again become inefficient and corrupt. On March 21, 1890, the Grand Jury handed down a presentment stating that the Sheriff’s office, which for twenty years had been a hotbed of corruption, had recently been brought into “public scandal and infamy,” through the growth of notorious abuses; that in 1889 the Sheriff’s net profits had been at least $50,000, not including certain “extra compensations that could not be ascertained.” Many other abuses, the Grand Jury further recited, were found to be connected with the management of this office, and also with the conduct of the Ludlow Street Jail.

At about the same time the State Senate Committeeon Cities, headed by J. Sloat Fassett, a Republican, undertook an investigation. Though subjected to the charges of lukewarmness and bargaining, this body, popularly known as the “Fassett Committee,” brought out much valuable information. Part of its testimony has already been referred to. It is impossible even to summarize the vast total embodied in the 3,650 printed pages of its report, but some of the more interesting particulars may be briefly touched upon.

Henry S. Ives and George H. Stayner testified that, while prisoners at Ludlow Street Jail, they had paid, for various favors, $10,000 to Warden James P. Keating, then and later a prominent Tammany leader, and that previously they had paid other large amounts to certain Deputy Sheriffs.[4]

John F. B. Smyth testified that when Sheriff Grant had appointed him Sheriff’s auctioneer—the most valuable gift at the Sheriff’s disposal—the latter suggested his having as a partner ex-Alderman Kirk (one of the Aldermen of 1884 indicted in connection with the Broadway Surface Railroad franchise),[5]saying that the organization insisted on having “one-half of it [the loot] go to somebody else.” In less than a year the gross proceeds amounted to about $20,000. Of this, $10,000 went to various Deputy Sheriffs, one of whom was Bernard F. Martin, frequently Sachem and another noted Tammany leader.[6]

A copious amount of similar testimony was brought out implicating many other Tammany leaders, and showing that the Sheriff’s known income from the office rangedfrom $60,000 to $75,000 a year.[7]Thomas P. Taylor, a lawyer, swore that one of his clients in 1888 had had a claim of about $4,000 in the Sheriff’s hands, and that William H. Clark, a Sachem and a powerful Tammany leader, the partner of W. Bourke Cockran, and sometime Corporation Counsel, had asked him (Taylor), “what he would give to get it.” Mr. Taylor further testified that he had given nothing, and that he had secured only a few hundred dollars of the amount, after much trouble.[8]Clark denied the charge.[9]

Corruption, favoritism and blackmail were charged against all the other departments controlled by Tammany, though in the Police and Excise departments, Republican and Tammany commissioners alike were shown to have winked at the abuses. Gambling houses had to pay at least $25 a week for protection,[10]and revenue was likewise derived from every place or person capable of being blackmailed. The testimony strongly pointed to the probability that as much as $10,000 had been paid to get a certain saloon license, though there was no absolute verification of the statement.

One interesting fact officially brought out—a fact long generally known, however, and stated heretofore in this work—was that the Wiskinskie of the Tammany Society, nominally a city employee, was the official agent of the organization in collecting assessments, said to vary from 5 to 10 per cent., on the salaries of every Tammany office-holder. In fact, Mr. Croker unhesitatingly admitted before the Fassett Committee, that at that time it cost from $50,000 to $75,000 to run the organization successfully.[11]Considerable sums were likewise derived from assessments on candidates. Mr. Hewitt, it was said, contributed $12,000 in 1886, but Mr. Croker developed a verypoor memory when questioned about this and contributions from many Judges and other office-holders.[12]

The revelations, as usual, caused the formation of a citizens’ movement, and a strong combination of Republicans, Democrats and independents was formed, under the name of the “People’s Municipal League,” for the purpose of ousting Tammany. Francis M. Scott, a Democrat, was nominated for Mayor, and a vigorous campaign was waged. Tammany minimized the disclosures, and renominated Mr. Grant. A Democratic tidal wave swept the nation in the Fall of 1890, and on this wave the Tammany ticket was carried to victory, the local majority being 23,199.

The effect on the society and the organization of this victory, following so closely upon the Fassett revelations, was to impress the Tammany men with an added sense of security. Accordingly, by tacit understanding, smirches made upon reputations before the Fassett Committee were to constitute no bar to political advancement, and the old condition of things in the departments was to continue. Many of those who had suffered most at the hands of the Senatorial inquisitors were elected during the next four years to places in the society and to public offices. Irving Hall and the County Democracy passed out of existence, and Tammany had full sway. Administrative corruption continued, and frauds at the polls, despite certain improvements in the ballot laws instituted in 1890, developed to a science, reaching their climax in 1893.

In 1892 Tammany fought the nomination of Mr. Cleveland for President, though it supported him after his election. Thomas F. Gilroy, Grand Sachem (1892-94) was nominated for Mayor, the Republicans presenting Edwin Einstein. A Democratic landslide marked the election, and the Tammany candidates won by practicallythe same majority as that given to Mr. Cleveland, Mr. Gilroy receiving 173,510, and Mr. Einstein, 97,923 votes. Frauds were numerous, as usual. The opposition vote in a number of election districts was practically nothing. A certain Tammany politician, later State Senator from the lower end of town, stood in the envious wonder of his fellows for a whole year following, for having secured for the ticket all the votes but four in his election district.

The fame of this enterprising worker aroused a determination in the breasts of others to exceed his record. During the next campaign (1893) the general indignation against the corrupt conduct of Judge Maynard, brought out a strong opposition to his elevation to the bench of the Court of Appeals. Senator Hill caused his nomination, Tammany supported him, and the word was passed around that he must be elected at all hazards. As a consequence, frauds of the gravest character were committed throughout the city. The Tammany leader of the Second Assembly District, zealous to outdo the record of the previous year, offered prizes to his election district captains for the best results. The election overturned all known records. The successful competitor brought in a poll of 369 to 0. In two other precincts no opposition votes of any kind were counted, despite the presence of Republican inspectors, and the fact that Republicans, Socialists, Populists and Prohibitionists afterward swore under oath that they had voted for their respective candidates. The vote in this assembly district, nominally 8,000, rose to nearly 13,000.

A committee from the Populist County Committee, the local branch of the National People’s party, immediately took steps to secure evidence through which to effect the punishment of the lawbreakers.[13]The evidence secured,with that afterwards obtained by the Republican County Committee, the City Club, the Good Government clubs, and the Bar Association, was submitted to the Grand Jury, upon which some sixty indictments were handed down. A number of convictions were obtained, and several Tammany and assistant Tammany election officers were sent to prison. The Tammany leader of the Second Assembly District went to California immediately after the agitation began, and remained there until the affair blew over. In the election the following year the vote of this district fell to the old figures of approximately 8,000.

The city had again become scandalously corrupt. The bi-partizan boards, which originally had been established in the hope of applying some check to the general rascality, had merely furnished greater opportunities for deals and political bargaining. Charges of blackmail, extortion, of immunity given to crime, and most other forms of administrative venality, grew so common that again the State Senate sent (April, 1894), a committee to the city to investigate. This was the body commonly known as the “Lexow Committee,” from its chairman, Clarence Lexow. Its counsel, John W. Goff, vigorously conducted the investigation, and the result was a mass of information regarding Tammany methods of government such as the public had not known since the exposures of Tweed’s time. We can but touch upon the testimony.

It was shown that during each of the years 1891, 1892 and 1893, many thousands of fraudulent ballots had been cast by the active cooperation and connivance of the police; Police Captains were appointed from those members of the force who especially connived at these frauds, the appointments being made by the President of the Board of Police (who was one of the most conspicuous Wigwam leaders) at the instance of the organization. Tammany influences permeated the Police Department to such a degree that the district leaders dictated appointments, and from Captain down almost the entire forcejoined the Tammany district associations. Forced contributions were levied upon the members for the benefit of Wigwam district organizations.

Capt. Creedon confessed to paying $15,000 to secure a promotion to a Captaincy, and Capt. Schmittberger, to having secured the appointment of another man as Captain, in consideration of the payment of $12,000. The average cost of obtaining an appointment as policeman was $300. The police functionaries recouped themselves in various ways. Vice and crime were protected openly. One woman who kept a number of houses of ill-repute testified that she had paid continuously for protection an aggregate of $30,000 or more. The system reached such a perfection in detail that a ratable charge was placed upon each house according to the number of inmates, the protection prices ranging from $25 to $50 monthly. Women of the streets paid patrolmen for permission to solicit, and divided proceeds. Visitors were robbed systematically, and the plunder was divided with the police. More than 600 policy shops paid at the monthly rate of $15, while pool rooms paid $300 a month. It was noted by the committee, as a remarkable fact, that when public agitation grew very strong, a private citizen, Richard Croker, secured the closing of these places practically in a single day. Every form of gambling had to pay high prices for immunity. Green goods swindlers were required to make monthly payments, to subdivide the city into districts, and additionally, in case the victim “squealed,” to give one-half of the plunder to either ward or headquarters detectives. Saloons paid $20 monthly, according “to the established custom.” The police also acted in collusion with thieves and dishonest pawnbrokers. Almost every branch of trade and commerce was forced to make monthly payments, and from every possible source tribute was wrung.

The committee incorporated in its testimony the estimate of Foreman Tabor, of the Grand Jury, in March,1892, that the annual income derived from blackmailing and different sources of extortion was $7,000,000.[14]In this estimate there were probably not included the large sums paid by corporations of every kind, and all who sought the favor or feared the power of Tammany Hall.

The two Democratic members of the Police Board at this time were James J. Martin, one of the powerful district leaders, and John C. Sheehan, who became deputy “boss” during Mr. Croker’s absence. No direct evidence was given to establish their complicity in the general extortion, but John McClave, the Republican Commissioner, resigned after a searching and pointed examination.

Mr. Croker did not testify before the Lexow Committee, urgent business demanding his presence in England throughout the investigation.

The public was aroused as it had not been since 1871. An earnest agitation for reform, largely due to the crusade of Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, and to the work of the City Club and the Good Government clubs, was begun. A Committee of Seventy, composed of representatives of all classes, was formed to carry on a political contest, and an enthusiastic support was given to it by the great mass of the public throughout the campaign. William L. Strong, a Republican and a prominent dry goods merchant, was nominated by the Seventy for Mayor, and the Republicans indorsed him. Tammany, after floundering about for several weeks in the vain hope of securing a candidate strong enough to stem the opposing tide, selected at first Nathan Straus, who withdrew, and then Hugh J. Grant, making its campaign largely on the ground that Mr. Grant was the only unsmirched Tammany member of the “Boodle” Board of Aldermen of 1884. The contest was bitter and determined on both sides, Tammany putting forth its utmost efforts to avert the inevitable disaster. According to a statement of John C. Sheehan, the organizationexpended more money in this election than in any election in recent years.

The convictions of the previous year had served to cool the zeal of the Tammany workers for records at the polls. In consequence of this, and of further changes in the manner of balloting, New York enjoyed probably the most fairly conducted election of any since the first organized effort of Tammany men at the polls in 1800. Strong was elected by a majority of 45,187. With his election went nearly the whole of the city patronage, changes in the new constitution (1894) having greatly centralized the city’s administrative functions in the Mayor’s hands. Tammany was thus thrust out again.

Mayor Strong’s administration on the whole was beneficial. The city budget went up to nearly $44,000,000, but for the first time since Mayor Havemeyer’s time the streets were kept clean—a result due to the systematic energy of Col. George E. Waring, Jr. Moreover, new schools were built, new parks laid out, streets asphalted, improvements planned and carried out, while administrative corruption was almost unheard of. Not the least of the benefits of this administration was the partial reform of the Police Department, through the efforts of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, and his fellow Commissioners, Avery D. Andrews, Andrew D. Parker and Frank Moss.

In the mean time Richard Croker spent most of his time in England. From being a comparatively poor man, as he testified in 1890, he became suddenly rich. From April, 1889, to February, 1890, he was City Chamberlain, at a salary of $25,000 a year, but thereafter he held no public office. Within two years, however, he was able, according to common report, to buy an interest in the Belle Meade stock farm for $250,000, paying additionally $109,000 for Longstreet and other race horses. Later, he built a new house, said to cost over $200,000,and lavishly spent money, and displayed the evidences of wealth in other ways.

When in the city he was, for a considerable number of years, in the real estate business. He is popularly credited with having been interested in the passage and development of certain extremely valuable franchises which were obtained from the Legislature and Board of Aldermen for almost nothing. In 1892 he was reputed to dominate the Legislature, as he did the city, and the lobby disappeared. It was related at the time that all applicants for favors or for relief from hostile measures were advised “to see headquarters.”

One of the franchises granted during that year was the “Huckleberry franchise,” for a street railway in the Annexed District—a grant which was worth at the time fully $2,000,000, and yet was practically given away under circumstances of great scandal.[15]When testifying before the Mazet Committee in 1899, he was asked whether he had owned, in 1892, 800 shares of the stock of this road, but declined to state.[16]Another illustration of Mr. Croker’s alleged diversified interests was furnished by a statement said to have been inspired by John C. Sheehan and published on December 23, 1900. Mr. Sheehan asserted that in 1894 he and Mr. Croker were interested in a company formed with a capital of $5,000,000 for the construction of the rapid transit tunnel. Mr. Sheehan, the statement read, forced through the Board of Aldermen a resolution approving the tunnel route which he and Mr. Croker had selected as the most feasible. The statement further set forth that Mr. Croker had $500,000 worth of this company’s stock, which came to him gratuitously, and that he and Mr. Sheehan had been also mutually interested in a proposed surety company.

As chairman of the finance committee of TammanyHall (a post Tweed and Kelly had held, and which carried with it the titular leadership of the organization), all the vast funds contributed for Tammany’s many campaigns passed through his hands. As he himself testified, the finance committee kept no books.[17]

Whether Mr. Croker was at home or far abroad, his control of the Wigwam was absolute. Long since, he had inaugurated the system of “turning down” any man that disobeyed orders.

At the time of Mr. Bryan’s nomination, in 1896, Mr. Croker was in England. His three years’ racing experience there cost him, it was reported, between $600,000 and $700,000. He remained abroad, leaving the organization, as we have mentioned, in charge of John C. Sheehan as a kind of vicegerent. Mr. Sheehan’s public record in Buffalo had been severely criticized, and many organization men had protested against his being put in charge. This protest, however, was generally understood at the time to be founded not so much on the matter of Mr. Sheehan’s record as on that of his being an interloper from another section of the State. Tammany that year ignored the national Democratic platform. Though ratifying Mr. Bryan’s nomination, a general apathy prevailed at the Wigwam throughout the campaign, and the more radical Democrats repeatedly charged the leaders with treachery to the ticket. The result of this apathy and of other influences was that Mr. McKinley carried the city by over 20,000 plurality.

Mr. Croker finally returned home in September, 1897, shortly before the meeting of the Democratic city convention. It was commonly believed that Mr. Sheehan, the deputy “boss,” had made preparations to assume the “boss-ship” himself, but Mr. Sheehan emphaticallydenied this. Whatever the circumstances were Mr. Croker promptly deprived the former of power, and later succeeded in practically excluding him from the organization.

The “Boss’s” supreme control of city politics was illustrated by the nomination for Mayor of Greater New York of Robert C. Van Wyck, who was in no sense the organization’s candidate, but represented merely Mr. Croker’s choice and dictation. The Citizens’ Union nominated Seth Low, who probably would have been elected had the Republicans indorsed him. But the latter nominated Benjamin F. Tracy, thus dividing the opposition, which was still further disintegrated by the action of the Jeffersonian Democrats in nominating Henry George, and later Henry George, Jr., upon the noted economist dying in the heat of the campaign. The canvass was carried on with the greatest vigor, for under the Greater New York charter all the territory now embraced in the city limits was to vote for one Mayor, with a four-years’ term, and almost dictatorial power in the matter of appointments and removals. In his statement, heretofore referred to, Mr. Sheehan asserted that during this campaign he personally collected and turned over to John McQuade,[18]the treasurer of Tammany Hall, the sum of $260,000, irrespective of contributions collected by others, and that at the end of the canvass Mr. McQuade had $50,000 in the treasury.[19]

The vote stood: Van Wyck, 253,997; Low, 151,540; Tracy, 101,863; George, 21,693; scattering, 17,464. The Wigwam was beside itself with joy; the victorymeant absolute control of the greater city’s annual budget of over $90,000,000, not to speak of the tens of millions more derived from rents, fees, fines, interest, assessments for street improvements, bond sales and premiums, and from those vast and varied sources of contract juggling, selling of legislative “goods,” and all the other avenues, too numerous to enumerate, of which Tammany from early times has availed itself. It also meant the control of an army of employees, now estimated at 60,000. The disreputable classes vociferously celebrated the occasion, assured that the town was once more to be “wide open.”

FOOTNOTES[1]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. II, pp. 1708-12.[2]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 707-8.[3]Ibid., pp. 745-50, andIbid., Vol. II, p. 1701.[4]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 235-52, andIbid., p. 300.[5]Kirk had been dropped from the Council of Sachems in 1886 owing to the disclosures.[6]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 282-87. Bernard, or “Barney,” Martin and two others had been indicted on the ground of having been bribed, but the indictments were dismissed in March, 1890, on a technicality which allowed the defendants to fall back upon the Statute of Limitations.[7]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, p. 344.[8]Ibid., pp. 502-11.[9]Ibid., p. 513.[10]Ibid., Vol. II, p. 1244.[11]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, Vol. II, p. 1756.[12]Ibid., pp. 1757-62.[13]The credit for instituting this prosecution has been variously, and sometimes impudently, claimed. There is no doubt, however, that not only the first, but the most important evidence, was furnished by this committee, whose practical head was William A. Ellis, of the Second Assembly District.[14]Investigation of the Police Department, etc., 1894, Vol. V, p. 5734.[15]SeeA History of Public Franchises in New York City, by the author.[16]Stenographic minutes, p. 699.[17]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. II, p. 1755. Mr. Sheehan in the statement cited stated that when, in 1894, Mr. Croker sent an order to the district leaders requiring that district assessments amounting to $35,000 should be paid before March 1, the payments were promptly made.[18]Mr. McQuade was associated with Tweed, as a commissioner, in the building of the Harlem Court House. The testimony brought out in the case of Henry A. Smalleyvs.The Mayor, etc., before Judge Donohue, in the Supreme Court, January 28, 1878, showed that the value of all the material used in the building was $66,386, but that the Finance Department had paid out for this material $268,580.[19]Early in 1898 Tammany Hall, with considerable display, disposed of most of this fund, by giving $20,000 for the poor of the city and a like sum for the Cuban cause.

[1]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. II, pp. 1708-12.

[2]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 707-8.

[3]Ibid., pp. 745-50, andIbid., Vol. II, p. 1701.

[4]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 235-52, andIbid., p. 300.

[5]Kirk had been dropped from the Council of Sachems in 1886 owing to the disclosures.

[6]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 282-87. Bernard, or “Barney,” Martin and two others had been indicted on the ground of having been bribed, but the indictments were dismissed in March, 1890, on a technicality which allowed the defendants to fall back upon the Statute of Limitations.

[7]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. I, p. 344.

[8]Ibid., pp. 502-11.

[9]Ibid., p. 513.

[10]Ibid., Vol. II, p. 1244.

[11]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, Vol. II, p. 1756.

[12]Ibid., pp. 1757-62.

[13]The credit for instituting this prosecution has been variously, and sometimes impudently, claimed. There is no doubt, however, that not only the first, but the most important evidence, was furnished by this committee, whose practical head was William A. Ellis, of the Second Assembly District.

[14]Investigation of the Police Department, etc., 1894, Vol. V, p. 5734.

[15]SeeA History of Public Franchises in New York City, by the author.

[16]Stenographic minutes, p. 699.

[17]Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities, 1890, Vol. II, p. 1755. Mr. Sheehan in the statement cited stated that when, in 1894, Mr. Croker sent an order to the district leaders requiring that district assessments amounting to $35,000 should be paid before March 1, the payments were promptly made.

[18]Mr. McQuade was associated with Tweed, as a commissioner, in the building of the Harlem Court House. The testimony brought out in the case of Henry A. Smalleyvs.The Mayor, etc., before Judge Donohue, in the Supreme Court, January 28, 1878, showed that the value of all the material used in the building was $66,386, but that the Finance Department had paid out for this material $268,580.

[19]Early in 1898 Tammany Hall, with considerable display, disposed of most of this fund, by giving $20,000 for the poor of the city and a like sum for the Cuban cause.

Now that Tammany was reinstalled in almost absolute power, Mr. Croker set about choosing the important city officials to be appointed by the Mayor. He frankly admitted before the Mazet Committee, in 1899, that practically all of them were selected by him or his immediate associates. Requiring a routine assistant in the work of “bossing,” Mr. Croker selected John F. Carroll, who thereupon resigned the office of Clerk of the Court of General Sessions, which yielded, it was estimated, about $12,000 a year, to take a post with no apparent salary. Mr. Croker then returned to horse-racing in England.

The public pronouncements of the organization continued to voice the old-time characteristic pretensions of that body’s frugality, honesty and submission to the popular will. In October, 1898, the county convention in the Wigwam passed resolutions commending “the wise, honest and economical” Tammany administration of Greater New York, and denouncing the “corruption, extravagance and waste of the infamous mismanagement” by the previous reform administration. Yet at this very moment the Bar Association was protesting against Mr. Croker’s refusal to renominate Judge Joseph F. Daly,[1]on the ground of his refusing to hand over the patronage of his court. The convention itself, despite its fine words, acted merely as the register of the will of one man, with scarcely the formality of a contest; and the public had again become agitated over the certainty of grave scandals in the public service.

Tammany’s election fund this year was generally reputed to be in the neighborhood of $100,000. As much as $500 was spent in each of several hotly contested election districts. Tammany won, but by a margin less than had been expected and, in fact, arranged for. The State Superintendent of Elections, John McCullough, in his annual report (January, 1899) to Gov. Roosevelt, gave good grounds for believing that Tammany had been deprived of a large support on which it had counted. Of 13,104 persons registered from specified lodging houses in certain strong Tammany districts, only 4,034 voted. It was evident that colonization frauds on a large scale had been attempted, and had been frustrated only by the vigilance of Superintendent McCullough.

The state of administrative affairs in the city grew worse and worse, nearly approximating that of 1893-94. The Legislature again determined to investigate, and accordingly sent to the city the special committee of the Assembly, popularly known as the “Mazet Committee.” This body’s prestige suffered from the charge that its investigation was unduly partizan. Moreover, it was generally felt by the public that its work was inefficiently carried on. Nevertheless, it produced a considerable array of facts showing the existence of gross maladministration.

It was disclosed that every member of the Tammany Society or of the organization’s executive committee, held office, or was a favored contractor. Over $700,000 of city orders went to favored contractors without bidding. Various city departments were “characterized by unparalleled ignorance and unfairness.” The payrolls in some of the most important departments had increased$1,500,000 between July 1, 1898, and September 1, 1899, and the employees had increased over 1,000, excluding policemen, firemen and teachers. The testimony proved the increasing inefficiency and demoralization of the Police and Fire Departments. It further proved the existence of a ramified system of corruption similar to that revealed by the Lexow Committee.

The disclosures attracting the greatest public attention were those relating to the Ice Trust, the Ramapo project, and Mr. Croker’s relations to the city government. On April 14 the committee exposed a conspiracy between the Ice Trust and the Dock and other departments of the city government, to create and maintain a monopoly of New York’s ice supply. Six days after the exposure, Mayor Van Wyck, as he subsequently admitted in his testimony before Judge Gaynor, acquired 5,000 shares, worth $500,000, of the Ice Trust stock, alleging that he paid $57,000 in cash for them; but although urged to substantiate his statement, did not produce proof that he actually paid anything. It was shown conclusively before the committee that the arrangement between the Ice Trust and the city officials was such as to compel the people to pay 60 cents a hundred pounds, and that the trust had stopped the sale of five-cent pieces of ice, practically cutting off the supply of the very poor. Many other Tammany officials were equally involved. Proceedings were begun some time after, looking to an official investigation of the Ice Trust’s affairs, and charges against Mayor Van Wyck were filed with Gov. Roosevelt. The latter were finally dismissed by the Governor in November, 1900.

In August, the committee uncovered the Ramapo scheme. The Ramapo Water Company, with assets “of at least the value of $5,000,” sought to foist upon the city a contract calling for payment from the city treasury of an enormous amount in annual installments of about $5,110,000, in return for at least 200,000,000 gallons of water a day, at $70 per million gallons. This wasproved to be an attempt toward a most gigantic swindle. Had not Controller Coler exposed and frustrated the scheme, the Tammany members of the Board of Public Improvements would have rushed the contract to passage.

Mr. Croker’s testimony threw a flood of light upon his political views and standards as well as his powers and emoluments as “boss.” He acknowledged that he had a powerful influence over the Tammany legislators at Albany, whose actions he advised, and that he exercised the same influence upon local officials. He readily conceded that he was the most powerful man he knew of.[2]“We try to have a pretty effective organization,” he said; “that is what we are there for.”[3]

Mr. Croker also admitted that judicial candidates were assessed in their districts.[4]In fact, some of the Judges themselves named the respective sums to the committee. Judge Pryor testified that he had been asked for $10,000 for his nomination for a vacant half-term in the Supreme Court.[5]Other judicial candidates, it was understood, paid from $10,000 to $25,000 for nominations.[6]Mr. Croker maintained that the organization was entitled to all the judicial, executive, administrative—in brief, all offices—because “that is what the people voted our ticket for.”[7]Mr. Croker refused to answer many questions tending to show that he profited by a silent partnership in many companies which benefited directly or indirectly by his power. “The man who is virtual ruler of the city,” said Frank Moss and Francis E. Laimbeer, counsel to the committee, in their report, “can insure peace and advantage and business to any concern that takes him and his friends in, and can secure capital here or abroad to float any enterprise, when he guarantees that the city officials will not interfere with it.” Mr. Croker was askedmany other questions touching this subject, but gave little information. He declined to answer the question whether $140,000 of the stock of the Auto-Truck Company had been given to him without the payment of a dollar; it was his “private affair.”[8]

“We are giving the people pure organization government,” he said. He referred to the thoroughness of discipline in the Wigwam, and stated that the only way to succeed was to keep the whip in hand over his henchmen. It took “a lot of time,” and he “had to work very hard at it.” Tammany was built up, he said, not only upon the political principles it held, but upon the way its members sustained one another in business. “We want the whole business, if we can get it”; “to the party belong the spoils”; “we win, and we expect every one to stand by us”; “I am working for my pocket all the time,” were some of Mr. Croker’s answers, most of them told in anything but grammatical English.

The general opinion obtained that the committee’s work would have been far more effective and free from charges of partizan bias if Thomas C. Platt, the Republican “boss,” had been summoned concerning his alleged political connection with the great corporations and financial interests, as Mr. Croker had been.

Apparently the disclosures made no deep impression on the city administration, for matters went along pretty much as before. On March 9, 1900, the New YorkTimespublished a detailed statement, which it later reiterated, that the sum of $3,095,000 a year was being paid by the gambling-house keepers of the city to the “gambling-house commission,” which, it said, was composed of two State Senators, a representative of the poolroom proprietors, and the head of one of the city departments. This commission, the account stated, received and passed upon applications, established the tariff to be paid by theapplicants, and supervised the collections. Later, in the same month, the Grand Jury handed down a presentment arraigning the city officials for the sway enjoyed by the criminal and vicious classes.[9]

Neither the Grand Jury’s presentment nor theTimes’sdetailed statements had the slightest effect on the conduct of the city administration. In November, however, a marked change occurred. For several years certain reform societies and ecclesiastical bodies, particularly the Episcopal Church, had sought to mitigate the open flaunting of immorality in the tenement houses of a particular police district on the East Side. The attempts had been resisted, not only by those living upon the proceeds of this immorality, but by the police themselves; and two ministers who had complained to certain police officials had been grossly insulted.

Immediately after the Presidential election, Bishop Henry C. Potter, of the Episcopal Church, in a stinging letter of complaint, brought the matter to the attention of Mayor Van Wyck. It was the psychologic moment for such an action, and it produced immediate results. Mr. Croker paused in his preparations for his usual trip to England long enough to give orders to put down the immorality complained of, and he appointed a committee of five to carry his mandate into effect, or at least to make some satisfactory show of doing so. He went further than this, for his orders included a general ukase to the lawbreakers of the city to “go slow,” or in other words, to observe, until further advices from headquarters, a certain degree of moderation in their infractions of law and their outrages upon decency.

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