Latest / Plunkitt of Tammany Hall / Episode 16 - Plunkitt's Fondest Dream

Transcript

Episode 16 - Plunkitt's Fondest Dream · Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

• 0:00
  Chapter sixteen, Plunket's fondest dream. The time is comin', and though I'm
• 0:07
  no youngster, I may see it when New York City will break away from
• 0:11
  the state and become a state itself. It's got to come. The feelin
• 0:16
  between this city and the hayseeds that make a livin by plunderin it is every
• 0:21
  bit as bitter as the feeling between the North and South before the war.
• 0:26
  And let me tell you, if there ain't a peaceful separation before long,
• 0:30
  we may have the horrors of civil war right here in New York State.
• 0:34
  Why, I know a lot of men my district who would like nothin better
• 0:38
  to day than go out gunnin for hayseeds. New York City has got a
• 0:43
  bigger population than most of the states in the Union. It's got more wealth
• 0:47
  than any dozen of them. Yet the people here, as I explained before,
• 0:52
  are nothing but slaves of the Albany gang. We have stood the slavery
• 0:56
  a long long time, but the up rising is near at hand. It
• 1:02
  will be a fight for liberty, just like the American Revolution. We'll get
• 1:06
  liberty peacefully if we can, by a cruel war. If we must,
• 1:11
  just think of How lovely things would be here if we had a Tammany governor
• 1:15
  and legislator meeting, say in the neighborhood of fifty ninth Street, and a
• 1:19
  Tammany mayor and board of Alderman doing business in city Hall. How sweet and
• 1:25
  peaceful everything would go on. The people wouldn't have to bother about nothing.
• 1:30
  Tammany would take care of everything for them in its nice, quiet way.
• 1:34
  You wouldn't hear of any conflicts between the state and city authorities. They would
• 1:40
  settle everything pleasant and comfortable at Tammany Hall, and every bill introduced in the
• 1:45
  legislature by Tammany would be sure to go through. The Republicans wouldn't count imagine
• 1:52
  how the city would be built up in a short time. At present,
• 1:56
  we can't make a public improvement of any consequence without going Albany for permission,
• 2:00
  and most of the time we get turned down when we go there. But
• 2:06
  with a Tammany governor and legislature up at fifty ninth Street, how public works
• 2:10
  would hum here. The mayor and alderman could decide on an improvement telephone the
• 2:15
  Capitol, have a bill put through in a jiffy, and there you are.
• 2:21
  We could have a state constitution too, which would extend the debt limits
• 2:24
  so that we could issue a whole lot more bonds. As things are now,
• 2:30
  all the money spent for docks, for instance, is charged against the
• 2:34
  city in calculating the debt limit. Although the dock department provides immense revenues,
• 2:39
  it's the same with some other departments. This humbug would be dropped if Tammany
• 2:45
  ruled at the Capitol and the city Hall, and the city would have money
• 2:49
  to burn. Another thing, The constitution of the new State wouldn't have a
• 2:53
  word about civil service, and if any man dared to introduce any kind of
• 2:59
  a civil service bill in a legislature, he would be fired out the window.
• 3:04
  Then we would have government of the people, by the people who were
• 3:07
  elected to govern them. That's the kind of government Lincoln meant, Oh,
• 3:14
  what a glorious future for the city. Whenever I think of it, I
• 3:17
  feel like going out and celebrating, And I'm really almost sorry that I don't
• 3:23
  drink. You may ask what would become of the upstate people if New York
• 3:29
  City left them in the lurch and went into the state business on its own
• 3:31
  account. Well, we wouldn't be under no obligation to provide for them.
• 3:37
  Still, I would be in favor of helping them along for a while until
• 3:39
  they could learn to work and earn an honest living. Just like the United
• 3:44
  States government looks after the Indians, These Hayseeds have been so used to living
• 3:49
  off a New York city that they would be helpless after we left them.
• 3:53
  It wouldn't do to let them starve. We might make some sort of appropriation
• 3:58
  for them in a few years, but it would be with the distinct understanding
• 4:02
  that they must get busy right away and learn to support themselves. If after
• 4:06
  say, five years, they weren't self supporting, we could withdraw the appropriation
• 4:12
  and let them shift for themselves. The plan might succeed, and it might
• 4:16
  not. We'd be doing our duty anyhow. Some persons might say, but
• 4:23
  how about if the hayseed politicians moved down here and went in to get control
• 4:28
  of the government of the new state. We could provide against that easy by
• 4:32
  passional law that these politicians couldn't come below the bronx without a sort of passport,
• 4:39
  limited the time of their stay here, and forbidden them to monkey with
• 4:43
  politics here. I don't know just what kind of a bill would be required
• 4:46
  to fix this. But with a Tammany constitution, governor, legislature, and
• 4:51
  mayor, there would be no trouble in settling a little matter of that sort.
• 4:57
  Say, I don't wish I was a poet, for if I was,
• 5:00
  I guess i'd be living in a garret on no dollars a week instead
• 5:03
  of running a great contracting and transportation business, which is doing pretty well,
• 5:08
  thank you. But honest now, the notion takes me sometimes to your poetry
• 5:14
  of the red hot hail glorious landkind when I think of New York City as
• 5:18
  a state by itself. End of Chapter sixteen