FOOTNOTES

FOOTNOTES[1]Tweed testified in 1877 that Joseph F. Daly, with two others, constituted the sole membership of the “Citizens’ Association” of 1870, and that he had placated the three men by giving them offices, Mr. Daly securing a Judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas.[2]Stenographic minutes, p. 451.[3]Ibid., p. 465.[4]Ibid., p. 6806.[5]Ibid., p. 523.[6]Ibid., pp. 6891, etc.[7]Ibid., p. 464.[8]Stenographic minutes, p. 683.[9]On December 22, 1900, Gov. Roosevelt removed Asa Bird Gardiner, the Tammany District Attorney, who was popularly credited with having originated the phrase, “To hell with reform,” for having encouraged the turbulent element to open resistance of the law at the election. Eugene A. Philbin, an independent Democrat, was appointed his successor. The latter promptly demanded the resignations of many of Mr. Gardiner’s assistants. Before his election Gardiner had long been chairman of the Tammany Hall Legal Committee.

[1]Tweed testified in 1877 that Joseph F. Daly, with two others, constituted the sole membership of the “Citizens’ Association” of 1870, and that he had placated the three men by giving them offices, Mr. Daly securing a Judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas.

[2]Stenographic minutes, p. 451.

[3]Ibid., p. 465.

[4]Ibid., p. 6806.

[5]Ibid., p. 523.

[6]Ibid., pp. 6891, etc.

[7]Ibid., p. 464.

[8]Stenographic minutes, p. 683.

[9]On December 22, 1900, Gov. Roosevelt removed Asa Bird Gardiner, the Tammany District Attorney, who was popularly credited with having originated the phrase, “To hell with reform,” for having encouraged the turbulent element to open resistance of the law at the election. Eugene A. Philbin, an independent Democrat, was appointed his successor. The latter promptly demanded the resignations of many of Mr. Gardiner’s assistants. Before his election Gardiner had long been chairman of the Tammany Hall Legal Committee.

In the municipal campaign of 1901 the anti-Tammany forces combined upon the nomination of Seth Low, a Republican, for Mayor, and upon the nominations of various other candidates for city offices. Tammany’s candidate for Mayor was Edward M. Shepard. Both Mr. Low and Mr. Shepard were acclaimed by their respective supporters as men of standing, prestige and public character. Mr. Low was a man of wealth who had become president of Columbia University. Mr. Shepard was a lawyer of note, although some critics pointed out that his practise was that of a corporation attorney, serving the great vested interests. It may be remarked that Mr. Shepard was a son of the brilliant Lorenzo B. Shepard, who, as stated in Chapter XVI of this work, became a leader of Tammany Hall at so early an age and was chosen Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society.

The scandals of Mayor Van Wyck’s administration were conspicuous issues of the campaign of 1901. But there were two particularly noteworthy features pressed by the reformers in their indictment of Tammany. One of these issues, which made so deep an impression upon the public mind, especially in the densely populous East Side of New York City, was the flagrant immorality under which young girls of the tenderest age were often decoyed into lives of shame. The question thus presented was neither that of the “suppression of vice” nor that of how people could be made virtuous by mandate of law. The question, asput to voters, was whether a system under which a corrupt, money-making combination of vicious lawbreakers with police and other officials should be allowed to continue in abhorrent traffic.

A widely-circulated pamphlet published by the City Club for the Women’s Municipal League presented a series of facts as attested by court records, the statements of City Magistrates, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and others, and as reported by the Committee of Fifteen, composed of reformers, probing into the question. The pamphlet declared that the facts justified the conclusion that the business of ruining young girls and forcing them into a life of shame, for the money there was in it for the dealers, had recently grown to considerable proportions; that its existence was known to the police; that the police made little or no effort to stop it; that the police, or those for whom they acted, probably derived profit from the traffic; and that a reasonably active and efficient Police Department could stop the traffic of a deliberate merchandizing of the virtue of women, usually young girls. Details were given of numerous cases which had been passed upon in the courts, and a long description of the traffic was included from a statement made on October 21, 1901, by District Attorney Eugene A. Philbin of New York County.[1]

Justice William Travers Jerome, of the Court of Special Sessions, had already made a similar statement. He was quoted in the New YorkTimes, of June 27, 1901, as saying:

“People are simply ignorant of conditions on the East Side [of New York City]. If those conditions existed in some other communities there would be a Vigilance Committee speedily organized, and somebody would get lynched. The continued greed and extortion of the Police Captains who charge five hundred dollars for a disorderly resort to open in their precinct, and then collect fifty to a hundred [dollars] per month, has, however, made even vice unprofitable.Details, I know, are revolting and not nice to read, but yet the people ought to know about them. Just yesterday I sentenced to six months in the penitentiary the keepers of one of the most depraved houses of the East Side. I firmly believe that they were merely the agents of the man who owns not one but many of such places. He is well known as a politician in a certain notorious district.“That house is but one of hundreds within a radius of one mile of this building [the Criminal Court House] where criminals are sometimes brought to justice. I will stake my reputation that there are scores within less than that distance from here in which there are an average of ten or twelve children from thirteen to eighteen years old.”[2]

“That house is but one of hundreds within a radius of one mile of this building [the Criminal Court House] where criminals are sometimes brought to justice. I will stake my reputation that there are scores within less than that distance from here in which there are an average of ten or twelve children from thirteen to eighteen years old.”[2]

Nominated for District Attorney of New York County by the anti-Tammany forces, Mr. Jerome’s speeches on these existing conditions made a keen impression and excited the deepest feeling, especially among the people of the East Side. Intricate questions of taxation and arrays of figures proving an exorbitant budget and the waste of public funds could not make the same appeal to their indignation as the portrayal of conditions menacing their home life and polluting their environment. The facts thus spread forth caused the most intense resentment against Tammany.

In reply Tammany Hall sought to represent that the traffic thus described was largely mythical—and that at all events it was greatly exaggerated. It was no fiction, however, nor was police connivance and corruption a fiction, either. So far as the open flaunting of vicious conditions was concerned, Tammany Hall had itself been forced to recognize them; as a concession to public opinion Mr. Croker had, in November, 1900, appointed an Anti-Vice Committee with orders to investigate vice conditions and “clean up” the “Red Light” district. To impart a tone of good faith to the work of this committee, he had appointed Lewis Nixon, a naval academy graduate and a ship builder, its chairman. It was generally understood that this committee had been created as a clever campaign move to offset in the public mind the growing indignationagainst Tammany, many of the leaders of which, it was notorious, had profited richly from the system of police “protection” of vice.

In respect to the “white slave” traffic, however, it must be said, in justice to Tammany, that the factors attributed were not the only ones responsible, and such a traffic was far from being confined to New York City; it went on in other cities under Republican and Reform as well as Democratic rule. This was conclusively shown later by the necessity of the passage of a law passed by Congress aimed at the traffic (a law subsequently diverted somewhat from its original purpose), and by official investigations and court proceedings. The large number of prosecutions in the Federal courts under that law showed the widespread character of the traffic.

Another important issue of the municipal campaign of 1901 was the scandal growing out of the charges that William C. Whitney, Thomas F. Ryan, W. L. Elkins, P. A. B. Widener, Thomas Dolan and associates had looted the stockholders of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company of New York City of tens of millions of dollars. Whitney and Ryan were credited with being among the chief financial powers long controlling “Boss” Croker; and by means of his control of Tammany Hall, and in turn New York City, securing franchises, privileges and rights of enormous value. This control was often equally true of the New York State legislature; subsequent developments, in fact, revealed that in years when the Legislature was dominantly Republican and therefore could not be ordered by Mr. Croker, both Republican and Democratic legislators were corrupted by the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, or by agents acting for it.

According to Mr. W. N. Amory,[3]who was thoroughly familiar with the affairs of the Metropolitan Street RailwayCompany, and who exposed its looting, Mr. Jerome knew, in 1901, “that the conduct of Metropolitan affairs was corrupt. We had on numerous occasions discussed that point.”

Mr. Jerome made profuse public promises that if he were elected District Attorney he would press investigation. “Let me tell you,” he said at the conclusion of a speech on October 26, 1901, “that if I am elected I shall make it my business to follow the trail of wrongdoing and corruption not only when they lead into tenement houses, but I shall follow them even if they lead into the office of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company.” Mr. Jerome added: “No one knows better than I do that when I am attacking the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, I am arraying myself against the most dangerous, the most vindictive and the most powerful influences at work in this community.”[4]

Mr. Jerome’s denunciations and promises aroused great enthusiasm and large expectations; they had much effect in contributing to the result of the campaign, for it was popularly realized that while Tammany leaders accumulated their millions of dollars, yet back of these leaders, and secretly operating through them, were magnates of great financial power with their tens or hundreds of millions of dollars acquired largely by means of financial and industrial power conferred by legislation, permissory or statute, of various kinds. The electorate well knew that comparatively small grafters were numerous, but now it had the promise that the large spoliators, hitherto immune, would be exposed and prosecuted, if possible.

The result of the election was that Mr. Low was elected Mayor by a plurality of 31,636. Nearly all of the other anti-Tammany candidates for the large offices were also elected, although Tammany’s candidate for the Borough of the Bronx—Louis F. Haffen—was successful.The total vote stood: Low, 296,813; Shepard, 265,177. For other political parties, a small vote was cast: Benjamin Hanford, candidate for Mayor of the Social Democratic party, received 9,834 votes; Keinard, Socialist Labor candidate for Mayor, polled 6,213 votes, and Manierre, Prohibition candidate for Mayor, 1,264 votes.

That of a total vote of 561,990 votes cast for the two chief opposing candidates, Tammany and its allied organizations should have polled 265,177 votes, showed Tammany Hall’s enormous strength, even in the face of a combination of opponents, with all the strength of definite issues obviously putting Tammany on the defensive.

Realizing that the attacks upon him personally as the “boss” of Tammany Hall and of the city had been successful in a political sense, Mr. Croker wisely concluded, immediately after this defeat, to obscure himself and give an appearance of retiring from active participation in the affairs of Tammany Hall. Conscious, too, of the public discredit attaching to Tammany methods and Tammany leaders, he saw that the time had come to inject some show of an element of respectability and reform into Tammany Hall. He now underwent the formalities of an “abdication.”

On January 13, 1902, the astonishing news was made public that he had selected Lewis Nixon as his successor as the leader of Tammany Hall. Mr. Nixon, at this time, was forty-one years old; hailing from Leesburg, Virginia, he had been graduated from the United States Naval Academy, and had become a naval constructor, later owning his own naval ship plant at Elizabeth, New Jersey. He was also connected with a number of private corporations. In 1898 he had been appointed by Mayor Van Wyck to the office of President of the East River Bridge Commission, and in 1900-1901 had acted, as we have seen, as Chairman of Mr. Croker’s Anti-Vice Committee.

When the educated Mr. Nixon assumed what he styledthe leadership of Tammany Hall, not only seasoned politicians of all grades but also the sophisticated smiled skeptically. Tammany district leaders maintained in public an air of profound gravity and obedient acquiescence which caused general amusement. And when Mr. Nixon solemnly discussed his plans for the improvement of Tammany Hall, he was popularly regarded as an innocent. Even when Mr. Croker, as an apparent token of good faith, made Mr. Nixon chairman of the Tammany Finance Committee, few considered his appointment seriously; he was generally dubbed “the phantom leader.” Having attended to Mr. Nixon’s installation, Mr. Croker sailed abroad to his estate at Wantage; to all nominal appearances he had severed himself from Tammany politics.

This comedy lasted but a few months. On May 14, 1902, Mr. Nixon sent his resignation as leader to the Tammany Hall Executive Committee. He accompanied his resignation with a speech in which he declared that since he had become chairman of the Tammany Hall Finance Committee, he had found himself so hampered by a “kitchen cabinet” headed by Andrew Freedman (Mr. Croker’s business partner) and by the continued interference of the absent Mr. Croker, that he could no longer lead Tammany Hall and retain his self-respect in the circumstances.

“Every important act of mine,” Mr. Nixon announced, “has been cabled to England before it became effective. Mr. Freedman and his party interfered with me at every turn, and at last sought to dictate to me whom I ought to place on the Board of Sachems.

“Then a cablegram came from Wantage [Mr. Croker’s estate] direct to me to place certain men on the Board of Sachems, and when I rebelled I found that at every turn I would be opposed by this coterie of interferers.

“I found that nearly all my important acts had to be viséd before they became effective. Many of the districtleaders would accept my orders, but before carrying them out, they would get advice from Mr. Croker.”[5]

With this announcement Mr. Nixon vanished from the scene of Tammany politics.

As a matter of fact, certain Tammany district leaders were already planning to bring about a change of actual leadership.

On May 22, 1902, the Executive Committee of Tammany Hall took steps which tended to sever the relation that Mr. Croker retained with the organization. It voted to recommend the abolition of the Sub-Committee on Finance which had always been presided over by the various “bosses” of Tammany Hall, thus eliminating from the chairmanship of that committee Andrew Freedman, who was the representative and mouthpiece of the absentee Mr. Croker.

At the same time the Executive Committee chose a triumvirate of leaders to guide the organization. The regency of three thus selected were Charles F. Murphy, Daniel F. McMahon and Louis F. Haffen. All three, of course, were Tammany district leaders. Mr. Murphy’s career is described hereafter. Mr. McMahon was chairman of Tammany’s Executive Committee and head of the contracting firm of Naughton & Company. It was this company that made a fortune from the contract for changing the motive power of the Third Avenue Railway, regarding which there was so much scandal. With nothing more than powerful political “pull,” this concern obtained large contracts. It was charged by John C. Sheehan that Richard Croker secured 50 per cent. of the profits of this company, and that he pocketed $1,500,000 from this source; this assertion, however, depended merely upon Mr. Sheehan’s word; it was not established in any official investigation. The third member of the triumvirate,Mr. Haffen, was now president of the Borough of the Bronx.

But this triumvirate did not last long. On September 19, 1902, it was effaced, and Charles F. Murphy became the boss of Tammany. This action was taken at a meeting of the Executive Committee. At this meeting former Chief of Police Devery, holding that he had been elected at the primaries, tried to have himself recognized as a district leader, but his claims were speedily disposed of and he was shut out. Mr. Haffen handed in this resolution:

“Whereas, the experiment of the Committee of Three having proved the desirability of individual responsibility in leadership,“Resolved, That the powers and duties heretofore exercised and performed by the Committee of Three be hereafter exercised and performed by Charles F. Murphy.”

“Whereas, the experiment of the Committee of Three having proved the desirability of individual responsibility in leadership,

“Resolved, That the powers and duties heretofore exercised and performed by the Committee of Three be hereafter exercised and performed by Charles F. Murphy.”

Nine Tammany district leaders, headed by John F. Carroll, who evidently aimed at power himself, opposed the resolution, but twenty-seven other district leaders voted it through. One of the leaders immediately sent a cablegram to Mr. Croker announcing the result. Now that Mr. Murphy was chosen leader, he also became the treasurer of Tammany Hall.

FOOTNOTES[1]Facts for New York Parents, etc., Published for the Women’s Municipal League by the City Club of New York, October, 1901.[2]Ibid.[3]From 1895 to 1900 Mr. Amory was connected in an official capacity with the Third Avenue Railway Company.[4]Report of speech in the New YorkHerald, October 27, 1901.[5]This speech was published in the New YorkSunand other newspapers on the following day.

[1]Facts for New York Parents, etc., Published for the Women’s Municipal League by the City Club of New York, October, 1901.

[2]Ibid.

[3]From 1895 to 1900 Mr. Amory was connected in an official capacity with the Third Avenue Railway Company.

[4]Report of speech in the New YorkHerald, October 27, 1901.

[5]This speech was published in the New YorkSunand other newspapers on the following day.

Charles Francis Murphy, supreme leader of the Tammany organization from 1902 to this present writing, was born in New York City on June 20, 1858. He was a son of Dennis Murphy, an Irishman whose eight children all were born in the same district in New York City, and all of whom obtained the rudiments at least of a public school education. Dennis Murphy, it may be here said, lived to the remarkably hale age of eighty-eight years, dying in 1902.

As a youth, “Charlie” Murphy worked in an East Side shipyard, by no means a genteel schooling for a boy, although affording a forceful kind of experience of much value in his later career. Having to fight his way among rough youths, he developed both physical prowess and a sort of domineering ascendency which gave him marked leadership qualities among the virile youths overrunning what was then a district noted for its gangs. It was a section of the city filled with vacant lots and was long called the “Gas House District”; here it was that the notorious “Gas House Gang” achieved local reputation.

Tradition has it that when a very young man “Charlie” Murphy organized the Sylvan Social Club, a species of Tammany Hall juvenile auxiliary, composed of boys and youths ranging from fifteen to twenty years of age of whom he became the recognized leader. Later, through political influence, he obtained a job as driver on a cross-townhorse car line. In his later career his enemies invidiously related how jobs of that kind were much coveted at the time because of the fact that as there were no bell punches or car fare registers, the conductors could easily help themselves to a proportion of the fares and divide with the drivers. True, this practise was prevalent, but the implication thus cast upon Mr. Murphy has been simply a gratuitous one, lacking even the elements of proof; it can therefore be dismissed from consideration.

He was a manly youth noted for his filial care, a solicitous son, turning in most of his earnings to his mother; he was, in fact, the main support of the family. At the same time he put by enough money—said to have been $500—to establish himself in the saloon business.

In 1879 he became owner of a diminutive saloon on Nineteenth street, east of Avenue A. Four years later, he opened another saloon, larger and better equipped than the first, at the corner of Twenty-third street and Avenue A. He was already a pushful, resourceful Tammany worker in his district, in which he was a district captain. Of the underground methods and diversified influences of district politics he had a good knowledge, and no less so the application of campaign funds in the most effective ways for producing votes. Shortly before 1886, Mr. Murphy opened another saloon, this time at Nineteenth street and First avenue. Subsequently he opened still another saloon at Twentieth street and Second avenue, which was the headquarters of the Anawanda Club, the Tammany district organization. Selling out the original saloon in which he had started business, he now opened a saloon at the northwest corner of First avenue and Twenty-third street. By 1890 he was the owner of four prosperous saloons. It was said of him that he never tolerated a woman in his saloons, although all of his saloons were situated in a district where the admission of women was a commonplace.

In 1892, at the age of thirty-two years, he was chosen Tammany leader of the “Gas-House” district. He was popular with the generality of people there; however reserved was his talk, he was always credited with being generous with his cash; no poor person was turned away empty-handed. It was narrated of him that during the blizzard of 1888 the Tammany General Committee, at his prompting, voted $4,000 for the relief of the poor, and that a large part of it came from Mr. Murphy’s own pocket. Of the $4,000, the sum of $1,500 was given to the Rev. Dr. Rainsford’s mission for distribution. Such personal acts of human warmth (irrespective of motive) counted more with masses of voters than tons of formal polemics on civic virtue, nor did the recipients care as to what source the funds came from. Even Dr. Rainsford was so impressed that he was moved to say from the pulpit of St. George’s Church that if all the Tammany leaders were like the leader of the Eighteenth Assembly District (Mr. Murphy), Tammany would be an admirable organization.

As a district leader, Mr. Murphy carried on politics and saloons systematically as a combined business. One of his brothers had long been on the police force; another brother was an Alderman; still another brother became an Alderman and Councilman.

When Mr. Van Wyck was elected Mayor, Charles F. Murphy was appointed a Dock Commissioner. Report had it that when he went into the Dock Board Mr. Murphy “was worth” perhaps $400,000, accumulated in the saloon business and politics in eighteen years. He had long been known as “Silent Charlie.” Within a few years after his appointment as Dock Commissioner, his fortune, it was said, reached at least $1,000,000. When he became Dock Commissioner, Mr. Murphy nominally assigned his four saloons to a brother and three old friends.

Before leaving the office of Dock Commissioner, John J. Murphy (Charles F. Murphy’s brother), James E.Gaffney and Richard J. Crouch (one of Charles F. Murphy’s political district lieutenants) had incorporated the New York Contracting and Trucking Company. Gaffney was an Alderman. These three men were credited with holding only five shares each of the hundred shares of the company; just who held the remaining eighty-five shares has never been definitely explained. When quizzed later by a legislative committee, Charles F. Murphy denied that he had any ownership or financial interest in the New York Contracting and Trucking Company, and no records could be found proving that he did have any interest.

One of the transactions of this company was as follows: In July, 1901, the company leased a dock at West Ninety-sixth Street, and it leased another dock at East Seventy-ninth Street, paying the city a total rent of $4,800 a year for the two properties. It would appear from a report subsequently made by Commissioner of Accounts William Hepburn Russell to Mayor Low that the average profit from the two dock properties was $200 a day, making a rate of 5,000 per cent. on the investment. This particular transaction of the New York Contracting and Trucking Company, lucrative as it was, nevertheless was modest compared to the company’s subsequent transactions which we shall duly describe.

Certainly by the year 1902, Mr. Murphy showed the most visible evidences of some sizable degree of wealth; he acquired a suburban estate at Good Ground, Long Island, owning, too, in time, among other possessions denoting wealth, a string of automobiles.

This millionaire leader of Tammany Hall was by no means an unpleasant man to meet. He had a certain diffidence and he was not a good talker; his old habit of attentively listening was too strongly fixed. Physically strong, his deep voice and direct, concise manner when he did speak were impressive and always concentrated on the business at hand. He had none of theordinary vices; he drank liquor occasionally, it was true, but his drinks were sparse and the times far separated. In smoking he did not indulge, neither did he swear, nor gamble at cards, although he was not a stranger to stock market speculations. A communicant of the Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, he attended mass every Sunday, and gave liberal donations to the church. Unlike Mr. Croker, Mr. Murphy never cared to make the Democratic Club his headquarters; every night, when a district leader, Mr. Murphy could be found, from 7:30 to 10 o’clock, leaning against a lamp post at the northwest corner of Twentieth Street and Second Avenue. Everybody in the district knew that he would be there, accessible to anybody who wanted to talk to him. Such were the career and characteristics of the new leader of Tammany Hall—a dictator in fact, yet preserving all of the tokens of democratic accessibility.

Mayor Low’s administration failed to make an impression calculated to influence a majority of voters to reelect him. Quite true, most of his appointees to head the various departments were men of character, administrative capacity and sincerity of purpose—radically different types, indeed, from the Tammany district leaders who were usually appointed to those offices under Tammany administrations.

But in appointing Colonel John N. Partridge as commissioner of police, Mayor Low chose a weak and inefficient man. The demoralized condition of the police administration under Tammany had long been the special target of the reformers’ attacks, and people had expected a wholesome overhauling of that department under Mayor Low. Colonel Partridge’s administration, however, was so disappointing that the City Club was moved to demand his resignation. It criticized Commissioner Partridge for taking no adequate measures to break up the alliance between the police and crime, or to get a proper understanding of the underlying conditions in the police department,and further criticized him for surrounding himself at headquarters with notoriously corrupt officers, one of whom, in fact, was made his principal uniformed adviser.

The City Club’s criticism did not charge that Partridge was personally corrupt, but that he was weak and gullible and was ignorant of real conditions. “Commissioner Partridge and his deputies adopted the idea of ruling the police force according to military ideas. The word of a superior officer was accepted absolutely as against that of a subordinate. In a force where the superior officers had, for the most part, secured their promotions by bribery; where the superior officers were the beneficiaries of blackmailing; and where the honest men, as a rule, remained subordinates—the attempt to instil a spirit of respect among the men for their superiors excited only ridicule, and added to the prevalent demoralization.…”[1]

True as such a general statement was, it has been equally true, as experience has shown, that various other reform police commissioners have vainly tried “to break the system”; temporary figures, commissioners come and go, but “The System” has remained more or less intact. Even General Francis V. Greene, appointed by Mayor Low January 1, 1903, to succeed Colonel Partridge (who resigned the day before the trustees of the City Club’s demand for his resignation was handed in), found this to be a fact, notwithstanding his earnest, conscientious efforts to correct conditions in the police department.

The vote of the body of the police force themselves showed, in 1902, their complete dissatisfaction with conditions. At least 75 per cent. of the police force voted for Low in 1901; a year later fully 90 per cent. voted for Bird S. Coler, Tammany’s candidate for Governor.[2]

This was only one of many indications of a forthcoming Tammany victory. Even some reformers criticized Mayor Low as at all times ready to denounce the Tammany leader from whom he could expect nothing, while refraining from saying anything against Senator Thomas C. Platt, the Republican “boss” who represented and headed a political machine element not materially different from that of Tammany. Mayor Low, it was also critically pointed out, was not of a type to hold the goodwill of a large body of the proletarian voters; his views, manner and leanings were of an aristocratic order; and in a city where class distinctions were so notoriously and effectively exploited by Tammany Hall, nothing could be more destructive to the endurance of an administration than the popular belief that its head, however honest personally, embodied the interests and smug views of the people of wealth—that he was, in the expressive phrase of politics, “a silk-stocking.” Various acts of Mayor Low’s were cited against him and deepened this impression in the popular mind.[3]Mayor Low’s supporters pointed out energetically that he had reduced the city’s debt by $7,000,000; that he had reformed the system of tax collection; that he had secured for the city adequate payments for public franchise grants; that he had defeated corrupt “jobs”; that he had reformed the public school system—that in every way he had been a thorough reform Mayor. These representations, the election result showed, were in vain.

With conditions favorable to its return to power, Tammany Hall took measures to make its ticket in the municipal campaign of 1903 headed by a candidate whose name stood for prestige and respectability.

Tammany’s candidate for Mayor was George B. McClellan, whose father of the same name, after serving as Commanding General in the Union Army during part ofthe Civil War, had been the Democratic candidate for President of the United States in 1864. A political protégé of Charles F. Murphy, George B. McClellan had seen service in Congress and had been selected by Mr. Murphy as Tammany’s candidate for Mayor a considerable time before the campaign opened. Jealousy antagonistic to Tammany’s domination and assertion of supreme power, the Brooklyn Democratic organization, then under control of “Boss” Hugh McLaughlin, opposed McClellan’s nomination, but Mr. Murphy carried his point.

To the amazement and chagrin of the Republicans and Fusionists, Tammany Hall then consummated a bold and astute political stroke by appropriating two of the three principal nominees of its opponents’ ticket, and nominating them as Tammany candidates. These two men were Edward M. Grout and Charles V. Fornes, respectively occupying the offices of Controller and President of the Board of Aldermen under Mayor Low’s administration. With Mayor Low they had been renominated. Thus did Tammany shrewdly weaken the other side and present itself as having two chief candidates of the same identity and capacity as those of the reformers. Mayor Low and his supporters did not accept this unhumorous situation complacently; they indignantly forced Grout and Fornes off their ticket. But the effect sought by Tammany had been produced.

Mr. McClellan was elected Mayor by a plurality of 62,696. The vote resulted: McClellan, 314,782; Low, 252,086. Furman, candidate for Mayor of the Social Democratic party, received 16,596 votes; Hunter, the Socialist Labor party’s candidate for Mayor, 5,205 votes. For the Prohibition ticket 869 votes were cast. In this election Tammany also elected its candidates, including Grout and Fornes, to all of the other important city offices, except the Presidency of the Borough of Richmond. The results of the election practically gave Tammany Hall full control of the city.

FOOTNOTES[1]The Police Department of the City of New York—A Statement of Facts, published by the City Club of New York, October, 1903, pp. 52-55, etc.[2]Ibid., p. 58.[3]See a long letter from a leading reformer published in the New YorkHerald, April 12, 1903.

[1]The Police Department of the City of New York—A Statement of Facts, published by the City Club of New York, October, 1903, pp. 52-55, etc.

[2]Ibid., p. 58.

[3]See a long letter from a leading reformer published in the New YorkHerald, April 12, 1903.

Graft of all kinds was rampant, as later official investigation showed, in Tammany-controlled departments, but in the public mind the question of this form of graft was vastly overshadowed by the revelations of the New York legislative committee investigating the great life insurance companies.

The disclosures showed that Republican legislators as well as Democratic were bought; that enormous corruption funds had been contributed to both political parties, and that one political machine was no better than the other.

Bribery expenditures, the committee reported, were classified on the various insurance companies’ books as “legal expenses.” The committee described the amounts as extraordinarily large. In the year 1904 alone, the Mutual Life Insurance Company thus disbursed $364,254.95; the Equitable Life Assurance Society, $172,698.42, and the New York Life Insurance Company, $204,019.25.[1]

Andrew C. Fields, long engaged by the Mutual Life Insurance Company to manipulate legislation at Albany, lived there in a sumptuously furnished house jocosely styled the “House of Mirth.” The expenditures were charged to “legal expenses.” The Mutual thus expended more than $2,000,000 in “legal expenses” from 1898 to1904.[2]And from 1895 to 1904, the total payments made by the New York Life Insurance Company to Andrew Hamilton, its chief lobbyist at Albany, amounted to $1,312,197.16, all of which sum was soberly entered as “legal expenses.”[3]A present of nearly $50,000 was contributed in 1894 by the New York Life Insurance Company to the campaign fund of the Republican National Committee, and similar amounts in 1896 and 1900 to the same recipient.[4]All of the large insurance companies regularly contributed funds not only for national political campaigns, but for those in the States; the Equitable, for example, gave $50,000 in 1904 to the Republican National Committee, and had also, for many years, been giving $30,000 annually to the New York State Republican Committee.[5]The legislative investigating committee found it impossible to trace all of the directions of this continuous great corruption. “Enormous sums,” the committee stated, “have been expended in a surreptitious manner.”

Under the pressure of public opinion, District Attorney Jerome finally caused the Grand Jury to proceed against a few of the figureheads involved; the great magnates who had profited so enormously from the huge frauds, were, so events proved, left untouched. Although it had been clearly proved by the testimony that the frauds and corruptions consummated were gigantic, not a single one of those of great wealth implicated was ever sent to jail or even incommoded by the formality of a trial.

In the face of such disclosures, the opponents of Tammany could not well point to Tammany corruption as an exclusive product. It was a time, too, when what was termed “muckraking” was almost at its height; magazines and newspapers, were filled with articles exposing in detail the corruptions and colossal manipulations and spoliation done by great corporations and other vestedinterests, and the close connection between these and the “bosses” and machines of both old political parties. Public attention was concentrated more upon these nationwide scandals than upon local graft—petty, indeed, in some respects, compared to the great extortions of trusts and other industrial, transportation and financial corporations.

These factors had their influence in developing in New York City a powerful movement called the Municipal Ownership League, later passing under the name of the Independence League. The head of this organization was William R. Hearst. He had inherited a large fortune from his father, United States Senator George Hearst. The estate comprised a San Francisco newspaper; and William R. Hearst had come to New York, where he now had a morning and an evening newspaper. Of a sensational order, yet written in popular style, these newspapers had an extensive circulation, and their agitational matter were in reality the mainstay of his movement. Two of the local objectives of this agitation were the scandalous overcrowding of the street car system and the methods by which the subway system in New York City, built by the city’s credit, had been turned over to the profit of private interests. At the same time, no means was neglected to awaken popular resentment against the “plunderbund” fattening on the people, and to arouse indignation against the bossism of Tammany Hall. Day after day effective articles, editorials and cartoons were published; written in a simple style, understandable by the crudest intelligence, they produced a great effect among the voters. Nothing quite like this original kind of political journalism had ever been known in New York City.

The operations of the New York Contracting and Trucking Company, in particular, supplied facts which were used effectually by newspapers and civic organizations to show the new methods by which Tammany leaders were gathering in millions from contracts. This company,as we have seen, was headed by John J. Murphy, brother of the Tammany Hall chief, and by Alderman James E. Gaffney.

Its transactions revealed the great difference between Tweed’s methods and those of the later leaders of Tammany Hall. Under the Tweed régime tens of millions of dollars were stolen outright. The lesson of the overthrow of the Tweed “ring” was not lost on his successors. Mr. Croker refused to countenance such outworn, discarded and dangerous methods of theft. They had resulted disastrously to Tammany in Tweed’s day. In place of direct thieving methods of getting rich, indirect methods, surrounded with secrecy and every possible precaution against detection, were developed. Some Tammany district leaders became opulent on blackmail and extortion, the circuitous route of which it was most difficult to trace (in a legal sense) to its final destination. As for Mr. Croker himself, the question was frequently put to him, “Where did you get it?”[6]He could reply that his operations in amassing his wealth were entirely legitimate; “inside” real estate speculations, connections with trust companies and other corporations and stock transactions. Knowing him to be the source of much legislation and administrative favors worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to corporations, his opponents were by no means wholly satisfied with such an explanation, but whatever their suspicions they could never prove that he had personally profited from selling legislation. Essentially, however, Mr. Croker never posed as a business man; he was a politician.

But by the period when Charles F. Murphy became “chief,” the “business-man” type of leader had evolved. Under this plan—a plan that afforded the most plausible opportunities for explaining the sudden acquisition of wealth—Tammany men became open or secret partnersin contracting firms, using the pressure of political power to have large contracts awarded to their concerns. It was not necessary for these leaders to know anything of contracting; they could be ignorant of every detail; their one aim was to get the contracts; the actual skilled work could be done by hired professional men. No law penalized such methods, respectable in every appearance. At the same time, inasmuch as speculating in the stock market was legitimate in law, fortunes could be made in acting upon advance information of legislative or other official means concerning certain corporations.

The first large contract obtained by the New York Contracting and Trucking Company was a $2,000,000 contract for excavating the site for the new Pennsylvania Railroad Station in New York City.

For a long time, notwithstanding reiterated protests from the press and public organizations, the Board of Aldermen, controlled by Tammany, had obstinately refused to vote for the franchise giving the Pennsylvania Railroad power to use streets for its tunnel approaches and terminal in Manhattan, New York City. Reports were circulated that the sum of $300,000 had been demanded by the Aldermen, and that until that sum was produced they would not vote for the franchise. It was noted that it was “Big Jim” Gaffney, “outside man” for the New York Contracting and Trucking Company and Alderman from Leader Charles F. Murphy’s district, who, together with “Little Tim” Sullivan, Tammany leader in the Board of Aldermen, took a leading part in persuading the Aldermen to hold out against giving the franchise for the Pennsylvania tunnel. The newspapers unanimously described the Aldermanic action as a “hold-up.” Likewise, it was also noted that when from some mysterious quarter orders reached Tammany Aldermen to vote for the franchise, it was Alderman Gaffney who took the lead in rallying the Aldermen to vote it through.

This sudden change of front after a protracted “hold-up,”puzzled the public exceedingly, and sinister imputations were made. Not until months later did the public begin to see illumination; it was then announced that although the New York Contracting and Trucking Company had not been the lowest bidder (its bid, according to report, was $400,000 more than that of a competitor), nevertheless it had been awarded the $2,000,000 contract for digging the Pennsylvania Railroad site.

In the case of the awarding of a contract covering several million dollars in February, 1905, to the New York Contracting and Trucking Company for the six-track local improvement of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the circumstances were much the same.

A franchise had been asked for a project called the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad Company. At the same time, another company calling itself the New York and Port Chester Railroad Company, made a similar application and opposed the other company. Both companies, as subsequent developments showed, were in fact owned by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad; the opposition of one to the other was evidently for mere effect.

For three years the Board of Aldermen refused to give the franchises, either one of which would give the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad its own independent entrance into New York City. Somehow and from somewhere the announcement was now made that unless the Board of Aldermen acted, a law would be passed by the Legislature stripping it of all power of granting franchises. This threat was executed; the Legislature passed an act vesting franchise-granting power in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. It may here be parenthetically noted that with the great powers increasingly vested in it the Board of Estimate became the most compact and powerful instrument of government that had ever been developed in the government of New York City.

This body is composed of eight officials. Of these, three officials,—the Mayor, the Controller and the President of the Board of Aldermen,—have, by reason of a greater vested plurality of votes, the dominance of power. The other five members are the Borough Presidents.

The first point passed upon by this Board was the question of whether or not the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad Company was or was not a defunct corporation. On March 30, 1904, Corporation Council Delany (elected by Tammany Hall) reported to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment that the Board had no jurisdiction to examine the legal capacity or incapacity of the company.[7]

On June 24, 1904, the company received its franchise. The company was really an adjunct of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, and its franchise gave it the right to operate more than sixteen miles of four-track line within New York City; the company secured practically all the available routes for entrance and exit to and from New York City by way of the Bronx. It was the $6,000,000 contract for constructing this railroad improvement that the New York Contracting and Trucking Company secured.

The declaration was made that no other contractor had ventured to compete for this work; and the explanation was offered in some quarters that inasmuch as a large part of the work was located inside the city limits and as an unfriendly city administration might do much to hamper the carrying out of the contract, the New York, New Haven and Hartford officials, with a cautious eye to the railroad’s interests, were willing to award the contract to the Tammany firm and pay higher prices. Mr. Gaffney asserted that politics had nothing to do with the obtaining of the contract and that his company “hadbid with other contractors and won out,” but politicians did not take this statement seriously. In February, 1907, the New York Contracting and Trucking Company surrendered its contract for a consideration of $500,000 to another company, the Holbrook, Cabot & Daly Company, which had previously done much of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad’s construction work. It was not until seven years later that the fact, originally suspected, as to why the contract had been given without competition to the Gaffney-Murphy company, was authoritatively stated. On May 20, 1914, Charles S. Mellen, long president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, testified before the Interstate Commerce Commission that the contract had been turned over to that Tammany concern “to avoid friction with the city,” meaning that by giving the contract to the Tammany company, city officials would attempt no “hold-up,” such as placing obstacles in the way of carrying the construction work through.

Further disclosures strongly indicated that during the time when the Westchester franchise was acquired by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, certain powers in Tammany Hall “had to be taken care of,” and that they benefited financially.

After being looted of large sums in financial jugglery, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad had been thrown on the verge of insolvency. It was revealed in 1918 that a certain $12,000,000 of New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad money put into the Westchester project had mysteriously vanished in unexplained directions. The Interstate Commerce Commission, in 1914, conducted an investigation to find out specifically, if possible, what became of those missing millions.

On April 24, 1914, Oakley Thorne, a New York banker, who had been the agent of J. P. Morgan & Company in handling the $12,000,000 for the purpose of secretly purchasing the Westchester and the Portchester franchisesfor the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, gave certain testimony before the Interstate Commerce Commission. He averred that he had burned the books containing the particulars as to how he had spent at least $8,000,000; he explained that he therefore could not give names, amounts and dates. A letter written by Mr. Thorne in October, 1906, to C. S. Mellen, president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, was produced. In this letter Thorne wrote that “there are people in Fourteenth Street who are very strongly in favor of Westchester and others in favor of Portchester,” and suggested that “both sides will have to be taken care of.” Asked what the reference to “Fourteenth Street” meant, Thorne replied, “Why, I believe, Tammany Hall.” Mr. Thorne testified that he could not possibly remember the names of any individuals in “Fourteenth Street” who “had to be taken care of,” but he admitted that he knew that “Big Tim” Sullivan was “friendly” to the Westchester “enterprise” and owned stock in it; at the time this testimony was given Sullivan was dead.

Mr. Thorne asserted that he could not recall definite particulars, but he could vaguely remember that there were persons in “Fourteenth Street” who had, at the time, been “interested in the Westchester City and Contract Company, the New York Development Company and other concerns that subsequently formed a part of the Westchester combination turned over to the New Haven [the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company] through Morgan & Company.” Certain “persons in Fourteenth Street,” Mr. Thorne further testified, had to be bought off because of their “nuisance value,” but precisely what was the nature of that “nuisance value” was not explained. In the disposition of the many millions of dollars placed in his hands, Mr. Thorne was not required to make any accounting or give any vouchers.

Further details of later developments were given in the testimony of Charles S. Mellen, president of the New York,New Haven and Hartford Railroad during the years when the above franchises were acquired.

On May 14, 1914, Mr. Mellen testified, at a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission, that the directors of that railroad set aside a fund of $1,200,000, the value of 8,000 shares of New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad stock, which sum was distributed among “people of influence” in the politics of New York City for the procuring of certain much-desired changes in the charter of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad Company. Mr. Mellen further testified that Inspector Thomas F. Byrnes, who, for many years, had been head of the New York Police Department (and who was deceased at the time of this hearing) had acted as the go-between in this transaction; that Byrnes agreed to obtain thirteen different modifications or “amendments” to the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad charter from New York city’s officials; and that to bring about these results stock, or its equivalent in cash, to the sum of $1,200,000, was given to Byrnes for distribution among Tammany politicians whose identity Mr. Mellen declared that he did not know. Mr. Mellen’s testimony revealed that some of these persons accepted stock made out in the names of dummies, but that the majority demanded and received cash for their “services.” All but $50,000 of the $1,200,000 was distributed.

The records of the Board of Estimate in 1908 and 1909 bear out Mr. Mellen’s testimony; they show that nearly every request for alterations of the charter or extensions of time made by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was granted. The Board of Estimate during the years in question consisted of Mayor McClellan; Controller Herman A. Metz; Patrick F. McGowan, President of the Board of Aldermen; John F. Ahearn, President of the Borough of Manhattan; Bird S. Coler, President of the Borough of Brooklyn; Louis F. Haffen, President of the Borough of the Bronx; Lawrence Gresser,President of the Borough of Queens, and George Cromwell, President of the Borough of Richmond.[8]

Continuing his testimony, Mr. Mellen stated, on May 20, 1914, that upon further recollection he found that the amount distributed to politicians in connection with securing the Westchester franchise and alterations to the charter, really totaled $1,500,000 or $1,600,000. Much of this amount was presented in the form of due bills sent in by Tammany politicians by means of messengers; Mr. Mellen personally handed over cash for the due bills, but the names of the recipients he said he could not remember. “Do you know,” Mr. Mellen was asked, “what all this Westchester and Portchester stock was doing in Tammany Hall?” “I know,” he replied, “what it was doing to me when I took it on. It was costing me lots of money.” “Do you know how all this stock reached Tammany Hall?” “I have not the slightest idea. I could suppose a lot of things, but I do not know anything about it.”

Submitting, on July 11, 1914, the results of its investigation to the United States Senate, the Interstate Commerce Commission reported that the facts as to the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway transaction constituted “a story of the profligate waste of corporate funds.” The fullest details are set forth in that report of the magnitude of the corruption used. Commenting upon Mr. Mellen’s testimony, the report declared: “The testimony is somewhat occult, but the character of the transaction is no less certain. This money was used for corrupt purposes, and the improper expenditures coveredup by the transfer to the New Haven [New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company] of these worthless securities.… It seems very strange that Mr. Mellen was not able to identify with any particularity any one with whom he had these transactions except the late Thomas F. Byrnes. No comment is necessary to make clear to the mind the corrupt and unlawful nature of this transaction, and it would seem that the amount illegally expended could be recovered from Mr. Mellen and the directors who authorized it.…”[9]

There is now pending (1917) a suit in the United States District Court brought by the stockholders against the former directors of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company and against the company for the return of $165,000,000 alleged to have been lost to the treasury of that railroad in various ways.

To return, however, to the operations of the New York Contracting and Trucking Company: Another contract secured by that concern was a contract from the Consolidated Gas Company for grading the site for the Astoria gas plant; the franchise for the Astoria “Gas Grab” had been supported by Tammany.

By 1905 it was estimated that the New York Contracting and Trucking Company or its offshoots had received contracts aggregating $15,000,000—all contracts from corporations and interests benefiting from the city government or depending upon favors from it. Yet two years previously this very company was a nonentity as far as securing large contracts were concerned, and none of its heads had any experience in the contracting business. Now in a certain well-understood field, it was virtually free from competition.

None could now fail to note the great transition fromthe Tweed period when Tammany leaders used only the vulgar and criminal methods of stealing money out of the city treasury. Under Murphy’s leadership the obvious methods used were those of “honest graft”—the making of millions from contracts with public service corporations, and this was represented as legitimate business. Fully six Tammany district leaders were members of or “interested” in large contracting firms, although the heads of these, often of a nominal character, were not known as Tammany leaders. These concerns employed a total of many thousands of men, all of whom were expected to be useful at the primaries and elections.

At this time there was discernible the beginnings of a growing feeling that reform officials, while prosecuting gamblers and comparatively petty offenders of all stripes, somehow were singularly ineffective in bringing about the prosecution of corporation magnates charged with looting on a large scale. This feeling had not crystallized as yet, but it was felt in some quarters.

Some of District Attorney Jerome’s former supporters were impressed by the fact that despite his campaign promises, he had not caused the indictment or other prosecution of the men who had looted the Metropolitan Street Railway Company. James W. Osborne, a noted attorney, had declared in open court in 1903, that the “insiders” had, by means of duplicating of construction accounts, manipulation and in other ways, stolen $30,000,000. Mr. Amory declared and specified that an additional $60,000,000 had, by various processes of devious manipulation, gone to enrich the “insiders”—a total of $90,000,000.

On April 25, 1903, Mr. Osborne gave out this statement: “We have produced evidence before Magistrate Barlow which shows a crime has been committed, and now it is up to the District Attorney to say whether he will avail himself of that evidence and proceed against those who have committed the crime. We have charged in opencourt that $30,000,000 has been stolen, and that [statement] never has been disproved by the Metropolitan Company or its counsel. I told Mr. Nicoll, counsel for Mr. Vreeland [president of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company] openly he would not be able to disprove my charges.”

Mr. Amory openly declared that Mr. Jerome’s investigation of the matter in 1903 was not undertaken in good faith. “It was,” he wrote, “a deliberate whitewash. I have documentary evidence to prove it.” Mr. Amory charged that of the twenty-seven distinct written charges filed with Mr. Jerome against the Metropolitan management, Mr. Jerome’s accountant reported on only seven, and these latter were of minor importance, involving chiefly technicalities of accounts and not serious crimes. Yet Mr. Jerome, was Mr. Amory’s indignant comment, represented that the accountant’s report was “very clear and full and takes up every charge” and that Mr. Jerome had reported that “the specific charges so far as they involve criminal wrong-doing are entirely without foundation.”[10]

While thus declaring that he could find nothing on which to base prosecution of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company magnates, District Attorney Jerome showed by other acts, it was complained, that petty criminals would be prosecuted to the limit of the law. He was charged with discriminating between rich and powerful business offenders, on the one side, and on the other, poor and relatively uninfluential violators of the law.

On one occasion Mr. Jerome appeared before labor unions, delivered homilies on the virtues, and warned them that he would make short shrift of labor grafters. This lecture had reference to the case of Sam Parks, a labor leader, charged with grafting on employers and receiving money for prompting or “calling off” strikes. DistrictAttorney Jerome waited for no elaborate formal investigation; he immediately started the machinery of his office against Parks and caused him to be convicted. Already a dying consumptive, Parks was sentenced to prison, where he died shortly after. But no action, it was pointed out, was taken against powerful construction companies that had bribed Parks and other labor leaders to declare strikes on buildings for which competitors had the contracts.[11]Another much-discussed incident was the result of a collision of railroad trains in the Park Avenue tunnel—a collision maiming and killing many persons. The obsolete and dangerous condition of this tunnel had long been known. It was commented that District Attorney Jerome did not make the slightest move against the railroad directors; he hurriedly caused the indictment and arrest of Wisker, a railroad engineer, as the sole culprit and proceeded with despatch to his trial. The jury, however, refused to convict the engineer.

Considering that Mr. Jerome was a leading reformer, such contrasts were gradually calculated to make the very mention of reform odious to the observing of the working people. The complaint was generally heard that the big grafters were safe and immune, while petty offenders were dealt with rigorously. Nevertheless, a large number of voters, influenced by a stream of praise from the press, still believed in Mr. Jerome’s promises and motives, and his action in 1905 in not securing a renomination from political bosses but procuring it independently by means of a petition circulated among electors, strengthened the old belief that he was sincere and was independent of political and other domination. Much was madeof the fact of his independent renomination. The Republicans withdrew their candidate for District Attorney and nominated Mr. Jerome, and the press in general enthusiastically supported him. He was reelected. It was not until some years later when the full effects of his administration could be popularly realized in perspective, that Jerome fell into general disfavor with the voters.

As an instance of the methods of contractors under the Tammany régime during this time, it is only necessary to mention the facts, later disclosed in an investigation by John Purroy Mitchel, Commissioner of Accounts, as to how in 1904 defective hose was sold to the Fire Department. The Windsor Fire Appliance Company (of which the president and chief stockholder was Michael F. Loughman, later appointed Deputy Commissioner of Water Supply) sold 25,000 feet of hose to New York City for $23,410.25. Although this hose did not answer the specifications of the contract, it was accepted. The consequence was that it burst many times at fires, some of them serious. The same was true of equally worthless hose supplied by other contractors.

The municipal election in 1905 was a triangular contest. Tammany Hall did not fear the Republican ticket headed by William M. Ivins for Mayor. But it did have intense uneasiness over the possibility of Mr. Hearst triumphing; his movement was too plainly making inroads among large numbers of voters that ordinarily would have voted the Tammany ticket. Tammany was particularly bent upon winning inasmuch as by the provisions of the revised charter the term of the incoming Mayor and other officials had been changed to a four-year incumbency. Hearst was the Municipal Ownership League’s candidate for Mayor, and Tammany renominated Mayor McClellan. So effective were Hearst’s onslaughts on “Boss” Murphy and the elements represented by him that during the campaign Mayor McClellan repeatedly made promises thathe would thereafter pursue an independent course, should he be reelected.

Mr. Hearst’s vote returns came in so heavily after the polls were closed that it looked as though he were certainly elected. That very night there was a strange interruption, lasting about an hour, in the public giving-out of the returns. Then as the returns were resumed, it appeared that although the vote between McClellan and Hearst was extremely close, McClellan had a little the better of it. The next day it was announced that Mayor McClellan was reelected by a close margin. Mr. Hearst and his followers declared that manifest fraud had been committed, and took steps to have a recount. Meantime while this process was dragging along, Mayor McClellan was widely criticized for his action in immediately claiming his reelection, opposing a recount, and not showing faith in the legitimacy of his claims by waiting with dignity until there had been a careful official recount.

The final official recount gave this result: McClellan, 228,407 votes Hearst, 224,929 votes; Ivins, 137,184 votes. It may be added here that in the very next year—in 1906—Hearst accepted a Tammany indorsement when he ran for Governor, but he was defeated by Charles E. Hughes, who, as counsel for the Legislative Insurance Committee, had achieved wide popularity for his exposure of the insurance company iniquities.

With the reelection of Mr. McClellan, Tammany Hall confidently looked forward to four more years of unquestioned control of the immense budget and enormous opportunities embodied in the rule of New York City.

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