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Episode 20 - Bosses Preserve the Nation · Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

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  Chapter twenty Bosses Preserved the Nation. When I retired from the Senate, I
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  thought I would take a good long rest. Such a rest as a man
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  need who has held office for about forty years and has held four different offices
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  in one year and drawn salaries from three of them at the same time.
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  Drawn so many salaries is rather fatiguing, you know. And as I said,
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  I started out for a rest. But when I seen how things were
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  going in New York State, and how a great big black shadow hung over
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  us, I said to myself, no rest for you, George. Your
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  work ain't done. Your country still needs you, and you mustn't lay down
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  yet. What was the great big black shadow. It was a primary election
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  law amended so as to knock out what are called the party bosses by letting
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  in everybody at the primaries and given control over them to state officials. Oh
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  yeah, that is a good way to do up the so called bosses.
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  But have you ever thought what would become of the country if the bosses were
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  put out of business and their places were taken by a lot of cart tailed
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  orators and college graduates. It would mean chaos. It would be just like
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  taking a lot of dry goods clerk and sending them to run express trains on
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  the New York Central Railroad. It makes my heart bleed to think of it.
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  Ignorant people are always talking against party bosses, But just wait till the
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  bosses are gone. Then, and not until then will they get the right
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  sort of epitats. As Patrick Henry or Robert Emmett said, look at the
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  bosses of Tammany Hall in the last twenty years. What magnificent men to them?
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  New York City owes pretty much all it is today, John Kelly,
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  Richard Crocker, and Charles F. Murphy. What names in American history compares
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  with them? Except Washington and Lincoln. They built up the Grand Tammany Organization,
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  and the organization built up New York. Suppose the city had depended for
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  the last twenty years on irresponsible concerns like the Citizens Union, where would it
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  be now? You can make a pretty good guess if you recall the strong
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  and low administrations, when there was no boss, and the heads of departments
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  were at odds all the time with each other, and the mayor was at
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  odds with a lot of them. They spent so much time in arguing,
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  in making grandstand play that the interests of the city were forgotten. Another administration
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  of that kind would put New York back a quarter of a century. Then
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  see how beautiful a Tammany city government runs with a so called boss directing the
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  whole shooting match. The machinery moves so noiselessly that you wouldn't think there was
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  any If there's any differences of opinion, the Tammany leader settles them quietly and
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  his orders go every time. How nice it is for the people to feel
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  that they can get up in the morning without him afraid of seeing the papers
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  that the commissioner of water supply has sandbagged a docummissioner, and that the mayor
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  and heads of the departments have been taken to the police court as witnesses.
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  That's no joke. I remember that under Strong some commissioners came very near sandbag
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  in one another. Of course, a newspapers like the Reform administration. Why
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  because these administrations, with their daily rows, furnish as racy news as prize
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  fights or divorce cases. Tammany don't care to get in the papers. He
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  goes right along, attendant to business quietly and only wants to be let alone.
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  That's one reason why the papers are against us. Some papers complain that
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  the bosses get rich while devoting their lives to the interests of the city.
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  What of it. If opportunities for turning an honest dollar comes their way,
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  why shouldn't they take advantage of them, just as I have done. As
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  I said in another talk, there is honest graft and dishonest graft. The
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  bosses go in for the former. There is so much of it in this
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  big town that they would be fools to go for dishonest graft. Now,
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  the primary election law threatens to do away with the boss and make the city
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  government a menagerie. That's why I can't take the rest I counted on.
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  I'm going to propose a bill the next session of the legislature repealing this dangerous
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  law and leaving the primaries entirely to the organizations themselves as they used to be.
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  Then will return the good old times when our district leaders could have nice,
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  comfortable primary elections at some place selected by themselves and let in only the
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  men the approved of as good democrats. Who was a better judge of the
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  democracy of a man who offers his vote than the leader of the district who
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  was better equipped to keep out undesirable voters. The men who put through the
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  primary law are the same crowd that stand for the civil service blight, and
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  they have the same objects in view. The instruction of governments by party,
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  the downfall of the Constitution, and held generally. End of Chapter twenty