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Episode 23 - Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader · Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

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  Chapter twenty three, Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader. Note this chapter
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  is based on extracts from Plugget's diary and on my daily observation of the work
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  of the District Leader W. L. R. The life of the Tammany
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  District Leader is strenuous. To his work is due the wonderful recupertive power of
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  the organization. One year it goes down in defeat, and the prediction is
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  made that it will never raise its head. The district leader, undaunted by
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  defeat, collects his scattered forces, organizes them as only Tammany knows how to
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  organize, and a little while the organization is as strong as ever. No
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  other politician in New York or elsewhere is exactly like the Tammany District Leader or
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  works as he does. As a rule, he has no business or occupation
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  other than politics. He plays politics every day and night of the year,
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  and his headquarters bears the inscription never closed. Everybody in the district knows him,
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  everybody knows where to find him, and nearly everybody goes to him for
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  assistance of one sort or another, especially the poor of the tenements. He
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  is always obliging. He will go to the police courts to put in a
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  good word for the drunks and disorderlies, or pay their fines. If a
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  good word is not effective, he will attend christenings, weddings and funerals.
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  He will feed the hungry and help bury the dead. A philanthropist not at
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  all. He is playing politics all the time. Brought up in Tammany Hall,
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  he has learned how to reach the hearts of the great mass of voters.
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  He does not bother about reaching their heads. It is his belief that
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  arguments in campaign literature have never gained votes. He seeks direct contact with the
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  people, does them good turns when he can, and relies on their not
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  forgetting him on election day. His heart is always in his work, too,
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  for his subsistence depends on its results. If he holds his district and
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  Tammany is in power, he is amply rewarded by a good office and the
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  opportunities that go with it. What these opportunities are has been shown by the
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  quick rise to wealth of so many Tammany District readers, with the examples before
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  him of Richard Crocker, once leader of the twentieth District, John F.
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  Carroll, formerly leader of the twenty ninth, Timothy dry Dollar Sullivan, late
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  leader of the sixth, and many others. He can always look forward to
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  riches and ease while he is going through the drudgery of his daily routine.
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  This is a record of a day's work by Plunkett. Two. A M
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  aroused from sleep by the ringing of his doorbell, went to the door and
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  found a bartender who asked him to go to the police station and bail out
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  a saloon keeper who had been arrested for violating the excised law. Furnished bail
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  and returned to bed. At three o'clock six A M, awakened by fire
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  engines passing his house, hastened to the scene of the fire, according to
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  the custom of the Tammany district leaders to give assistance to the fire sufferers if
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  needed. Met several of his election district captains, who are always under orders
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  to look out for fires which are considered great vote getters, found several tenants
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  who had been burned out, took them to a hotel, supplied them with
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  clothes, fed them, and arranged temporary quarters for them until they could rent
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  and furnish new apartments. Eight thirty A M went to the police court to
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  look after his constituents, found six drunks, secured the discharge of four by
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  a timely word with the judge, and paid the fines of two. Nine
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  A M appeared in a municipal district court, directed one of his district captains
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  to act as council for a widow against whom dispossessed proceedings had been initiated,
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  and obtained an extension of time, paid the rent of a poor family about
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  to be dispossessed, and gave them a dollar for food. Eleven A M
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  at home again found four men waiting for him. One had been discharged by
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  the Metropolitan Railway Company for a neglect of duty and wanted the district leader to
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  fix things. Another wanted a job on the road, the third sought a
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  place on the subway, and the fourth, a plumber, was looking for
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  work with the Consolidated Gas Company. The district leader spent nearly three hours fixing
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  things for the four men and succeeded in each case. Three PM attended the
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  funeral of an Italian as far as the ferry, hurried back to make his
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  appearance at the funeral of a Hebrew constituent went conspicuously to the front both in
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  the Catholic Church and the synagogue, and later attended the Hebrew confronation ceremonies in
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  the synagogue. Seven p m. Went to district headquarters and presided over a
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  meeting of election district captains. Each captain submitted a list of all the voters
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  in his district, reported on their attitude toward tammany suggested who might be won
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  over and how they would be One told who were in need and who were
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  in trouble of any kind, and the best way to reach them. District
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  leader took notes and gave orders. Eight pm. Went to a church fair,
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  took chances on everything, bought ice cream for the young girls and the
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  children, kissed the little ones, flattered them brother and took their fathers out
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  for something down at the corner. Nine pm at the clubhouse. Again,
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  spent ten dollars on tickets for a church excursion and promised a subscription for a
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  new church. Bell bought tickets for a baseball game to be played by two
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  nines from his district. Listen to the complaints of a dozen pushcart peddlers who
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  said they were persecuted by the police and assured them he would go to police
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  headquarters in the morning and see about it. Ten thirty pm attended a Hebrew
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  wedding reception and dance, had previously sent a handsome wedding present to the bride.
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  Twelve pm in bed. This is the actual record of one day in
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  the life of Plunkett. He does some of the same things every day,
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  but his life is not so monotonous as to be wearisome. Sometimes the work
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  of a district leader is exciting, especially if he happens to have a rival
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  who intends to make a contest for the leadership at the primaries. In that
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  case, he is even more alert, tries to reach the fires before his
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  rival, sends out runners to look for drunks and disorderlies at the police stations,
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  and keeps a very close watch on the obituary columns of the newspapers.
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  A few years ago there was a bitter contest for the Tammany leadership of the
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  ninth District between John C. Sheehan and Fred J. Goodwin. Both had
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  long experience in Tammany politics and both understood every move of the game. Every
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  morning, their agents went to their respective headquarters before seven o'clock and read through
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  the death notices in all the morning papers. If they found that anybody in
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  the district had died, they rushed to the homes of their principles with the
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  nation, and then there was a race to the house of the deceased to
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  offer condolences, and if the family were poor, something more substantial. On
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  the day of the funeral, there was another contest. Each faction tried to
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  surpass the other in number and appearances of the carriages it's sent to the funeral,
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  and more than once they almost came to blows at the church or in
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  the cemetery. On one occasion, the Goodwin Nights played a trick on their
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  adversaries which has since been imitated in other districts. A well known liquor dealer
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  who had a considerable falling died, and both she Han and Goodwin were eager
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  to become his political error by making a big showing at the funeral. Goodwin
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  managed to catch the enemy napping. He went to all the livery stables in
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  the district, hired all the carriages for the day, and gave orders to
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  two hundred of his men to be on hand as mourners. She Han had
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  never had any trouble about getting all the carriages that he wanted, so he
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  let the matter go until the night before the funeral. Then he found that
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  he could not hire a carriage in the district. He called his district committee
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  together in a hurry and explained the situation to them. He could get all
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  the vehicles he needed in the adjoining district, he said, but if he
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  did that, Goodwin would rouse the voters of the ninth by declaring that he,
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  she hand had patronized foreign industries. Finally, it was decided that there
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  was nothing to do but to go over to sixth Avenue and Broadway for carriages.
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  She Hand made a fine turnout at the funeral, but the deceased was
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  hardly in his grave before Goodwin raised the cry of protection to home industries and
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  announced his rival for patronizing livery stable keepers outside of his district. The error
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  had its effect in the primary campaign. As all events, Goodwin was elected
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  leader. A recent contest for the leadership of the second district illustrated further the
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  strenuous work of Tammany district leaders. The contestants were Patrick Diver, who had
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  managed the district for years, and Thomas F. Foley. Both were particularly
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  anxious to secure the large Italian vote. They not only attended all the Italian
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  christenings and funerals, but also kept a close lookout for the marriages in order
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  to be on hand with wedding presents. At first, each had his own
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  reporter in the Italian Quarter to keep the crack of the marriages. Later,
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  fully conceived a better plan. He hired a man to stay all day at
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  the City Hall Marriage Bureau, where most Italian couples go through the civil ceremony,
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  and telephoned to him at his saloon when anything was doing at the bureau.
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  Folly had a number of presents ready for use, and whenever he received
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  a telephone message from his man, he hastened to the City Hall with a
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  ring or watch or a piece of silver and handed it to the bride with
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  his congratulations. As a consequence, when Diver got the news and went to
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  the home of the couple with his present, he always found that Folly had
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  been ahead of him. Toward the end of the campaign, Diver also stationed
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  a man at the marriage bureau, and then there were daily foot races and
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  fights between the two healers. Sometimes the rivals came into conflict at the death
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  bed. One night, a poor Italian peddler died in Roosevelt Street. The
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  news reached Diver and Folly about the same time, and as they knew the
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  family of the man was destitute, each went to an undertaker and brought him
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  to the Roosevelt Street tenement. The rivals and the undertakers met at the house
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  and an altercation ensued. After much discussion, the Diver undertaker was selected.
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  Folly had more carriages at the funeral, however, and he further impressed the
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  Italian voters by paying the widow's rent for a month and sending her half a
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  ton of coal and a barrel of flour. The rivals were put on their
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  metal toward the end of the campaign by the wedding of a daughter of one
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  of the original Cohens of the Baxter Street region. The Hebrew vote in the
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  district is nearly as large as the Italian vote, and Diver and Folly set
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  out to capture the coins and their friends. They stayed up nights thinking about
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  what they would give the bride. Neither knew how much the other was prepared
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  to spend on a wedding present or what form it would take. So spies
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  were employed by both sides to keep watch on the jewelry stores, and the
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  jewelers of the district were bribed by each side to impart the desired information.
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  At last, Folly heard that Diver had purchased a set of silver knives,
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  forks and spoons. He at once bought a duplicate set and added a silver
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  tea service. When the presents were displayed at the home of the bride,
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  Diver was not in a pleasant mood, and he charged his jeweler with treachery.
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  It may be added that Folly wanted the primaries. One of the fixed
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  duties of a Tammany district leaders is to give two outings every summer, one
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  for the men of his district and the other for the women and children,
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  and a beefsteak, dinner and a ball every winter. The scene of the
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  outings is usually one of the groves around the sound. The ambition of the
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  district leader on these occasions is to demonstrate that his men have broken all records
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  in the matter of eating and drinking. He gives out the exact number of
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  pounds of beef, poultry, butter, et cetera that they have consumed,
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  and professes to know how many potatoes and ears of corn have been served.
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  According to his figures, the average eating record of each man at the outing
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  is about ten pounds of beef, two or three chickens, a pound of
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  butter, a half pack of potatoes, and two dozen ears of corn.
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  The drinking records, as given out are still more phenomenal. For some reason
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  not yet explained, the district leader thinks that his popularity will be greatly increased
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  if he can show that his followers can eat and drink more than the followers
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  of any other district leader. The same idea governs the beef steak dinners in
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  the winter. It matters not what sort of steak is served or how it
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  is cooked. The district leader considers only the question of quantity, and when
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  he excels all others in this particular, he feels somehow that he is a
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  bigger man and deserves more patronage than his associates in the Tammany Executive Committee.
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  As to the balls, they are the events of the winter in the extreme
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  east Side and West Side society. Mamie and Maggie and Jenny prepare for them
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  months in advance, and their young men save up for the occasion, just
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  as they say for the summer trips to Coney Island. The district leader is
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  in his glory at the opening of the ball. He leads the coalition with
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  the prettiest woman present his wife if he has one, permitting, and spends
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  almost the whole night shaking hands with these constituents. The ball costs him a
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  pretty penny, but he has found that the investment pays by these means.
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  The Tammany district leader reaches out into the homes of his district, keeps watch
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  not only on the men, but also on the women and children, knows
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  their needs, their likes and dislikes, their troubles, and their hopes,
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  and places himself in a position to use his knowledge for the benefit of his
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  organization and himself. Is it any wonder that scandals do not permanently disable Tammany,
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  and that it speedily recovers from what seems to be crushing defeat. End
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  of Chapter twenty three.