Latest / Plunkitt of Tammany Hall / Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

Transcript

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall · Plunkitt of Tammany Hall

• 0:00
  Chapter one, Honest graft and dishonest graft. Everybody is talking these days about
• 0:06
  Tammany men grown rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawing the distinction between
• 0:12
  honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the
• 0:17
  two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I
• 0:22
  have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm
• 0:26
  getting richer every day. But I've not gone in for the dishonest graft,
• 0:30
  blackmail and gamblers, saloon keepers, disorderly people, et cetera. And neither
• 0:35
  has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics. There's an
• 0:40
  honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum
• 0:44
  up the whole thing by saying, I've seen my opportunities and I took him.
• 0:49
  Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city,
• 0:54
  and it's going to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm
• 0:58
  tipped off. Say they're going to lay out a new park at a certain
• 1:02
  place. I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that
• 1:06
  place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then
• 1:10
  the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a
• 1:14
  rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before. Ain't it
• 1:19
  perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and
• 1:23
  foresight? Of course it is, well, that's honest graft. Or supposing
• 1:30
  it's a new bridge they're going to build, I get tipped off and I
• 1:34
  buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches.
• 1:38
  I sell it my own price later on and drop some more money in the
• 1:42
  bank. When you it's just like looking ahead in Wall Street or in the
• 1:47
  coffee or cotton market. It's honest graft, and I'm looking for it every
• 1:52
  day in the year. I will tell you, frankly that I've got a
• 1:56
  good lot of it too. I'll tell you of one case. They were
• 2:00
  going to fix up a big park no matter where I got onto it,
• 2:05
  and went looking about for land in that neighborhood. I could get nothing at
• 2:09
  a bargain but a big piece of swamp. But I took it fast enough
• 2:15
  and held on to it. That turned out was just what I counted on.
• 2:20
  They couldn't make the park complete without Plunket swamp, and they had to
• 2:23
  pay a good price for it. Anything dishonest in that up in the watershed
• 2:29
  made some money too. Bought up several bits of land there some years ago
• 2:32
  and made a pretty good guess that they would be bought up for water purposes
• 2:37
  later by the city. Somehow I always guessed about right, and shouldn't I
• 2:43
  enjoy the profit of my foresight. It was rather amusing when the Comden Nation
• 2:47
  Commissioners came along and found piece after piece of the land in the name of
• 2:52
  George Plunkett of the fifteenth Assembly District, New York City. They wondered how
• 2:57
  I knew just what to buy. The answer there is, I seen my
• 3:00
  opportunity, and I took it. I haven't confined myself to land. Anything
• 3:06
  that pays is in my line. For instance, the city is repaved in
• 3:12
  a street and has several hundred thousand old granite blocks to sell. I am
• 3:17
  on hand to buy, and I know just what they are worth. Now.
• 3:22
  Never mind that I had a sort of monopoly of this business for a
• 3:25
  while. But once a newspaper tried to do me. They got some outside
• 3:30
  men to come over from Brooklyn to New Jersey to bid against me. Was
• 3:35
  I done? Not much. I went to each of the men and said,
• 3:40
  how many of these two hundred and fifty thousand stories do you want?
• 3:45
  One said twenty thousand, and another one at fifteen thousand, other one of
• 3:50
  ten thousand. I said, all right, let me bid for the lot,
• 3:54
  and I'll give each of you all you want for nothing. They agreed.
• 4:00
  Course, then the auctioneer yelled, how much of my bid for these
• 4:03
  two hundred and fifty thousand fine paving stones? Two dollars and fifty cents,
• 4:10
  says I. Two dollars and fifty cents, screamed the auctioneer. Oh,
• 4:15
  that's a joke. Give me a real bid. Found the bid was real
• 4:19
  enough. My rival stood silent. I got the lot for two dollars and
• 4:24
  fifty cents and gave them their share. That's how the attempt to do plunkt
• 4:29
  ended, and that's how all such attempts end. I've told you how I
• 4:33
  got rich by honest graft. Now let me tell you that most politicians who
• 4:39
  are accused of robbing the city get rich the same way. They don't steal
• 4:44
  a dollar from the city treasury. They just seen their opportunities and took them.
• 4:47
  That is why when Reform administration comes in and spends half a million dollars
• 4:53
  trying to find the public robberies they talked about in the campaign, they don't
• 4:57
  find them. The books are always all right, the money in the city
• 5:00
  treasury is all right, Everything is all right. All they can show you
• 5:04
  is that the Tammany heads of departments looked after the friends within the law and
• 5:10
  gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me
• 5:15
  tell you that's never going to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man
• 5:21
  looks after his friends, and any man who doesn't isn't likely to be popular.
• 5:27
  If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I
• 5:30
  give it to a friend. Why shouldn't I do the same in public life
• 5:33
  another kind of honest graft. Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There
• 5:39
  was an awful howl by the reformers, But don't you know that Tammany gains
• 5:44
  ten votes for everyone at lost by salary raising. The Wall Street banker thinks
• 5:48
  it's shameful to raise a department clerk's salary from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred a
• 5:54
  year. But every man who draws a salary himself says, that's all right,
• 6:00
  I wish it was me, And he feels very much like voting the
• 6:02
  Tammany ticket on election day just out of sympathy. Tammany was beat in nineteen
• 6:09
  oh one because the people were deceived into believing that it worked dishonest graft.
• 6:15
  They didn't draw a distinction between dishonest and honest graft. But they saw that
• 6:20
  some Tammany men grew rich, and supposed they had been robbing the city treasury
• 6:25
  or levy, and blackmail on disorderly houses, or working in with the gamblers
• 6:30
  and lawbreakers. As some matter of policy, if nothing else, why should
• 6:34
  Tammany leaders go into such dirty business when there is so much honest graft laying
• 6:40
  around when they are in power? Did you ever consider that? Now?
• 6:45
  In conclusion, I want to say that I don't own a dishonest dollar.
• 6:50
  If my worst enemy was given the job of writing my epithaph when I'm gone,
• 6:56
  he couldn't do more than right. George W. Plunkett, He's seen
• 7:00
  his opportunities and he took him. End of Chapter one, Chapter two,
• 7:06
  How to become a Statesman there's thousands of young men in this city who will
• 7:13
  go to the polls for the first time next November. Among them will be
• 7:18
  many who have watched the careers of successful men in politics and who are longing
• 7:24
  to make names and fortunes for themselves at the same game. It is to
• 7:30
  these youths that I want to give advice. First, let me say that
• 7:35
  I am in a position to give what the courts call expert testimony on the
• 7:42
  subject. I don't think you can easily find a better example than I am
• 7:46
  of his success in politics after forty years experience at the game. I am
• 7:51
  well, I'm George Washington Plunkett. Everybody knows what figure I cut in the
• 7:59
  great organization on Earth. And if you hear people say that I've laid away
• 8:05
  a million or so since I was a butcher's boy in Washington Market, don't
• 8:09
  come to me for an indignant denial. I'm pretty comfortable. Thank you.
• 8:15
  Now. Haven't qualified as an expert, as lawyers say, I am going
• 8:20
  to give advice free to the young men who are going to cast their first
• 8:24
  votes and who are looking forward to political glory and lots of cash. Some
• 8:31
  young men think they can learn how to be successful in politics from books,
• 8:35
  and they crammed their heads with all sorts of college raft. They couldn't make
• 8:41
  a bigger mistake. Now understand me, I ain't saying nothing as colleges.
• 8:46
  I guess they'll have to exist as long as there is bookworms, and I
• 8:50
  suppose they do some good in a certain way, but they don't count in
• 8:56
  politics. In fact, a young man who has gone through the college course
• 9:01
  is handicapped at the outset. He may succeed in politics, but the chances
• 9:05
  are one hundred to one against him. Another mistake. Some young men think
• 9:13
  that the best way to prepare for the political game is to practice speaking and
• 9:16
  becoming orators. That's all wrong. We've got some orators in Tammany Hall,
• 9:24
  but they're chiefly ornamental. You never heard of Charlie Murphy delivering a speech,
• 9:28
  did you, Or Richard Crocker or John Kelly or any other man who has
• 9:33
  been a real power in the organization. Look at the thirty six district leaders
• 9:39
  of Tammany Hall today. How many of them travel on their tongues? Maybe
• 9:45
  one or two? And then'll count when business is doing it Tammy Hall,
• 9:50
  the men who rule have practiced keeping their tongue still not exercising them. So
• 9:56
  you want to drop the orator I did, unless you mean to go I
• 10:00
  going to politics just to perform the skyrocket Act. Now I've told you what
• 10:05
  not to do. I guess I can explain best what to do to succeed
• 10:09
  in politics by telling you what I did after going through the apprenticeship of the
• 10:16
  business while I was a boy, by working around the district headquarters in hustling
• 10:20
  about the polls on election day, I set out when I cast my first
• 10:24
  vote to win fame and money in New York City politics. Did I offer
• 10:31
  my services to the district leader as a stump speaker? Not much. The
• 10:35
  woods are always full of speakers. Did I get up a hook on municipal
• 10:41
  government and showed it to the leader? I wasn't such a fool. What
• 10:46
  I did was get some marketable goods before going to the leaders. What do
• 10:52
  I mean by marketable goods? Let me tell you. I had a cousin,
• 10:56
  a young man who didn't take any particular interest in politics. I went
• 11:01
  to him and said, Tommy, I'm going to be a politician and I
• 11:07
  want to get a following. Can I count on you, he said,
• 11:09
  sure, George. That's how I started in business. I got a market
• 11:15
  ro commodity one vote. Then I went to the district leader and told him
• 11:18
  I could command two votes on election day Tommy's in Moan. He smiled on
• 11:26
  me and told me to go ahead. If I had offered him a speech
• 11:30
  or a book full of learning, he would have said, I forget it.
• 11:35
  That was beginning business in a small way, wasn't it. But that
• 11:41
  is the only way to become a real lasting statesman. I soon branched out.
• 11:46
  Two young men in the flat next to mine were school friends. I
• 11:50
  went to them just as I went to Tommy, and they agreed to stand
• 11:54
  by me. Then I had a following and three voters, and I began
• 11:58
  to get a bite. Whenever I dropped into district headquarters, everybody shook hands
• 12:03
  with me, and leader one day honored me by lighting a match for my
• 12:09
  cigar. And so went on like a snowball rolling down hill. I worked
• 12:13
  the flathouse that I lived in from the basement to the top floor, and
• 12:18
  I got about a dozen young men to follow me. Then I tackled the
• 12:22
  next house and so on down the block and around the corner. Before long
• 12:26
  I had sixty men back of me and formed the George Washington Plunkett Association.
• 12:35
  What did the district leader say when I called at headquarters? I didn't have
• 12:41
  to call at headquarters. He came after me and said, George, what
• 12:45
  do you want? If you don't see what you want, ask for it.
• 12:50
  Wouldn't you like to have a job or two in the department for your
• 12:54
  friends? I said, oh, I'll think it over. I haven't yet
• 12:58
  decided what the joy George Washington Plunkett Association will do in the next campaign.
• 13:05
  You ought to say, have seen how I was courted and petted then by
• 13:09
  the leaders of the rival organizations. I had marketable goods and there was bids
• 13:15
  for them from all sides, and I was a rising man in politics.
• 13:20
  As time went on and my association grew, I thought I would like to
• 13:24
  go to the Assembly. I just had to hint at what I wanted,
• 13:30
  and three different organizations offered me the nomination. Afterwards, I went to the
• 13:35
  Board of Aldermen, then to the State Senate, then became leader of the
• 13:39
  district and so on up until I became a statesman. That is the way
• 13:48
  and the only way to make a lasting success in politics. If you are
• 13:52
  going to cast your first vote next November and want to go into politics,
• 13:58
  do as I did. Get a far if it's only one man, and
• 14:01
  then go to the district leader and say I want to join the organization.
• 14:07
  I've got one man who will follow me through thick and thin. The leader
• 14:11
  won't laugh at your one man following. He'll shake your hand warmly, offer
• 14:16
  to propose you for membership in his club, take you down to the corner
• 14:20
  for a drink, and ask you to call again. But go to him
• 14:24
  and say, I took first parties in college at Aristotle. I can recite
• 14:30
  all Shakespeare forwards and backwards. There ain't nothing in science that ain't as familiar
• 14:35
  to me as block signs on the elevated roads. And I'm the real thing
• 14:39
  in the way of silver tongued orators. What will he answer? He'll probably
• 14:46
  say, I guess you were not to blame for your misfortune, but we
• 14:52
  have no use for you here. End of Chapter two, Chapter three.
• 14:58
  The curse of so Service Reform. This civil service law is the biggest fraud
• 15:05
  of the age. It is the curse of the nation. There can't be
• 15:11
  no real patriotism while it lasts. How are you going to interest our young
• 15:16
  men in their country if you have no offices to give them when they work
• 15:20
  for their party. Just look at things in this city today. There are
• 15:26
  ten thousand good offices, but we can't get at more than a few hundred
• 15:31
  of them them. How are we going to provide for the thousands of men
• 15:35
  who worked for the Tammany ticket. It can't be done. These men were
• 15:41
  full of patriotism a short time ago. They expected to be serving their city.
• 15:46
  But when we tell them that we can't place them, do you think
• 15:50
  their patriotism is going to last? Not much? They say, what's the
• 15:56
  use of working for your country anyhow? And in the game? And what
• 16:02
  can they do? I don't know, but I'll tell you what I do
• 16:04
  know. I know more than one young man in past years who worked for
• 16:10
  the ticket and was just overflowing with patriotism. But when he was knocked out
• 16:15
  by the civil service humbug, he got to hate his country and became an
• 16:19
  anarchist. This ain't no exaggeration. I have good reason for saying that most
• 16:25
  of the anarchists in this city are men who ran up against civil service examinations.
• 16:30
  Isn't it enough to make a man sour on his country when he wants
• 16:34
  to serve it and won't be allowed unless he answers a lot of fool questions
• 16:38
  about the number of cubic inches of water in the Atlantic and the quality of
• 16:44
  sand in the Sahara Desert. There was once a bright young man in my
• 16:48
  district who tackled one of these examinations. The next I heard of him,
• 16:52
  he had settled down in her most saloons, smoking and drinking beer and talking
• 16:59
  socialism all day. Before that time, he had never drunk anything but whisky.
• 17:06
  I know what was coming when a young irishman drops whiskey and takes to
• 17:10
  beer and long pipes in a German saloon. That young man is today one
• 17:15
  of the wildest anarchists in town. And just to think he might be a
• 17:22
  patriot. But for that cussed civil service, Say, did you hear about
• 17:27
  that Civil Service Reform Association kicking? Because the tax commissioners want to put their
• 17:34
  fifty five deputies on the exempt list and fire the outfit left of them by
• 17:40
  low that civil service. For you, just think fifty five Republicans and mugwamps
• 17:48
  holding eight thousand and four thousand and five thousand dollars jobs in the tax department,
• 17:53
  when fifteen hundred and fifty five good Tammany men are ready and willing to
• 17:59
  take their places, it's an outrage. What did the people mean when they
• 18:03
  voted for Tammany? What is representative government anyhow? Is it all a fake
• 18:10
  that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for
• 18:12
  the people. If it isn't a fake, then why isn't a people's voice
• 18:18
  obeyed? And Tammany men put in all the offices. When the people elected
• 18:25
  Tammany, they knew just what they were doing. We didn't put up any
• 18:30
  false pretenses. We didn't go in for humbug civil service and all that rot.
• 18:33
  We stood where we have always stood, for rewarding the men that won
• 18:38
  the victory. They call that a spoil system, all right, Tammany is
• 18:45
  for the spoil system. And when we go in, we fire every anti
• 18:51
  Tammany man from office that can be fired under the law. It's an elastic
• 18:56
  sort of law, and you can bet it will be stretched to the limit.
• 19:00
  Of course, the Republican State Civil Service Board will stand in the way
• 19:03
  of our local Civil Service Commission all it can, but say, suppose we
• 19:10
  carry the state sometime, won't we fire the upstate board all right? Or
• 19:15
  we'll make it work in harmony with the local board. And that means that
• 19:19
  Tammany will get everything in sight. I know that the civil service humbug is
• 19:26
  stuck into the constitution too, But as Tim Campbell said, what's the constitution?
• 19:32
  Among friends say, the people's voice is smothered by the cursed civil service
• 19:41
  law. It is the root of all evil in our government. You hear
• 19:45
  of this thing and that thing going wrong in the nation, the state,
• 19:49
  or the city, look down beneath the surface, and you can trace everything
• 19:53
  wrong to civil service. I have stirred the subject now. I know the
• 19:59
  civils service humbug is undermining our institutions. And if a halt ain't called soon,
• 20:04
  this great Republic will tumble down like a Park Avenue house when they were
• 20:08
  building the subway, and on its ruins will rise another Russian government. This
• 20:15
  is an awful, serverious proposition. Free silver, the tariff and imperialism and
• 20:22
  the Panama Canal are trifling issues when compared with it. We could worry along
• 20:27
  without any of these things. But civil service has sapping the foundation of the
• 20:33
  whole shooting match. Let me argue it out for you. Hind up to
• 20:37
  syllogisms, but I can give you some arguments that nobody can answer. First,
• 20:44
  this great and glorious country was built up by political parties. Second,
• 20:49
  parties can't hold together if the workers don't get the offices when they win.
• 20:55
  Third, if the parties go to pieces, the government they built up must
• 21:00
  go to pieces two. Fourth, then there'll be h two pay. Could
• 21:08
  anything be clearer than it? Say? Honest? Now, can you answer
• 21:15
  that argument? Of course, you won't deny that the government was built up
• 21:18
  by the great parties. That's history, and you can't go back of the
• 21:22
  returns. As to my second proposition, you can't deny that either. When
• 21:27
  parties can't get offices, they'll bust. They ain't far from the busting point.
• 21:33
  Now, with all this civil service business keeping most of the good things
• 21:37
  from them, how are you going to keep up patriotism if this thing goes
• 21:41
  on, you can't do it. Let me tell you that patriotism has been
• 21:47
  dying out fast for the last twenty years. Before then, when a party
• 21:51
  won, the worker's got everything in sight that was something to make a man
• 21:55
  patriotic. Now, when a party wins and its men come forward and ask
• 21:57
  for the rewards, is nothing doing unless you can answer a list of questions
• 22:03
  about Egyptian mummies and how many years it will take for a bird to wear
• 22:07
  out a mass of iron as big as the earth by stepping on it once
• 22:11
  in a century. I've studied politics and men for forty five years, and
• 22:18
  I see how things are drifting. Sad indeed, is the change that has
• 22:22
  come over the young men. Even in my district, where I try to
• 22:26
  keep up the fire of patriotism by getting a lot of jobs from my constituents,
• 22:30
  whether Tammany is in or out, the boys and men don't get excited
• 22:34
  anymore when they see a United States flag or hear the Star spangled banner.
• 22:38
  They'll care no more for firecrackers on the fourth of July, and why should
• 22:44
  they? What is there in it for them? They know that no matter
• 22:48
  how hard they work for their country in a campaign, the jobs will go
• 22:52
  to fellows who can tell about the mummies and the birds stepping on the iron.
• 22:59
  Are you prize then, that the young men of the country are beginning
• 23:03
  to look coldly at the flag and don't care to put up a nickel for
• 23:07
  firecrackers. Say, let me tell you of one case. After the Battle
• 23:12
  of San Juan Hill, Americans found a dead man with light complexion, red
• 23:18
  hair, and blue eyes. They could see when a Spaniard, although he
• 23:22
  had on a Spanish uniform. Several officers looked him over him, and then
• 23:27
  a private of the seventy first Regiments saw him and yelled, good lord,
• 23:32
  that's Flaherty. The man grew up in my district and he was once the
• 23:37
  most patriotic American boy on the west side. He couldn't see a flag without
• 23:42
  yelling himself, horse. Now how did he come to be lying dead with
• 23:48
  a Spanish uniform on? I found out all about it, and I'll vouch
• 23:52
  for the story well. In the municipal campaign of eighteen ninety seven, that
• 23:59
  young man chalked full of patriotism, worked day and night for the Tammany ticket.
• 24:03
  Tammany won, and the young man determined to devote his life to the
• 24:07
  service of the city. He picked out a place that would suit him and
• 24:12
  sent in his application to the head of department. He got a reply that
• 24:18
  he must take a civil service examination to get the place. He didn't know
• 24:22
  what these examinations were, so he went all lighthearted to the Civil Service board.
• 24:26
  He read the questions about the mummies, the bird on the iron,
• 24:30
  and all the other fool questions, and he left that office and enemy of
• 24:36
  the country that he had loved so well, the mummies and the bird blasted
• 24:41
  his patriotism. He went to Cuba, enlisted in the Spanish army at the
• 24:45
  breaking out of the war, and died fighting his country. That is but
• 24:52
  one victim of the infamous civil service. If that young man had not run
• 24:57
  up against the civil examination, but had been allowed to serve his country as
• 25:02
  he wished, he would be in good office to day, drawn a good
• 25:06
  salary. Ah, how many young men have had their patriotism blasted in the
• 25:11
  same way. Now, what is going to happen when civil service crushes out
• 25:17
  patriotism? Only one thing can happen. The republic will go to pieces.
• 25:22
  Thenizar Sultan will turn up, which brings me to the fourthly of my argument,
• 25:29
  that is, there will be thy h to pay, and that ain't
• 25:34
  no lie. End of Chapter three, Chapter four. Reformers only morning glories,
• 25:42
  college professors and philosophers who go up in a balloon to think. Are
• 25:48
  always discussing the question why reform administrations never succeed themselves. The reason is plain
• 25:55
  to anybody who has learned the A. B. C's of politics. I
• 25:59
  can't tell you how many of these movements I've seen started in New York during
• 26:03
  my forty years in politics, but I can tell you how many have lasted
• 26:07
  more than a few years. None. There have been reform committees of fifty,
• 26:12
  of sixty, of seventy, of one hundred, and all sorts of
• 26:17
  numbers that started out to do up the regular political organizations. There were morning
• 26:23
  glories, looking lovely in the morning, and withered up in a short time,
• 26:27
  while the regular machines went on flourishing forever like fine old oaks say,
• 26:34
  that's the first poetry I ever worked off, Ain't it great? Just look
• 26:41
  back a few years. You remember the People's Municipal League that nominated Frank Scott
• 26:47
  for mayor in eighteen ninety. Do you remember the reformers that got up that
• 26:52
  league? Have you ever heard of them? Since? I haven't. Scott
• 26:56
  himself survived because he had always been a first rate aitician. But you'd have
• 27:00
  to look in the newspaper Almanacs of eighteen ninety one to find out who made
• 27:06
  up the People's Municipal League. Oh yes, I remember one name, Ollie
• 27:10
  Teel, Dear pretty Ollie and his big dog. They're about all that's left
• 27:17
  of the league. Now take the reform movement of eighteen ninety four. A
• 27:22
  lot of good politicians joined in that, the Republicans, the State Democrats,
• 27:26
  the Stecolites and New O'Brien knights, and they give us a licking. But
• 27:33
  the real reform part of the affair, the Committee of seventy that started the
• 27:37
  thing going. What's become of those reformers? What's become of Charles Stuart Smith?
• 27:45
  Where's Banks? Do you ever hear of Cornell? The iron man in
• 27:48
  politics? Now? Could a search party find R. W. G.
• 27:53
  Welling? Have you seen the name of Fulton McMahon or m I ain't sure
• 28:02
  which in the papers lately? Or Prebel Tucker or But it's no use to
• 28:07
  go through the list of the reformers who said they sounded in the death knell
• 28:11
  of Tammany in eighteen ninety four. They're gone for good, and Tammany's pretty
• 28:15
  well, thank you. They did the talking and posing and the politicians in
• 28:22
  the movement got all the plumbs. It's always the case. The Citizens' Union
• 28:26
  has lasted a little bit longer than the reform crowd that went before them,
• 28:32
  But that's because they learned a thing or two from us. They learned how
• 28:36
  to put up a pretty good bluff, and bluff counts a lot in politics.
• 28:41
  With only a few thousand members, they had the nerve to run the
• 28:45
  whole fusion movement, make the Republicans and other organizations come to their headquarters to
• 28:52
  select a ticket and dictate what every candidate must do or not do. I
• 28:56
  love nerve, and I've had a lot of respect for the citizens Union lately.
• 29:02
  But the Union can't last. It's people haven't been trained to politics,
• 29:07
  and whenever Tammany calls their bluff, they lay right down. You'll never hear
• 29:11
  of the Union again after a year or two. And by the way,
• 29:15
  what's become of the good government clubs, the political nurseries of a few years
• 29:21
  ago. Do you ever hear of good Government club D, N, P,
• 29:26
  n Q and Z anymore? What's become of the infants who were to
• 29:30
  grow up and show us how to govern the city. I know what's become
• 29:36
  of the nursery that would start out in my district. You can find pretty
• 29:38
  much a whole outfit over at my headquarters, Washington Hall. The fact is
• 29:44
  that a reformer can't last in politics. He can make a show for a
• 29:48
  while, but he always comes down like a rocket. Politics is as much
• 29:52
  a regular business as the grocery or the dry goods or the drug business.
• 29:56
  You've got to be trained up to it, or you're sure of fail.
• 30:00
  Suppose a man who knew nothing about the grocery trade suddenly went into the business
• 30:04
  and tried to conduct it according to his own ideas. Wouldn't he make a
• 30:07
  mess of it. He might make a spurge for a while as long as
• 30:12
  money lasted, but his store would soon be empty. It's just the same
• 30:17
  with reformer. He hasn't been brought up in the difficult business of politics,
• 30:22
  and he makes a mess of it every time. I've been studying the political
• 30:26
  game for forty five years, and I don't know it all yet I'm learning
• 30:33
  something all the time. How then, can you expect what they call businessmen
• 30:37
  to turn into politics all at once and make a success of it. It
• 30:42
  is just as if I went up to Columbia University and started to teach Greek.
• 30:48
  They usually last about as long in politics as I would last at Columbia.
• 30:52
  You can't begin too early in politics if you want to succeed at the
• 30:56
  game. I begin several years before I could vote, and so every successful
• 31:00
  leader in Tammany Hall. When I was twelve years old, I made myself
• 31:04
  useful around the district headquarters and did work at all the polls on election day.
• 31:08
  Later on, I hustled about getting out voters who had jags on or
• 31:12
  who were too lazy to come to the polls. There's one hundred ways that
• 31:17
  boys can help, and they get an experience. That's the first real step
• 31:22
  in statesmanship. Show me a boy that hustles for the organization on election day,
• 31:26
  and I'll show you a common statesman. That's the ABC of politics.
• 31:32
  It ain't easy work to get up to Q and Z. You have to
• 31:36
  give nearly all your time and attention to it. Of course, you may
• 31:40
  have some business or occupation on the side, but the great business of your
• 31:45
  life must be politics if you want to succeed at it. A few years
• 31:49
  ago, Tammany tried to mix politics and business and equal quantities by having two
• 31:53
  leaders for each district, a politician and a businessman. They wouldn't mix.
• 32:00
  They were like oil and water. The politician looked after the politics of his
• 32:05
  district. The businessman looked after his grocery store or his milk route. And
• 32:09
  whenever he appeared at an executive meeting, it was only to make trouble.
• 32:14
  The whole scheme turned out to be a farce and was abandoned. Mighty quick,
• 32:20
  Do you understand now why it is that a reformer goes down and out
• 32:23
  in the first or second round while a politician answers to the gong every time.
• 32:30
  It is because the one has gone into the fight without training, while
• 32:35
  the other trains all the time and knows every fine point of the game.
• 32:40
  End of chapter four, Chapter five. New York City is pie for the
• 32:45
  hay Seats. This city is ruled entirely by the hay Seed legislators at Albany.
• 32:53
  I've never known an upstate Republican who didn't want to run things here,
• 32:59
  and I met many thousands of them in my long service and the legislature.
• 33:05
  The Hayseeds think we are like the Indians to the national government. That is
• 33:09
  sort of wards of the state, who don't know how to look after ourselves
• 33:15
  and have to be taken care of by the Republicans of Saint Lawrence, Ontario
• 33:21
  and other backwoods companies. Why should anybody be surprised because ex Governor Odell comes
• 33:28
  down here to direct the Republican machine. Newburgh ain't big enough for him.
• 33:34
  He, like all the other upstate Republicans, wants to get hold of New
• 33:38
  York City. New York is their pie. Say you hear a lot about
• 33:45
  the downtrodden people of Ireland and the Russian peasants and the Suffern bars. Now
• 33:51
  let me tell you that they have more real freedom and home rule than the
• 33:55
  people of this grand and imperial city, England. For example, they make
• 34:01
  a pretense of giving the Irish some self government in this state. The Republican
• 34:07
  government makes no pretense at all. It says, right out in the open,
• 34:12
  New York City is a nice, big fat goose. Come along with
• 34:17
  your carbon knives and have a slice. They don't pretend to ask the gooses
• 34:22
  consent. We don't own our streets, or our docks, or our waterfront
• 34:29
  or anything else. The Republican legislature and governor run the whole shooting match.
• 34:35
  We've got to eat and drink what they tell us to eat and drink,
• 34:38
  and have got to choose our time for eating and drinking to suit them.
• 34:44
  If they don't feel like taking a glass of beer on Sunday, we must
• 34:47
  abstain. If they have not got any amusements up in their backwoods, we
• 34:52
  mustn't have none. We've got to regulate our whole lives to suit them,
• 34:58
  and then we have to pay their taxes to boot. Did you ever go
• 35:01
  up to Albany from this city with a delegation that wanted anything from the legislature.
• 35:07
  No, well don't. The Hayseeds who run the committees will look at
• 35:12
  you as if you were a child that didn't know what it wanted, and
• 35:16
  will tell you, in so many words, to go home and be good,
• 35:20
  and the legislature will give you whatever it thinks is good for you.
• 35:24
  They put on a sort of patronizing air as much as to say, these
• 35:29
  children are an awful lot of trouble. They're wanting candy all the time,
• 35:35
  and they know that it will make them sick. They ought to thank Goodness
• 35:38
  that they have us to take care of them. And if you try to
• 35:42
  argue with them. They'll smile in a pitying sort of way, is if
• 35:46
  they were humor in a spoiled child. But just let a Republican farmer from
• 35:52
  Chemberg or Wayne or Tioga turn up at the Capitol. The Republican legislature will
• 35:59
  make a rush for him and ask him what he wants, and tell him
• 36:01
  if he doesn't see what he wants, to ask for it. If he
• 36:05
  says his taxes are too high, they reply to him, all right,
• 36:07
  old man, don't let that worry you. How much you want us to
• 36:12
  take off? I guess about fifty percent will about do for the present,
• 36:16
  says the man. Can you fix me up? Sure? The legislature agrees,
• 36:22
  give us something harder. Don't be bashful. We'll take off sixty percent
• 36:27
  if you wish. That's what we're here for. Then the legislature goes and
• 36:31
  passes the law increasing the liquor tax or some other tax in New York City,
• 36:37
  takes a half of the proceeds for the state treasury and cuts down the
• 36:40
  farmer's taxes to suit. It's as easy as rolling off a log. When
• 36:45
  you've got a good working majority and no conscience to speak of. Let me
• 36:51
  give you another example. It makes me hot under the collar to tell you
• 36:54
  about this. Last year, some hay seeds along the Hudson River, mostly
• 37:00
  O'Dell's neighborhood, got dissatisfied with the docks where they landed their vegetables, brick
• 37:05
  bats, and other things they produced in the river counties. They got together
• 37:08
  and said, let's take a trip down to New York and pick out the
• 37:12
  finest dock we can find. Odell and the legislature will do the rest.
• 37:16
  They did come down here, and what do you think They hit on the
• 37:21
  finest dock in my district, invaded George W. Plunket's district without saying as
• 37:25
  much as by your leave. Then they called on Odell to put through a
• 37:30
  bill given them this dock, and he did. When the bill came before
• 37:36
  Mayor Low, I made the greatest speech of my life. I pointed out
• 37:39
  how the legislature could give a whole waterfront to the hay seeds over the head
• 37:44
  of the dock commissioner in the same way, and warned the mayor that nations
• 37:49
  had rebelled against their governments for less. But it was no go. O'Dell
• 37:53
  and Low were pards and well, my dock was stolen. Heard a lot
• 38:00
  in the Senate campaign about Odell's great work in reducing the state tax to almost
• 38:06
  nothing, and you'll hear a lot more about it in the campaign next year.
• 38:12
  How did he do it by cutting down the expenses of the state government.
• 38:16
  Oh no, the expenses went up. He simply performed the old Republican
• 38:22
  Act of Milkin New York City. The only difference was that he nearly milked
• 38:28
  the city dry. He not only ran up the liquor tax, but put
• 38:31
  all sorts of taxes on corporations, banks, insurance companies, and everything in
• 38:37
  sight that could be made to give up. Of course, nearly the whole
• 38:40
  tax fell on the city. Then O'Dell went through the country district and said,
• 38:45
  see what I have done for you. You ain't got any more taxes
• 38:49
  to pay the state, Ain't I a fine feller? Once a farmer in
• 38:53
  Orange County asked him, how did you do it? Ben did? Easy?
• 38:59
  Answered, whenever I want any money for the state treasury, I know
• 39:02
  where to get it. And he pointed towards New York City. And then
• 39:07
  all the Republican tinkering with New York City's charter nobody can keep up with it.
• 39:13
  When a Republican mayor is in, they give him all sorts of power.
• 39:16
  If a Tammany mayor is elected next fall, I wouldn't be surprised if
• 39:21
  they changed the whole business and arranged it so that every city department should have
• 39:24
  four heads, two of them Republicans. If we make a kick, they
• 39:30
  would say, you don't know what's good for you. Leave it to us.
• 39:34
  It's our business. End of Chapter five, Chapter six. To hold
• 39:40
  your district, study human nature and act accordon. There's only one way to
• 39:46
  hold a district. You must study human nature and act accordon. You can't
• 39:52
  study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else.
• 39:59
  If you have been to college so much the worse for you. You'll have
• 40:02
  to unlearn all you learn before you can get right down to human nature,
• 40:07
  and unlearning takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they
• 40:13
  learned at college. Such men may get to be district leaders by a fluke,
• 40:17
  but they never last the learn real human nature. You have to go
• 40:24
  among the people, see them and be seen. One know every man,
• 40:30
  woman and child in the fifteenth district except them that's been born this summer,
• 40:37
  and I know some of them too. I know what they like and what
• 40:40
  they don't like, what they are strong at, and what they are weak
• 40:45
  in. And I reach them by approaching at the right side. For instance,
• 40:52
  here's how I gather in the young men. I hear of a young
• 40:55
  fellow that's proud of his voice, thinks they can sing fine. I ask
• 41:00
  him to come round to Washington Hall and join our glee club. He comes
• 41:04
  and sings, and he's a follower, plunket for life. Another young fella
• 41:08
  gains a reputation as a baseball player in a vacant lot. I bring him
• 41:13
  into our baseball club. That fixes him. You'll find him working for my
• 41:17
  ticket at the poll's next election day. Then there's the fellow that likes rowing
• 41:22
  on the river, the young fellow that makes a name as Walter on his
• 41:25
  block, the young fella that's handy. With these dukes, I rope them
• 41:29
  all in by giving them opportunities to show themselves off. I don't trouble them
• 41:34
  with political arguments. I just study human nature and act to court. But
• 41:39
  you may say this game will work with the high toned fellas, the fellers
• 41:45
  that go through college and then join the Citizens Union. Of course it wouldn't
• 41:49
  work. I have a special treatment for them. I like the patent medicine
• 41:54
  man that gives the same medicine for all diseases. The Citizens' Union of a
• 42:00
  young man. I love him. He's the daintiest morsel of a lot,
• 42:06
  and he don't often escape me before telling you how I catch him. Let
• 42:10
  me mention that before the election last year, the Citizens Union said they had
• 42:15
  four hundred or five hundred and rolled voters in my district. They had a
• 42:20
  lovely headquarters to beautiful roll top desks and acutest rugs in the world. If
• 42:25
  I was accused of having contributed to fix up the nest for them, I
• 42:30
  wouldn't deny it under oath. What do I mean by that? Never mind,
• 42:35
  you can guess from the sequel if you're sharp. Well. Election day
• 42:38
  came. The Citizens Union's candidate for Senator, who ran against me, just
• 42:44
  polled five votes in the district, while I polled something more than fourteen thousand
• 42:49
  votes. What became of the four hundred or five hundred Citizens Union en rolled
• 42:53
  voters in my district? Some people guessed that many of them were good plunket
• 42:59
  men, all along and worked with the CITs just to bring them into the
• 43:02
  plunket camp by election day. You can guess that way too if you want
• 43:07
  to. I never contradict stories about me, especially in hot weather. I
• 43:13
  just call your attention to the fact that on last election day, three hundred
• 43:17
  and ninety five Citizens Union in road voters in my district. We're missing and
• 43:23
  unaccounted for. I tell you, frankly, though, how I have captured
• 43:29
  some of the citizens junior young men. I have a plan that never fails.
• 43:32
  I watch the city record to see when there's civil service examinations for good
• 43:37
  things. Then I take my young cit in hand, tell him all about
• 43:42
  the good thing, and get him worked up till he goes and takes an
• 43:45
  examination. I don't bother about him any more. It's a cinch that he
• 43:51
  comes back to me in a few days and asks to join Tammany Hall.
• 43:55
  Come over to Washington Hall some night, and I'll show you a list of
• 44:00
  on our roll marked c s, which means bucked up against civil service.
• 44:07
  As to the older voters, I reached them too. No, I don't
• 44:09
  send them campaign literature. That's rot. People can get all the political stuff
• 44:15
  they want to read, and a good deal more to in the papers.
• 44:19
  Who read speeches nowadays? Anyhow, it's bad enough to listen to them.
• 44:23
  You ain't going to gain any votes. By stuffing the letter boxes with campaign
• 44:28
  documents Like as not, you lose votes for There's nothing a man hates more
• 44:32
  than to hear the letter carrier ring his bell and go to the letterbox expecting
• 44:37
  to find a letter he was looking for, and find only a lot of
• 44:40
  printed politics. I met a man this very morning who told me he voted
• 44:45
  the Democratic state ticket last year just because Republicans kept Grameny's letterbox with campaign documents.
• 44:52
  What tells in holding your grip on your district is to go right down
• 44:58
  among the poor families and help them in the different ways they need help.
• 45:02
  I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in ninth,
• 45:07
  tenth or eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day of night,
• 45:09
  I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the
• 45:14
  fire engines. If a family is burned out, I don't ask whether they
• 45:17
  are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the charity organization society,
• 45:22
  which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide they were
• 45:27
  worthy of help. About the time they are dead from starvation. I just
• 45:31
  get quarters for them, buy clothes for them if their clothes were burned up,
• 45:36
  and fix them up till they get things running again. It's philanthropy,
• 45:39
  but it's politics, too, mighty good politics. Who can tell how many
• 45:45
  votes one of these fires bring me. The poor are the most grateful people
• 45:49
  in the world. And let me tell you, they have more friends in
• 45:52
  their neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs. If there's a family in my
• 45:57
  district and want I know it, but for the charitable societies do and me
• 46:01
  and my men are first on the ground. I have a special court to
• 46:06
  look up such cases. The consequence is that the poor look up to George
• 46:09
  W. Plunkett as a father, come to him in trouble, and don't
• 46:14
  forget him on election day. Another thing, I can always get a job
• 46:19
  for a deserving man. I make it a point to keep on the track
• 46:22
  of jobs, and it seldom happens that I don't have a few of my
• 46:27
  sleeve ready for use. I know every big employer in the district and in
• 46:30
  the whole city for that matter. And they ain't in the habit of saying
• 46:36
  no to me when I ask them for a job. And the children,
• 46:39
  the little roses of the district, do I forget them? Oh no,
• 46:45
  They know me, every one of them, and they know that a sight
• 46:49
  of Uncle George and Candy means the same thing. Some of them are the
• 46:53
  best kind of vote getters. I'll tell you case. Last year, a
• 46:58
  little eleventh Avenue Rosebud, who's his father is a Republican, cot hold of
• 47:01
  his whiskers on election day and said she wouldn't let go till he'd promise to
• 47:06
  vote for me. And she didn't. End of chapter six. Chapter seven
• 47:13
  on the Shame of the Cities. I've been reading a book by Lincoln Stephens
• 47:19
  on the Shame of the Cities. Stephans means well, but like all reformers,
• 47:24
  he don't know how to make distinctions. He can't see no difference between
• 47:30
  honest graft and dishonest graft, and consequent he gets things all mixed up.
• 47:36
  There's the biggest kind of difference between political looters and politicians who make a fortune
• 47:42
  out of politics by keeping their eyes wide open. The looter goes in for
• 47:46
  himself alone without considering his organization or his city. The politician looks after his
• 47:53
  own interests, to organization's interests and the city's interest all at the same time
• 47:59
  shed ditinction. For instance, I ain't no looter. Looter hogs it.
• 48:04
  I never hogged. I made my pile in politics, but at the same
• 48:08
  time I served your organization and got more big improvements for New York City than
• 48:14
  any other living man. And I never monkeyed with the penal code. The
• 48:20
  difference between a looter and a practical politician is the difference between the Philadelphia Republican
• 48:25
  gang and Tammany Hall. Stephens seems to think they're both about the same,
• 48:31
  but he's all wrong. The Philadelphia Crown runs up against the penal code.
• 48:37
  Tammany don't. The Philadelphians are ain't satisfied with Robin the Bank of all its
• 48:43
  gold and paper money. They stay to pick up the Nichols and pennies,
• 48:46
  and the cop comes round and nabs them. Tammany ain't no such fool.
• 48:51
  Well, I remember about fifteen or twenty years ago, a Republican superintendent of
• 48:55
  the Philadelphia Almshouse stole the zinc roof off the building and sold it for junk
• 49:02
  that was carrying things to excess. There is a limit to everything, and
• 49:07
  the Philadelphia Republicans go beyond the limit. It seems like they can't be cool
• 49:12
  and moderate like real politicians. It ain't fair, therefore, to class tammany
• 49:17
  men with the Philadelphia gang. Any man who undertakes to write political books should
• 49:23
  never for a moment lose sight of the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft,
• 49:31
  which I explained in full in another talk. If he puts all kinds
• 49:36
  of graft on the same level, he'll make the fatal mistake that Stephan's made
• 49:40
  and spoil his book. A big city like New York or Philadelphia or Chicago
• 49:46
  might be compared to a sort of garden of Eden from a political point of
• 49:52
  view. It's an orchard full of beautiful apple trees. One of them has
• 49:57
  got a big sign on it marked penal code tree poison. The other trees
• 50:04
  have lots of apples on them for all, Yet the fools go to the
• 50:07
  penal code tree. Why for the reason, I guess that a cranky child
• 50:13
  refuses to eat good food and choose up a box of matches with relish.
• 50:17
  I never had any temptation to touch the penal code tree. The other apples
• 50:22
  are good enough for me, And oh lord, how many of them there
• 50:29
  are in a big city. Stephans made one good point in his book.
• 50:35
  He said he found that Philadelphia, ruled almost entirely by Americans, was more
• 50:40
  corrupt than New York, where the Irish do almost all the government. I
• 50:46
  could have told him that before he did any investigating if he had come to
• 50:51
  me. The Irish was born to rule, and they're the honestest people in
• 50:55
  the world. Show me the Irishman who would steal a roof off an almhouse.
• 51:01
  He don't exist. Of course, if an Irishman had the political pull
• 51:07
  and the roof was much worn, he might get the city authorities to put
• 51:10
  on a new one, and get the contract for it himself and buy the
• 51:15
  old roof at a bargain. But that's honest graft. It's going about the
• 51:20
  thing like a gentleman, and there's more money in it than a tearn down
• 51:23
  an old roof and carting it to the junk Man's more money and no penal
• 51:30
  code. One reason why the Irishman is more honest in politics than many sons
• 51:37
  of the revolution is that he is grateful to the country and the city that
• 51:42
  gave him protection and prosperity when he was driven by oppression from the Emerald dial
• 51:47
  Say that sentence is fine, ain't it. I'm going to get some literary
• 51:52
  follow to work it over into poetry for next Saint Patrick's Day dinner. Yes,
• 51:59
  the Irishman is his one thought is to serve the city which gave him
• 52:04
  a home. He has this thought even before he lands in New York,
• 52:07
  for his friends here often have a good place in one of the city departments
• 52:13
  picked out for him while he is still in the old country. Is it
• 52:17
  any wonder that he has a tender spot in his heart for Old New York
• 52:22
  when he is on its salary list the morning after he lands. Now a
• 52:28
  few words on the general subject of the so called shame of cities. I
• 52:32
  don't believe that the government of our cities is any worse in proportion to opportunities
• 52:39
  than it was fifty years ago. I'll explain what I mean by in proportion
• 52:45
  to opportunities. Half a century ago, our cities were small and poor.
• 52:51
  There wasn't many temptations laying around for politicians. There was hardly anything to steal,
• 52:57
  and hardly any opportunities for even honest A city could count its money every
• 53:02
  night before going to bed, and if three cents was missing, all the
• 53:07
  fire bells would be rung. What credit was there in being honest under them
• 53:12
  circumstances? Makes me tired to hear of old codgers back in the thirties or
• 53:16
  forties boasting that they retired from politics without a dollar except what they earned in
• 53:22
  their profession or businesses. If they lived today, with all the existing opportunities,
• 53:30
  they would be just the same as twentieth century politicians. There ain't any
• 53:36
  more honest people in the world just now than the convicts and Singh Sing.
• 53:42
  Not one of them steals anything. Why because I can't see the implication.
• 53:49
  Understand, I ain't defending politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals
• 53:55
  is worse than the thief. He is a fool with the grand opportunities all
• 54:00
  around. For the man with a political pull, there's no excuse for stealing
• 54:05
  assent. The point I want to make is that if there is some stealing
• 54:09
  in politics, it don't mean that the politicians of nineteen oh five are as
• 54:15
  a class worse than them. Of eighteen thirty five. It just means that
• 54:22
  the old timers had nothing to steal, while the politicians now are surrounded by
• 54:27
  all kinds of temptations, and some of them naturally the full ones buck up
• 54:32
  against the penal code. End of chapter seven, Chapter eight, ingratitude in
• 54:39
  politics. There's no crime so mean as ingratitude in politics. But every great
• 54:47
  statesman from the beginning of the world has been up against it. Caesar had
• 54:52
  his Brutus, that king of Shakespeare's Leary I think you call him, had
• 54:59
  his own daughters go back on him. Platt had his Odell, and I've
• 55:04
  got my the McManus. It's a real proof that a man is great when
• 55:09
  he meets with political ingratitude. Great men have a tender trust in nature.
• 55:15
  So have I. Outside of the contracting in real estate business, in politics,
• 55:22
  I have trusted men who have told me they were my friends. And
• 55:28
  if traders have turned up in my camp, well, I only had the
• 55:31
  same experience as Caesar, Leary and the others about my brutus. McManus,
• 55:38
  you know, has seven brothers, and they call him the because he is
• 55:45
  the boss of the lot, and to distinguish him from all the other mcmanuses.
• 55:51
  For several years, he was a political bushwhacker in campaigns. He was
• 55:55
  sometimes on the fence, sometimes on both sides of the fence, and sometimes
• 56:00
  under the fence. Nobody knew where to find him at any particular time,
• 56:06
  and nobody trusted him. That is, nobody but me. I thought there
• 56:10
  was some good in him after all, and that if I took him in
• 56:15
  hand, I could make a man of him. Yet I did take him
• 56:19
  in hand a few years ago. My friends told me it would be the
• 56:22
  Brutus Leary business all over again, but I didn't believe them. I put
• 56:29
  my trust in the I nominated him for the Assembly and he was elected.
• 56:35
  A year afterwards, when I was running for re election as Senator, I
• 56:38
  nominated him for the Assembly again on the ticket with me. What do you
• 56:45
  think happened? We both carried the fifteenth Assembly district, but he ran away
• 56:50
  ahead of me. Just think ahead of me in my own district. I
• 56:54
  was just dazed. When I began to recover my election district came. Captains
• 57:00
  came to me and said that McManus had sold me out with the idea of
• 57:05
  knocking me out of the centertorship, and then trying to capture the leadership of
• 57:09
  the district. I couldn't believe it. My trust in nature couldn't imagine such
• 57:15
  treachery. I sent for McManus and said, with my voice trembling with emotions,
• 57:23
  they say you've done me dirt. The it can't be true. Tell
• 57:29
  me it ain't true. The almost wept as he said he was innocent.
• 57:37
  Never have I done you dirt, George, he declared, wicked traitors have
• 57:40
  tried to do you. I don't know just who they are yet, but
• 57:45
  I'm on their trail and I'll find them or aberture the name of the MacManus.
• 57:52
  I'm going out right now to find them. Well, the kept his
• 57:59
  word as far as going out and finding the traders was concerned. He found
• 58:02
  them all right, and put himself at their head. Oh no, he
• 58:07
  didn't have to go far to look for them. He's got them gathered in
• 58:10
  his club rooms now, and he's doing his best to take the leadership from
• 58:15
  the man that made him. So you see that Caesar and Larry's and me
• 58:21
  in the same boat. Only I'll come out on top while Caesar and Leary
• 58:25
  went under. Now let me tell you that the ingrate in politics never flourishes
• 58:32
  long. I can give you lots of examples. Look at the men who'd
• 58:37
  done up Roscoe Conkling when he resigned from the United States Senate and went to
• 58:42
  Albany to ask for re election. What's become of them passed from view like
• 58:47
  a moving picture. Who took Conkling's place in the Senate? Twenty dollars?
• 58:53
  Even that you can't remember his name without looking in the almanac. And poor
• 58:59
  old Platt, he's down and out now. And Odell is in the saddle.
• 59:04
  But that don't mean that he'll always be in the saddle. His enemies
• 59:07
  are working hard all the time to do him, and I wouldn't be a
• 59:13
  bit surprised if he went out before the next state campaign. The politicians who
• 59:19
  make a lasting success in politics are the men who were always loyal to their
• 59:24
  friends, even up to the gate of state prison if necessary, men who
• 59:30
  keep their promises and never lie. Richard Crocker used to say that telling the
• 59:36
  truth and sticking to his friends was the political leader's stock in trade. Nobody
• 59:42
  ever said anything truer, and nobody lived up to it better than Crocker.
• 59:46
  That is why he remained leader of Tammany Hall. As long as he wanted
• 59:52
  to, every man in the organization trusted him. Sometimes he made mistakes that
• 59:57
  hurt him campaigns, but they were always on the side of serving as friends.
• 1:00:02
  It's the same with Charles F. Murphy. He has always stood by
• 1:00:07
  his friends, even when it looked like he would be down for doing so.
• 1:00:10
  Remember how he stuck to mc clellan in nineteen o three when all the
• 1:00:15
  Brooklyn leaders were against him and it seemed as if Tammany was in for a
• 1:00:20
  grand smash up. It's men like Crocker and Murphy the stay leaders as long
• 1:00:25
  as they live, not men like Brutus and McManus. Now, I want
• 1:00:30
  to tell you why political traders in New York City especially are punished quick.
• 1:00:37
  It's because the Irish are in a majority. The Irish, above all people
• 1:00:43
  in the world, hates a trader. You can't hold them back when a
• 1:00:46
  trader of any kind is in sight. And remember in Old Ireland they'd take
• 1:00:52
  particular delight in doing up a political trader. Most of the voters in my
• 1:00:58
  district are Irish or of Irish descent. They've spotted the McManus and when they
• 1:01:06
  get a chance at him, at the polls next time, they won't do
• 1:01:09
  a thing to him. The question has been asked, is a politician ever
• 1:01:15
  justified in going back on his district leader. I answer no, as long
• 1:01:21
  as the leader hustled around and gets all the jobs possible for his constituents.
• 1:01:25
  When the voters elect a man leader, they make a sort of a contract
• 1:01:30
  with him. They say, although it ain't written out, we've put you
• 1:01:36
  here to look out for our interests. You want to see that this district
• 1:01:40
  gets all the jobs that's coming to it. Be faithful to us, and
• 1:01:45
  we'll be faithful to you, the district leader promises, and that makes a
• 1:01:52
  solemn contract. If he lives up to it, spends most of his time
• 1:01:55
  chasing after places in the departments, picks up jobs from real roads and contractors
• 1:02:00
  for his followers, and shows himself in all ways a true statesman, then
• 1:02:05
  his followers are bound in honor to uphold him, just as they're bound to
• 1:02:09
  uphold the Constitution of the United States. But if he only looks after his
• 1:02:14
  own interests, or shows no talent for sending out jobs, or ain't got
• 1:02:19
  the nerve to demand and get his share of the good things that are going
• 1:02:23
  his followers may be absolved from their allegiance, and they may up and swat
• 1:02:28
  him without being put down as political ingrates. End of Chapter eight, Chapter
• 1:02:35
  nine Reciprocity and Patronage. Whenever Tammanny is whipped at the poles, the people
• 1:02:43
  set to predicting that the organization is going to smash. They say we can't
• 1:02:47
  get along without the officers, and that the district leaders are going to desert
• 1:02:52
  wholesale. That was what was said after the throwdowns in eighteen ninety four and
• 1:02:59
  nineteen oh one. But it didn't happen, did it. Not one big
• 1:03:04
  Tammany man deserted, and today the organization is stronger than ever. I was
• 1:03:09
  that it was because Tammany has more than one string to its bow. I
• 1:03:15
  acknowledge that you can't keep an organization together without patronage. Men ain't in politics
• 1:03:22
  for nothing. They want to get something out of it. But there is
• 1:03:28
  more than one kind of patronage. We lost the public kind, or a
• 1:03:31
  greater part of it in nineteen o one, but Tammany has an immense private
• 1:03:37
  patronage that keeps things going when it gets a setback at the polls. Take
• 1:03:44
  me, for instance, when low came in. Some of my men lost
• 1:03:49
  public jobs, but to fix them all right. I didn't know how many
• 1:03:53
  jobs I got for them on the surface and elevated railroads, several hundred.
• 1:03:59
  I placed a lot more or on public works done by contractors. And no
• 1:04:02
  Tammany man goes hungry. In my district. Plunkett's okay on an application for
• 1:04:09
  a job is never turned down, for they all know that Plunkett and Tammany
• 1:04:15
  don't stay out long. See let me tell you too that I got jobs
• 1:04:19
  from Republicans in office, federal and otherwise. When Tammany's on top, I
• 1:04:25
  do good turns for the Republicans. When they're on top, they don't forget
• 1:04:30
  me. Me and Republicans are enemies just one day in the year, election
• 1:04:34
  day. Then we fight tooth and nail. The rest of the time,
• 1:04:40
  it's live and let live with us. On election day I try to pile
• 1:04:45
  up as big a maturity as I can against George Wanmaker, the Republican leader
• 1:04:50
  of the fifteenth. Any other day, George and I are the best of
• 1:04:55
  friends. I can go to him and say, George, I want you
• 1:05:00
  to place this friend of mine. He says, all right, senator or
• 1:05:04
  vice versa. You see, we differ on tariffs and currencies in all them
• 1:05:11
  things, but we agree on the main proposition that when a man works in
• 1:05:15
  politics, he should get something out of it. The politicians have got to
• 1:05:20
  stand together this way, or there wouldn't be any political parties. In a
• 1:05:25
  short time. Civil service would gobble up everything. Politicians would be on the
• 1:05:30
  bum, the republic would fall, and soon there would be the cry of
• 1:05:34
  vivile royal. The very thought of this civil service, monister, makes my
• 1:05:42
  blood boil. I have said it a lot of times already, but another
• 1:05:46
  instance of its awful work just occurs to me. Let me tell you a
• 1:05:51
  sad but true story. Last Wednesday, a line of carriages wound into cavalry
• 1:05:58
  cemetery. I was in one of them. It was the funeral of a
• 1:06:01
  young man from my district, a bright boy that I had great hopes of
• 1:06:08
  when he went to school. He was the most patriotic boy in the district.
• 1:06:12
  Nobody could sing the Star Spangled banner like him, nobody was fond of
• 1:06:15
  waving a flag, and nobody shot off as many firegraggers on the fourth of
• 1:06:20
  July. And when he grew up he made up his mind to serve his
• 1:06:25
  country in one of the city's departments. There was no way of getting there
• 1:06:30
  without passing a civil service examination. Well, he went down to the Civil
• 1:06:36
  Service office and tackled the fool questions. I saw him the next day.
• 1:06:43
  It was Memorial Day and soldiers were marching and flags flying and people cheering.
• 1:06:48
  Where was my young man standing on a corner scowling at the whole show.
• 1:06:55
  When I asked him why he was so quiet, he laughed in a wild
• 1:07:00
  sort of way and said, what rot all? This is just in?
• 1:07:04
  A band came along playing Liberty. He laughed wild again and said, liberty
• 1:07:11
  rats. I don't guess I need to make a long story of it.
• 1:07:15
  From the time that young man left the Civil Service Office, he lost all
• 1:07:19
  patriotism. He didn't care no more for his country. He went to the
• 1:07:25
  dogs. He ain't the only one. There's a gravestone over some bright young
• 1:07:30
  man's head for every one of them infernal civil service examinations. They are undermining
• 1:07:36
  the manhood of the nation and making the declaration of independence a farce. We
• 1:07:44
  need a new declaration of independence, independence of the whole full civil service business.
• 1:07:51
  I mention all this now to show why it is that the politicians of
• 1:07:56
  two big parties help each other along, and why tammany men are tolerably happy
• 1:08:01
  when not in power in the city. When we win, I won't let
• 1:08:05
  any deserving Republican in my neighborhood suffer from hunger or thirst, although of course
• 1:08:12
  I look out for my own people first. Now I've never gone in for
• 1:08:16
  nonpartisan business, but I do think that all the leaders of the two parties
• 1:08:20
  should get together and make an open, nonpartisan fight against civil service their common
• 1:08:27
  enemy. They could keep up their quarrels about imperialism and free silver in high
• 1:08:32
  tariff, they don't count for much alongside of civil service, which strikes right
• 1:08:39
  at the root of the government. The time is fast coming when civil service
• 1:08:44
  or the politicians will have to go, and it will be here sooner than
• 1:08:47
  they expect if the politicians don't unite, drop all them minor issues for a
• 1:08:54
  while, and make a stand against the civil service flood that's sweeping over the
• 1:08:59
  country like them floods out West. End of chapter nine, Chapter ten,
• 1:09:08
  Brooklynites natural born hay seeds. Some people are wondering why it is that the
• 1:09:14
  Brooklyn Democrats have been sidon with David B. Hill and the Upstate crowd.
• 1:09:20
  There's no cause for wonder. I have made a careful study of the Brooklynite
• 1:09:25
  and I can tell you why, because Brooklynite is a natural born hay seed
• 1:09:31
  and can never become a real New Yorker. He can't be trained into it.
• 1:09:35
  Consolidation didn't make him a New Yorker, and nothing on earth can.
• 1:09:41
  A man born in Germany can settle down and become a good New Yorker.
• 1:09:45
  So can an irishman. In fact, the first word an Irish boy learns
• 1:09:49
  in the Old Country is New York. And when he grows up and comes
• 1:09:54
  here, he is at home right away. Even a Jap or a Chinaman
• 1:09:58
  can become a New Yorker, but a Brooklyn Knight never can. And why
• 1:10:03
  because Brooklyn don't seem to be like any other place on earth. Once let
• 1:10:10
  a man grow up amidst Brooklyn's cobblestones and the older of Newton Creek in Golwan's
• 1:10:16
  Canal ever in his nostrils, and there's no place in the world for him
• 1:10:21
  except Brooklyn. And even if he don't grow up there, if he is
• 1:10:26
  born there and lives there, only in his boyhood and then moves away.
• 1:10:30
  He is still beyond redemption. In one of my speeches in the legislature,
• 1:10:35
  I gave an example of this, and it's worth repeating now. Soon after
• 1:10:41
  I became a leader on the West Side a quarter of a century ago,
• 1:10:44
  I came across a bright boy about seven years old, who had just been
• 1:10:48
  brought over from Brooklyn by his parents. I took an interest in the boy,
• 1:10:51
  and when he grew up, brought him into politics. Finally, I
• 1:10:57
  sent him to the Assembly from my district. I remember that the boy was
• 1:11:01
  only seven years old when he left Brooklyn and was twenty three when he went
• 1:11:06
  to the Assembly. You'd think he had forgotten all about Brooklyn, wouldn't you.
• 1:11:12
  I did, But I was dead wrong. When that young fellow got
• 1:11:15
  into the Assembly, he paid no attention to bills or debates about New York
• 1:11:21
  City. He didn't even show any interest in his own district, but just
• 1:11:27
  let Brooklyn be mentioned, or a bill be introduced about Gowanas Canal or the
• 1:11:31
  Long Island Railroad, and he was all attention. Nothing else on earth interested
• 1:11:36
  him. The end came when I caught him. What do you think I
• 1:11:41
  caught him? At one morning I went over from the Senate to the Assembly
• 1:11:45
  Chamber, and there I found my young man reading, actually reading a Brooklyn
• 1:11:51
  newspaper. When he saw me coming, he tried to hide the paper,
• 1:11:56
  but it was too late. I caught him dead to rights, and I
• 1:11:59
  said to him, Jimmy, I'm afraid New York ain't fascinating enough for you.
• 1:12:04
  You had better move back to Brooklyn after your present term. And he
• 1:12:10
  did. I met him the other day crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, carrying a
• 1:12:13
  hobby horse under one arm and a doll's carriage under the other, and look
• 1:12:16
  him perfectly happy. McFerrin and his men are the same way. They can't
• 1:12:21
  get it into their heads that they are New Yorkers, and just tend naturally
• 1:12:27
  towards supportin Hill and his hay Seeds against Murphy. I had some hopes of
• 1:12:32
  McCarran till lately. He spends too much of his time over there, and
• 1:12:35
  has seen so much of the world that I thought he might be an exception
• 1:12:41
  and grow out of his Brooklyn surroundings. But his course at Albany shows that
• 1:12:45
  there is no exception to the rule. Say I'd rather take a hot and
• 1:12:49
  tott in hand to bring up as a good New Yorker than undertake the job
• 1:12:56
  with a Brooklyn Night. Honest I would. And by the way, come
• 1:13:00
  to think of it, is there really any upstate Democrats left? It has
• 1:13:06
  never been proved, to my satisfaction there is any. I know that some
• 1:13:13
  upstate members of the State Committee call themselves Democrats. Besides these, I know
• 1:13:17
  at least six more men above the Bronx who make a living out of profession
• 1:13:21
  to be Democrats, and I have just heard of some few more. But
• 1:13:27
  if there is any real Democrats up the state, what becomes of them on
• 1:13:31
  election day? They certainly don't go near the polls or they vote the Republican
• 1:13:36
  ticket. Look at the last three state elections, Roosevelt piled up more than
• 1:13:44
  one hundred thousand majority above the Bronx. Odell piled up about one hundred and
• 1:13:48
  sixty thousand majority the first time he ran, and one hundred and thirty one
• 1:13:54
  thousand the second time. About all the Democratic votes cast were polled in New
• 1:14:00
  York City. The Republicans can get all the votes they want up the state.
• 1:14:04
  Even when we piled up one hundred and twenty three thousand majority for Kohler
• 1:14:10
  in the city in nineteen oh two, the Republicans went at eight thousand better
• 1:14:15
  above the Bronx. That's why it makes me so mad to hear about upstate
• 1:14:19
  Democrats controlling our state convention and saying who we shall choose for president. It's
• 1:14:27
  just like Staten Island undertaken to dictate to a New York City convention. I
• 1:14:31
  remember once a Syracuse man came to Richard Crocker at the Democratic Club, handed
• 1:14:38
  him a letter of introduction and said, I'm looking for a job in the
• 1:14:42
  street cleaning department. I'm backed by one hundred upstate Democrats. Crocker looked hard
• 1:14:46
  at the man a minute and then said, upstate Democrats. Upstate democrats.
• 1:14:53
  I didn't know there was any upstate Democrats. Just walk up and down a
• 1:14:58
  while till I see what an upstate Democrat looks like. Another thing, when
• 1:15:02
  a campaign is on, did you ever hear of an Upstate Democrat making a
• 1:15:08
  contribution? Not much. Tammany has had to foot the whole bill, and
• 1:15:13
  when any of Hill's men come down to New York to help him in the
• 1:15:16
  campaign, we have to pay their board. Whenever money is to be raised,
• 1:15:21
  there's nothing doing up the state. The Democrats there are always providing that
• 1:15:27
  there is any Democrats there. Take to the woods. Supposing Tammany turned over
• 1:15:31
  the campaigns to the hillmen and then held off, what would happen. Why
• 1:15:38
  they would have to hire a shut out in the suburbs of Albany for a
• 1:15:42
  headquarters unless the Democratic National Committee put up for the campaign expenses. Tammany's got
• 1:15:48
  the votes and the cash. The hill crowds only got hot air. End
• 1:15:55
  of chapter ten, Chapter eleven, Tammany leader not bookworms. You hear a
• 1:16:02
  lot of talk about the Tammany district leaders being illiterate men. If illiterate means
• 1:16:10
  have in common sense, we plead guilty. But if they mean that Tammany
• 1:16:15
  leaders ain't got no education and ain't gents, they don't know what they're talking
• 1:16:20
  about. Of course we ate all bookworms and college professors. If we were,
• 1:16:28
  Tammany might win an election once in four thousand years. Most of the
• 1:16:32
  leaders are plain American citizens of the people and near to the people, and
• 1:16:39
  they have all the education they need to whip the dudes who part their name
• 1:16:44
  in the middle and run the city government. They've got bookworms too. In
• 1:16:48
  the organization. But we don't make them district leaders. We keep them for
• 1:16:54
  ornaments on parade days. Tammany Hall is a great, big machine, with
• 1:17:00
  every part adjust a delicate to do its own particular work. It runs so
• 1:17:08
  smooth that you wouldn't think it was a complicated affair, but it is.
• 1:17:14
  Every district leader is fitted to the district he runs, and he wouldn't exactly
• 1:17:19
  fit any other district. That's the reason Tammany never makes the mistake the Fusion
• 1:17:26
  outfit always makes of sending men into the districts who don't know the people and
• 1:17:31
  have no sympathy with their peculiarities. We don't put a silk stocking on the
• 1:17:38
  bowery, nor do we make a man who is handy with his fists leader
• 1:17:43
  of the twenty ninth. The Fusionists make about the same sort of a mistake
• 1:17:48
  that a repeater made at an election in Albany several years ago. He was
• 1:17:56
  hired to go to the polls early in a half dozen elects districts and vote
• 1:18:00
  on other men's names before these men reached the poles. At one place,
• 1:18:05
  when he was asked his name by the pole clerk, he had a nerve
• 1:18:10
  to answer William Crosswell, don come on if you ain't Bishop Doane, said
• 1:18:15
  the pole clerk. The at you, I yelled a repeater. Now that
• 1:18:23
  is the sort of bad judgment the fusionists are guilty of. They don't pick
• 1:18:29
  men to suit the work they have to do. Take me, for instance,
• 1:18:33
  My district the fifteenth is made up of all sorts of people, and
• 1:18:39
  a cosmopolitan is needed to run it successful. I'm a cosmopolitan. When I
• 1:18:45
  get into the silk stocking part of the district, I can talk grammar and
• 1:18:49
  all that with the best of them. I went to school three winters when
• 1:18:55
  I was a boy, and I learned a lot of fancy stuff that I
• 1:18:58
  keep for occasions. There made a silk stocking in the district who ain't proud
• 1:19:03
  to be seen talking with George Washington plunket, And maybe they learn a thing
• 1:19:09
  or two from their talks with me. There's one man in the district,
• 1:19:13
  a big banker, who said to me one day, George, you can
• 1:19:17
  sling the most vigorous English I ever heard. You remind me of Senator Horror
• 1:19:23
  of Massachusetts. Of course that was putting it on too thick, But say,
• 1:19:29
  honest, I like Senator horse speeches. He once quoted in the United
• 1:19:33
  States Senate some of my remarks on the curse of civil service. And though
• 1:19:39
  he didn't agree with me altogether, I noticed that her ideas are alike in
• 1:19:43
  some things, and we both have the knack of putting things strong. Only
• 1:19:48
  he put on more frills to suit his audience. As for the common people
• 1:19:54
  of the district, I am at home with them at all times. When
• 1:19:58
  I go among them, don't try to show off my grammar, or talk
• 1:20:01
  about the Constitution or how many volts there is in electricity, or make it
• 1:20:06
  appear in any way that I am better educated than they are. They wouldn't
• 1:20:13
  stand for that sort of thing. No, I drop all monkey shines.
• 1:20:18
  So you see, I've got to be several sorts of a man in a
• 1:20:21
  single day, a lightning change artist, so to speak. But I am
• 1:20:28
  one sort of man always in one respect. I stick to my friends high
• 1:20:31
  and low, do them a good turn whenever I get a chance, and
• 1:20:36
  hunt up all the jobs going from my constituents. There ain't a man in
• 1:20:41
  New York who's got such a cent for political jobs as I have. When
• 1:20:45
  I get up in the morning, I can almost tell every time whether a
• 1:20:49
  job has become vacant overnight and what department it is in, and I'm the
• 1:20:55
  first man on the ground to get it. Only last week I turned up
• 1:20:59
  at the office of Water Register Savage at nine a m. And told him
• 1:21:02
  I wanted a vacant place in his office for one of my constituents. How
• 1:21:08
  did you know that O'Brien had got out, he asked me. I smelled
• 1:21:13
  it in the air when I got up this morning. I answered, Now
• 1:21:16
  that was the fact. I didn't know there was a man in the department
• 1:21:20
  named O'Brien, much less that he had got out. But my scent led
• 1:21:26
  me to the water Register's office, and it don't often lead me wrong.
• 1:21:30
  A cosmopolitan ain't needed in all the other districts, but our men are just
• 1:21:35
  the kind to rule. There's Dan Finn in the Battery District, Bluff,
• 1:21:40
  Jolly Dan, who is now on the bench. Maybe you'd think that a
• 1:21:45
  court justice is not the man to hold a district like that, but you're
• 1:21:48
  mistaken. Most of the voters of the district are the janitors of the big
• 1:21:54
  office buildings on Lower Broadway and their helpers. These janitors are the most dignified
• 1:22:00
  and haughtiest of men. Even I would have trouble in holding them. Nothing
• 1:22:04
  less than a judge on the bench is good enough for them. Dan does
• 1:22:09
  the dignity act with the janitors, and when he is with the boys,
• 1:22:13
  he hangs up the ermine in the closet and becomes a jolly good fellow.
• 1:22:18
  Big Tom Foley, leader of the second district, fits in exactly two.
• 1:22:23
  Tom sells whiskey and good whiskey, and he is able to take care of
• 1:22:27
  himself against a half dozen thugs if he runs up against them on Cherry Hill
• 1:22:31
  or in Chartman Square. Pat Ryder and Johnny Aaron of the third and fourth
• 1:22:38
  districts are just the men for the places. Aaron's contestituents are about half Irishman
• 1:22:45
  and half Jews. He is as popular with one race as with the other.
• 1:22:49
  He eats corn, beef and kosher meat with equal nonchalance, and it's
• 1:22:54
  all the same to him whether he takes off his hat in the church or
• 1:22:58
  pulls it down over his ear in the synagogue. The other downtown leaders,
• 1:23:03
  Barney Martin of the fifth, Tim Sullivan of the sixth, Pat Keen of
• 1:23:08
  the seventh, Florie Sullivan of the eighth, Frank Goodwin of the ninth,
• 1:23:12
  Julius Harberger of the tenth, Pete Doling of the eleventh, Joe Scully of
• 1:23:16
  the twelfth, Johnny Oakley of the fourteenth, and Pat Keenan of the sixteenth
• 1:23:20
  are just built to suit the people they have to deal with. They don't
• 1:23:25
  go in for the literary business much downtown, but these men are all real
• 1:23:30
  gents, and that's what the people want, even the poorest tenement dwellers.
• 1:23:34
  As you go further uptown you find a rather different kind of district leader.
• 1:23:40
  There's Victor Dowling, who was until lately the leader of the twenty fourth.
• 1:23:45
  He's a lulu. He knows the Latin grammar backward. What's strange. He's
• 1:23:50
  a sensible young fellow too, and once in a century we come across a
• 1:23:55
  fellow like that in Tammany politics. James J. Martin, leader of the
• 1:24:00
  twenty seventh, is also something of a high toner and publishes a law paper,
• 1:24:04
  while Thomas C. Rush of the twenty ninth is a lawyer, and
• 1:24:09
  Isaac Hopper the thirty first is a big contractor. The downtown leaders wouldn't do
• 1:24:15
  uptown and vice versa. So you see these fool critics don't know what they're
• 1:24:20
  talking about when they criticize Tammany Hall, the most perfect political machine on earth.
• 1:24:29
  End of Chapter eleven, Chapter twelve. Dangerous of the dress suit in
• 1:24:33
  politics. Putting on this style don't pay in politics. The people won't stand
• 1:24:41
  for it. If you've got an achin for style, sit down on it
• 1:24:45
  till you have made your pile and landed a Supreme Court justiceship with a fourteen
• 1:24:49
  year term at seventeen thousand a year, or some job of that kind.
• 1:24:56
  Then you've got about all you can get out of politics, and you can
• 1:25:00
  afford to wear a dress suit all day and sleep in at all night if
• 1:25:03
  you have a mind to. But before you have caught on to your life
• 1:25:09
  meal ticket, be simple. Live like your neighbors, even if you have
• 1:25:14
  the means to live better. Make the poorest man in your district feel that
• 1:25:18
  he is your equal or even a bit superior to you. Above all things,
• 1:25:25
  avoid a dress suit. You have no idea of the harm that dress
• 1:25:29
  suits have done in politics. They are not so fatal to young politicians as
• 1:25:34
  civil service reform and drink, but they have scores of victims. I will
• 1:25:40
  mention one sad case. After the big Tammany victory in eighteen ninety seven,
• 1:25:45
  Richard Crocker went down to Lakewood to make up the slate of offices for Mayor
• 1:25:49
  Van Wick to distribute. All the district leaders and many more Tammany men went
• 1:25:57
  down there too to pick up anything good that was going on. There was
• 1:26:00
  nothing but dress suits at dinner at Lakewood, and Crocker wouldn't let any Tammany
• 1:26:05
  men go to dinner without them. Well, a bright, young West Side
• 1:26:10
  politician who held a three thousand dollar job in one of the departments, went
• 1:26:15
  to Lakewood to ask Croker for something better. He wore a dress suit for
• 1:26:20
  the first time in his life. It was his undoing. He got stuck
• 1:26:27
  on himself. He thought he looked too beautiful for anything, and when he
• 1:26:30
  came home he was a changed man. As soon as he got to his
• 1:26:34
  house, every evening he put on that dress suit and set around in it
• 1:26:40
  until bedtime. That didn't satisfy him long. He wanted others to see how
• 1:26:45
  beautiful he was in a dress suit, so he joined dancing clubs and began
• 1:26:49
  going to all the balls that was given in town. Soon he began to
• 1:26:54
  neglect his family. Then he took to drinking and didn't pay any attention to
• 1:27:00
  his political work in the district. The end came in less than a year.
• 1:27:03
  He was dismissed from the department and went to the dogs. The other
• 1:27:08
  day I met him, rigged out, almost like a hobo, but he
• 1:27:12
  still had a dress suit vest on. When I asked him what he was
• 1:27:15
  doing, he said nothing at present, but I got a promise of a
• 1:27:19
  job en rolling voters at Citizens Union headquarters. Yes, a dress suit had
• 1:27:26
  brought him to that low. I'll tell you another case. Right in my
• 1:27:30
  own assembly district a few years ago, I had as one of my lieutenants
• 1:27:35
  a man named Zeke Thompson. He did find work for me, and I
• 1:27:40
  thought he had a bright future. One day he came to me said he
• 1:27:44
  intended to buy an option on a house and asked me to help him out.
• 1:27:48
  I like to see a young man acquiring property, and I had so
• 1:27:53
  much confidence in Zeke that I put up for him on the house. A
• 1:27:58
  month or so afterwards, I heard strange rumors. People told me that Zeke
• 1:28:02
  was beginning to put on style. They said he had a billiard table in
• 1:28:06
  his house and at hired jab servants. I couldn't believe it, the idea
• 1:28:13
  of a Democrat, a follower of George Washington Plunkett in the fifteenth Assembly District
• 1:28:18
  having a billiard table on jaff servants. One morning I called at the house
• 1:28:24
  to give Zeke a chance to clear himself. A jap opened the door for
• 1:28:28
  me. I saw the billiard table. Zeke was guilty. When I got
• 1:28:31
  over the shock, I said to Zeke, you are caught with the goods
• 1:28:36
  on no excuses will go. The democrats of this district ain't used to dukes
• 1:28:42
  and princes, and we wouldn't feel comfortable in your company. You'd over powers.
• 1:28:48
  You had better move up to the nineteenth or twenty seventh district and hang
• 1:28:53
  a silk stocking on your door. He went up to the nineteenth turned Republican
• 1:28:58
  and was looking for an Albany job. The last to hurt of him.
• 1:29:00
  Now nobody ever saw me putting on any style. I'm the same Plunket I
• 1:29:05
  was when I entered politics forty years ago. That is why the people of
• 1:29:10
  the district have confidence in me. If I went into the stylish business,
• 1:29:15
  eve and I plunket might be thrown down in that district. That was shown
• 1:29:20
  pretty clearly in this senatorial fight last year. A day before the election,
• 1:29:26
  my enemies circulated report that I had ordered a ten thousand dollar automobile and a
• 1:29:31
  one hundred and twenty five dollar dress suit. I sent out contradictions as fast
• 1:29:35
  as I could, but I wasn't able to stamp out the infamous slander before
• 1:29:41
  the voting was over, and I suffered some at the polls. The people
• 1:29:45
  wouldn't have minded much if I had been accused of robbing the city treasury for
• 1:29:50
  their use to Slanders of that kind can campaigns, but the automobile and the
• 1:29:55
  dress suit were too much for them. Another thing that people won't stand for
• 1:30:00
  is showing off your learning. That's just put a nonstyle. In another way,
• 1:30:06
  if you're making speeches in a campaign, talk the language the people talk.
• 1:30:12
  Don't try to show how the situation is by quoting Shakespeare. Shakespeare was
• 1:30:17
  all right in his way, but he didn't know anything about fifteenth district politics.
• 1:30:24
  If you know Latin and Greek and have a hankering to work them off
• 1:30:28
  on somebody, hire a stranger to come to your house and listen to you
• 1:30:30
  for a couple of hours, then go out and talk the language of the
• 1:30:33
  fifteenth to the people. I know it's an awful temptation, the hankering to
• 1:30:39
  show off your learning. I've felt it myself. I know the awful consequences.
• 1:30:45
  End of Chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen on municipal ownership. I am for
• 1:30:54
  municipal ownership on one condition that the Civil Service Law be repealed. It's a
• 1:31:00
  grand idea. The city, the railroads, the gas works and all that.
• 1:31:05
  Just see how many thousands of new places there would be for the workers
• 1:31:10
  in Tammany. Why there would be almost enough to go around if no Civil
• 1:31:15
  Service law stood in the way. My plan is this, first to get
• 1:31:19
  rid of that infamous law, and then go ahead and by degrees, get
• 1:31:24
  municipal ownership. Some of the reformers are saying that municipal ownership won't do because
• 1:31:30
  it would give a lot of patronage to the politicians. How those fellows mix
• 1:31:34
  things up when they argue they are given the strongest argument in favor of municipal
• 1:31:40
  ownership. When they say that who is better fitted to run the railroads and
• 1:31:45
  the gas plants and the ferries than the men who make a business of looking
• 1:31:49
  after the interests of the city. Who is more anxious to serve the city,
• 1:31:55
  who needs the jobs more? Look at the dock department. The city
• 1:32:00
  owns the docks, and how beautiful Tammany manages them. I can't tell you
• 1:32:04
  how many places they provide for our workers. I know there is a lot
• 1:32:10
  of talk about dock graft, but that talk comes from the outs. When
• 1:32:15
  the Republicans had the docks under low and strong, you didn't hear them saying
• 1:32:19
  anything about graft, did you. No, They just went in and made
• 1:32:24
  hay while the sun shone. That's always the case. When the reformers are
• 1:32:29
  out. They raised the yell that Tammany men should be sent to jail when
• 1:32:33
  they get in. They're so busy keeping out of jail themselves that they don't
• 1:32:39
  have no time to attack Tammany. All I want is that municipal ownership be
• 1:32:45
  postponed till I get my bill repealing the civil service law before the next legislature.
• 1:32:50
  It would be all a mess if every man who wanted a job would
• 1:32:55
  have to run up against a civil service examination. For instance, if a
• 1:33:00
  man wanted a job as motorman on a surface car. It's ten to one
• 1:33:04
  that they would ask him who wrote the Latin grammar, and if so,
• 1:33:10
  why did he write it? How many years were you at college? Is
• 1:33:14
  there any part of the Greek language you don't know? State Hall you don't
• 1:33:18
  know? And why you don't know it? Give a list of all the
• 1:33:23
  sciences, with full particulars about each one and how it came to be discovered.
• 1:33:29
  Write out word for word the last ten decisions of the United States Supreme
• 1:33:32
  Court and show if they conflict with the last ten decisions of the police courts
• 1:33:38
  of New York City. Before the would be mortorman left the Civil Service room,
• 1:33:45
  the chances are he would be a raven lunatic. Anyhow, I wouldn't
• 1:33:49
  like to write on his car. Just here, I want to say one
• 1:33:56
  last final word about civil service. In the last ten years, I have
• 1:34:00
  made an investigation which I've kept quiet till this time. Now I have all
• 1:34:06
  the figures together and I'm ready to announce the result. My investigation was to
• 1:34:12
  find out how many civil service reformers and how many politicians were in state prisons.
• 1:34:17
  I discovered that there was forty percent more civil service reformers among the jailbirds
• 1:34:24
  if any legislative committee wants the detailed figures, I'll prove what I say.
• 1:34:29
  I don't want to give the figures now because I want to keep them to
• 1:34:32
  back me up when I go to Albany to get the civil service law repealed.
• 1:34:38
  Don't you think that when I've had my inning, the civil service law
• 1:34:42
  will go down and the people will see that the politicians are all right and
• 1:34:46
  that they ought to have the job of running things when municipal ownership comes.
• 1:34:53
  One thing more about municipal ownership. If the city owned the railroads, et
• 1:34:58
  ceter would be sure to go up higher salaries is the crying need of the
• 1:35:03
  day. Municipal ownership would increase them all along the line, and would stir
• 1:35:09
  up such patriotism as New York City never knew before. You can't be patriotic
• 1:35:15
  on a salary that just keeps the wolf from the door. Any man who
• 1:35:18
  pretends he can, we'll bear watching, keep your hand on your watch and
• 1:35:24
  pocket book when he's about. But when a man has a good, fat
• 1:35:29
  salary, he finds himself home in Hail Columbia, all unconscious, and he
• 1:35:33
  fancies when he's riding in a trolley car that the wheels are always seeing Yankee
• 1:35:40
  Doodle came to town. I know how it is myself. When I got
• 1:35:45
  my first good job from the city, I bought up all the firecrackers in
• 1:35:48
  my district to salute this glorious country. I couldn't wait for the Fourth of
• 1:35:54
  July. I got the boys on the block to fire them off for me,
• 1:35:59
  and I felt proud of being an American. For a long time after
• 1:36:02
  that, I used to wake up nights singing the star Spangled banner. End
• 1:36:08
  of Chapter thirteen, Chapter fourteen, Tammany the only lasting democracy. I've seen
• 1:36:15
  more than one hundred democracies rise and fall in New York City in the last
• 1:36:19
  quarter of a century. At least a half dozen new so called democratic organizations
• 1:36:26
  are formed every year. All of them go in to down Tammany and take
• 1:36:30
  its place, but they seldom last more than a year or two. While
• 1:36:35
  Tammany's like the everlasting rocks, the eternal hills, and the blockades on the
• 1:36:41
  l Road, it goes on forever. I recall off hand the County Democracy,
• 1:36:46
  which was the only real opponent Tammany had in my time, the Irving
• 1:36:51
  Hall Democracy, the New York State Democracy, the German American Democracy, the
• 1:36:58
  Protection Democracy, the Independent County Democracy, the Greater New York Democracy, the
• 1:37:02
  Jimmy O'Brien democracy, the Delicatessen Dealers Democracy, the Silver Democracy, and the
• 1:37:09
  Italian Democracy. Not one of them is living today, although I hear something
• 1:37:14
  about the ghost of the Greater New York Democracy being seen on Broadway once or
• 1:37:19
  twice a year. In the old days of the County Democracy, a new
• 1:37:25
  democratic organization meant some trouble for Tammany for a time. Anyhow, Nowadays a
• 1:37:30
  new democracy means nothing at all, except that about a dozen bone hunters have
• 1:37:35
  got together for one campaign only to try to induce Tammany to give them a
• 1:37:40
  job or two, or in order to get in with the reformers for the
• 1:37:45
  same purpose. You might think that it would cost a lot of money to
• 1:37:48
  get up one of these organizations and keep it going for even one campaign.
• 1:37:55
  But Lord bless you, it costs next to nothing. Jimmy O'Brien and brought
• 1:38:00
  the manufacture of democracies down to an exact science, and reduced the cost of
• 1:38:04
  productions so as to bring it within the reach of all. Any man with
• 1:38:10
  fifty dollars can now have a democracy of his own. I've looked into the
• 1:38:14
  industry and can give bottom figures. Here's the items of cost of a new
• 1:38:19
  democracy. Dinner to twelve bone hunters twelve dollars, a speech on Jeffersonian democracy
• 1:38:29
  zero dollars, a proclamation of principles, typewriting two dollars. Rent of a
• 1:38:34
  small room one month for headquarters twelve dollars. Stationery two dollars, twelve second
• 1:38:42
  hand chairs six dollars, one second hand table two dollars, twenty nine cuspidors
• 1:38:49
  nine dollars, sign painting five dollars. Total fifty dollars. Is there any
• 1:38:57
  reason for wonder then, that democracy spring up all over when a municipal campaign
• 1:39:02
  is coming on. If you land even one small job, you get a
• 1:39:06
  big return on your investment. You don't have to pay for advertising in the
• 1:39:12
  papers. The New York papers tumble over one another to give columns to any
• 1:39:16
  new organization that comes out against Tammany. In describing the formation of a democracy
• 1:39:24
  on the fifty dollars basis, according to the items I give, the papers
• 1:39:28
  would say something like this, the organization of the delicatessen democracy last night threatens
• 1:39:34
  the existence of Tammany Hall. It is a grand move for a new and
• 1:39:41
  pure democracy in this city. Well, may the Tammany leaders be alarmed.
• 1:39:45
  Panic has already broke loose in Fourteenth Street. The vast crowd that gathered at
• 1:39:50
  the launching of the new organization, the stirring speeches, and the proclamation of
• 1:39:56
  principles mean that at last there is an up horizon that will end Tammany's career
• 1:40:01
  of corruption. The Delicatessen Democracy will open in a few days, spacious headquarters
• 1:40:08
  where all true democrats may gather and prepare for the fight. Say, ain't
• 1:40:15
  some of the papers awful gullible about politics? Talk about come ons from Iowa
• 1:40:21
  or Texas? They ain't in it? With this childlike simplicity of these papers.
• 1:40:28
  It's a wonder to me that more men don't go into this kind of
• 1:40:31
  manufacturing industry. It has bigger profits generally than the green goods business, and
• 1:40:38
  none of the risks, and you don't have to invest as much as the
• 1:40:42
  green goods men. Just see what good things some of these democracies got in
• 1:40:45
  the last few years. The New York State Democracy in eighteen ninety seven landed
• 1:40:51
  a Supreme Court justiceship for the man who manufactured the concern a fourteen year term
• 1:40:59
  at s seventeen thousand, five hundred dollars a year, that is two hundred
• 1:41:03
  and forty five thousand dollars. You see, Tammany was rather scared that year
• 1:41:10
  and was bluffed into given this job to get the support of the state Democracy,
• 1:41:15
  which by the way, went out of business quick and prompt the day
• 1:41:18
  after it got this big plum. The next year the German Democracy landed a
• 1:41:24
  place of the same kind. And then see how the greater New York Democracy
• 1:41:29
  worked the game on the reformers in nineteen oh one. The men who managed
• 1:41:32
  this concern were former Tammy Knights who had lost their grip. Yet they made
• 1:41:39
  the citizens union innocence believe that they were the real thing in the way of
• 1:41:44
  reformers, and that they had one hundred thousand voter back of them. They
• 1:41:49
  got the borough President of Manhattan, the president of the Board of Aldermen,
• 1:41:55
  the registrar, and a lot of lesser places. It was the the greatest
• 1:42:00
  bunco game of modern times. And then in eighteen ninety four when Strong was
• 1:42:05
  elected mayor, what a harvest it was for all the little democracies that was
• 1:42:12
  made to order that year, every one of them got something good. In
• 1:42:15
  one case, all the nine men in an organization got jobs, paying from
• 1:42:20
  two thousand to five thousand dollars. I happen to know exactly what it cost
• 1:42:27
  to manufacture that organization. It was forty two dollars and four cents. They
• 1:42:32
  left out the stationery and had only twenty three cuspidors. The extra four cents
• 1:42:38
  was for two postage stamps. The only reason I can imagine why more men
• 1:42:43
  don't go into this industry is because they don't know about it. And just
• 1:42:47
  here it strikes me that it might not be wise to publish what I've said.
• 1:42:53
  Perhaps if it gets to be known what a snap this manufacture of democracies
• 1:42:58
  is. All the green goods made, the Bonko steelers and the young Napoleons
• 1:43:02
  of finance will go into it, and the public will be humbugged more than
• 1:43:06
  it has been. But after all, what difference would it make. There's
• 1:43:11
  always a certain number of suckers and a certain number of men looking for a
• 1:43:15
  chance to take them in, and the suckers are sure to be took one
• 1:43:19
  way or another. It's the everlasting law of Demand and supply end of Chapter
• 1:43:26
  fourteen. Chapter fifteen concerning gas in politics. Since the eighty cent gas bill
• 1:43:34
  was defeated in Albany, everybody's talking about senators being bribed. Now, I
• 1:43:41
  wasn't in the Senate last session, and I don't know the ins and outs
• 1:43:45
  of everything that was done, but I can tell you that the legislators are
• 1:43:49
  often hauled over the coals when they are all on the level. I've been
• 1:43:55
  there, and I know, for instance, when I voted in the Senate
• 1:43:58
  in nineteen o four for the Remsen bill that the newspapers called the Astoria gas
• 1:44:03
  grab bill, they didn't do a thing to me. The papers kept up
• 1:44:09
  a howl about all the supporters of the bill being bought up by the Consolidated
• 1:44:14
  Gas Company, and the Citizens Union did me the honor to call me the
• 1:44:18
  commander in chief of the Black Horse Cavalry. The fact is that I was
• 1:44:24
  working for my district all this time, and I wasn't Bribeburn nobody. There's
• 1:44:29
  several of these gas houses in the district, and I wanted to get them
• 1:44:32
  over to Astoria for three reasons. First because they're nuisances. Second because there's
• 1:44:40
  no votes in them for me any longer. Third, because well, I
• 1:44:44
  had a little private reason, which i'll explain further on. I needn't explain
• 1:44:48
  how they're nuisances. They're worse than open sewers. Still, I might have
• 1:44:54
  stood that if they hadn't degenerated so much in the last few years. Ah,
• 1:45:00
  gas houses ain't what they used to be. Not very long ago,
• 1:45:04
  each gas house was good for a couple of hundred votes. All the men
• 1:45:10
  employed in them were Irishmen and Germans who lived in the district. Now it
• 1:45:15
  is all different. The men are dagoes who live across in Jersey and take
• 1:45:19
  no interest in the district. What the use I have an ill smell of
• 1:45:25
  gas houses if there's no votes in them. Now as to my private reason,
• 1:45:30
  well, I'm a business man and go in for any business that's profitable
• 1:45:36
  and honest. Real estate is one of my specialties. I know the value
• 1:45:41
  of every foot of ground in my district, and I calculated long ago that
• 1:45:45
  if them gas houses were removed, surrounding property would go up one hundred percent.
• 1:45:51
  When the Remsen Bill providing for the removal of the gas houses to Queen's
• 1:45:57
  County came up, I said to myself, George, hasn't your chance come?
• 1:46:02
  I answered, sure. Then I sized up the chances of the bill.
• 1:46:08
  I've found it was certain to pass the Senate and Assembly, and I
• 1:46:12
  got assurances straight from headquarters that Governor Odell would sign it. Next, I
• 1:46:16
  came down to the city to find out the mayor's position. I got it
• 1:46:21
  straight that he would approve the bill too. Can't you guess what I did?
• 1:46:28
  Then, like any sane man who had my information, I went in
• 1:46:32
  and got options on a lot of the property around the gas houses. Well,
• 1:46:38
  the bill went through the Senate and the Assembly all right, and the
• 1:46:42
  mayor signed it, but Odell backslided at the last minute and the whole game
• 1:46:46
  fell through. If it had succeeded, I guess I would have been accused
• 1:46:51
  of grafton. What I want to know is, what do you call it?
• 1:46:56
  When I got left and lost a pot of money. I not only
• 1:47:00
  lost money, but I was abused for voting for the bill. Wasn't that
• 1:47:04
  outrageous? They said? I was in with the consolidated gas Company and all
• 1:47:11
  other kinds of rot, when I was really only working for my district and
• 1:47:15
  trying to turn an honest penny on the side. Anyhow, I got a
• 1:47:19
  little fun out of the business. When the Remsen bill was up, I
• 1:47:24
  was trying to put through a bill of my own, the Spyutan Diable Bill,
• 1:47:30
  which provided for filling in some land underwater that the New York Central Railroad
• 1:47:34
  wanted. Well, the Remsen managers were afraid of being beaten, and they
• 1:47:40
  went around offering to make trades with senators and assemblymen who had bills they were
• 1:47:45
  anxious to pass. They came to me and offered six votes from my Spayutan
• 1:47:50
  Dauville bill in exchange from my vote on Remsen bill. I took them up
• 1:47:57
  in a hurry, and they felt pretty sore afterwards when they heard I was
• 1:48:00
  going to vote for the Remsen bill. Anyhow, a word about the Spayjuten
• 1:48:04
  Doujevo bill. I was criticized a lot for introducing it. They said I
• 1:48:11
  was working in the interest of the New York Central and was going to get
• 1:48:15
  the contract for filling in. The fact is that the filling in was a
• 1:48:20
  good thing for the city, and if it helped the New York Central to
• 1:48:25
  what of it? The railroad is a great public institution, and I was
• 1:48:30
  never an enemy of public institutions. As to the contract, it hasn't come
• 1:48:35
  along yet. If it does come, it will find me at home at
• 1:48:40
  all proper and reasonable hours if there is a good profit in sight. The
• 1:48:45
  papers and some people are always ready to find wrong motives in what a statesman
• 1:48:50
  do. If we bring about some big improvement that benefits the city and it
• 1:48:56
  just happens as a sort of coincidence that would make a few dollars out of
• 1:49:00
  the improvement, they say we are grafters, but we are used to this
• 1:49:04
  kind of ingratitude. It falls to the lot of all statesmen, especially Tammany
• 1:49:10
  statesmen. All we can do is to bow our heads in silence and wait
• 1:49:15
  till time has cleared our memories. Just think I mentioned a dishonest grafting connection
• 1:49:21
  with the name of George Washington Plunket, the man who gave the city its
• 1:49:27
  magnificent chain of parks, It's Washington Bridge, its speedway, its Museum of
• 1:49:33
  Natural History, its one hundred and fifty fifth Street viaduct, in its west
• 1:49:39
  side courthouse. I was the father of the bills that provided for all these.
• 1:49:45
  Yet because I supported the Remsen and Spayuton Douyevo Bils. Some people have
• 1:49:51
  questioned my honest motives. If that's the case, how can you expect legislatures
• 1:49:59
  to fare who are not the fathers of the parks, the Washington Bridge,
• 1:50:03
  the speedway, and the viaduct. Now understand, I ain't defending the senators
• 1:50:11
  who killed the eighty cent gas bill. I don't know why they acted as
• 1:50:15
  they did. I only want to impress the idea to go slow before you
• 1:50:20
  make up your mind that a man occupying the exalted position that I held for
• 1:50:26
  so many years has done wrong. For all I know, these senators may
• 1:50:30
  have been as honest and high minded about the gas bill as I was about
• 1:50:35
  the Remsen and Spyutan Daavil bills. End of Chapter fifteen. Chapter sixteen Pluckt's
• 1:50:45
  fondest dream. The time is coming, and though I'm no youngster, I
• 1:50:50
  may see it when New York City will break away from the state and become
• 1:50:55
  a state itself. It's got to come. The feeling between this city and
• 1:51:00
  the hay seeds that make a living by plundering it is every bit as bitter
• 1:51:04
  as the feeling between the North and South before the war, and let me
• 1:51:09
  tell you, if there ain't a peaceful separation before long, we may have
• 1:51:14
  the horrors of civil war right here in New York State. Why, I
• 1:51:17
  know a lot of men in my district who would like nothing better today than
• 1:51:21
  go out gunning for hay seeds. New York City has got a bigger population
• 1:51:27
  than most of the states in the Union. It's got more wealth than any
• 1:51:30
  dozen of them. Yet the people here, as I explained before, are
• 1:51:34
  nothing but slaves of the Albany gang. We have stood the slavery a long
• 1:51:40
  long time, but the uprising is near at hand. It will be a
• 1:51:45
  fight for liberty, just like the American Revolution. We'll get liberty peacefully if
• 1:51:50
  we can by cruel war. We must just think of how lovely things would
• 1:51:56
  be here if we had a Tammany governor and legislation meet and say in the
• 1:52:00
  neighborhood of fifty ninth Street, and a Tammany mayor and board of aldermen doing
• 1:52:05
  business in city Hall. How sweet and peaceful everything would go on. The
• 1:52:11
  people wouldn't have to bother about nothing. Tammany would take care of everything for
• 1:52:15
  them in its nice, quiet way. You wouldn't hear of any conflicts between
• 1:52:19
  the state and city authorities. They would settle everything pleasant and comfortable at Tammany
• 1:52:26
  Hall, and every bill introduced in the legislature by Tammany would be sure to
• 1:52:30
  go through. The Republicans wouldn't count imagine how the city would be built up
• 1:52:36
  in a short time. At present, we can't make a public improvement of
• 1:52:41
  any consequence without going to Albany for permission, and most of the time we
• 1:52:45
  get turned down when we go there. But with a Tammany governor and legislature
• 1:52:50
  up at fifty ninth Street, how public works would hum here. The mayor
• 1:52:56
  and Alderman could decide on an improvement telephone the Capitol, have a bill put
• 1:53:00
  through in a jiffy, and there you are. We could have a state
• 1:53:04
  constitution too, which would extend the debt limits so that we could issue a
• 1:53:10
  whole lot more bonds. As things are now, all the money spent for
• 1:53:14
  docks, for instance, is charged against the city in calculating the debt limit.
• 1:53:19
  Although the dock department provides immense revenues, it's the same with some other
• 1:53:25
  departments. This humbug would be dropped if Tammany ruled at the capital and the
• 1:53:30
  City Hall, and the city would have money to burn another thing. The
• 1:53:33
  constitution of the New State wouldn't have a word about civil service, and if
• 1:53:40
  any man dared to introduce any kind of a civil service bill and a legislature,
• 1:53:45
  he would be fired out the window. Then we would have government of
• 1:53:48
  the people, by the people who were elected to govern them. That's the
• 1:53:54
  kind of government Lincoln meant. Oh, what a glorious future for the city.
• 1:54:00
  Whenever I think of it, I feel like going out and celebrating,
• 1:54:02
  and I'm really almost sorry that I don't drink. You may ask what would
• 1:54:09
  become of the upstate people if New York City left them in the lurch and
• 1:54:14
  went into the state business on its own account. Well, we wouldn't be
• 1:54:17
  under no obligation to provide for them. Still, I would be in favor
• 1:54:21
  of helping them along for a while until they could learn to work and earn
• 1:54:25
  an honest living. Just like the United States government looks after the Indians.
• 1:54:30
  These hay seeds have been so used to living off of New York City that
• 1:54:33
  they would be helpless after we left them. It wouldn't do to let them
• 1:54:38
  starve. We might make some sort of appropriation for them in a few years,
• 1:54:43
  but it would be with a distinct understanding that they must get busy right
• 1:54:47
  away and learn to support themselves. If after save five years they weren't self
• 1:54:51
  supporting, we could withdraw the appropriation and let them shift for themselves. The
• 1:54:58
  plan might succeed and it might not. We'd be doing our duty anyhow.
• 1:55:03
  Some persons might say, but how about if the Hayseed politicians moved down here
• 1:55:10
  and went in to get control of the government of the new state. We
• 1:55:14
  could provide against that easy by passional law that these politicians couldn't come below the
• 1:55:19
  bronx without a sort of passport, limited the time of their stay here,
• 1:55:24
  and forbidden them to monkey with politics here. I don't know just what kind
• 1:55:29
  of a bill would be required to fix this, but with a Tammany constitution,
• 1:55:33
  governor, legislature, and mayor, there would be no trouble in settling
• 1:55:38
  a little matter of that sort. See. I don't wish I was a
• 1:55:42
  poet, for if I was, I guess i'd be living in a garret
• 1:55:45
  on no dollars a week instead of running a great contracting and transportation business,
• 1:55:49
  which is doing pretty well, thank you. But honest now the notion takes
• 1:55:55
  me sometimes to yell poetry of the red hot hail, glorious land kind when
• 1:56:00
  I think of New York City as a state by itself. End of Chapter
• 1:56:04
  sixteen, Chapter seventeen. Tammany's Patriotism Tammany's the most patriotic organization on earth.
• 1:56:14
  Notwithstanding the fact that the civil Service laws sappen the foundations of patriotism all over
• 1:56:18
  the country. Nobody pays any attention to the Fourth of July any longer except
• 1:56:24
  Tammany and the small Boy. When the fourth comes, the reformers with revolutionary
• 1:56:29
  names parted in the middle run off to Newport or the Adirondacks to get out
• 1:56:33
  of the way of the noise and everything that reminds them of the glorious day.
• 1:56:39
  How different it is with Tammany. The very constitution of the Tammany Society
• 1:56:45
  requires that we must assemble at the Wigwam on the fourth, regardless of the
• 1:56:49
  weather, and listen to the reading of the Declaration of Independence and patriotic speeches.
• 1:56:56
  You ought to attend one of these meetings their liberal eduction in patriotism.
• 1:57:01
  The great haul upstairs is filled with five thousand people suffocating from heat and smoke.
• 1:57:08
  Every man jack of these five thousand knows that down in the basement there's
• 1:57:13
  a hundred cases of champagne and two hundred kegs of beer ready to flow when
• 1:57:17
  the signal is given. Yet that crowd stick to their seats without turning the
• 1:57:24
  hair, while for four solid hours the declaration of independence is read, long
• 1:57:30
  winded orders speak, and the glee club sings itself hoarse. Talk about heroism
• 1:57:36
  in the battlefield that comes and passes away in a moment. You ain't got
• 1:57:41
  time to be anything but heroic. But just think of five thousand men sitting
• 1:57:46
  in the hottest place on earth for four long hours, with parched lips and
• 1:57:51
  non stomachs, and knowing all the time that the delights of the oasis in
• 1:57:57
  the desert were only two flights downstairs. Ah. That is the highest kind
• 1:58:03
  of patriotism, the patriotism of long suffering and endurance. What man wouldn't rather
• 1:58:11
  face a cannon for a minute or two than thirst for four hours with champagne
• 1:58:15
  and beer almost under his nose? And then see how they applaud and yell
• 1:58:21
  when patriotic things are said. As soon as the man on the platform starts
• 1:58:27
  off with when in the course of human events, word goes around that it's
• 1:58:31
  the declaration of independence, and a mighty roar goes up. The declaration ain't
• 1:58:38
  a very short document, and the crowd has heard it on every fourth day,
• 1:58:42
  but they give it just as fine as sendoff, as if it was
• 1:58:45
  brand new and awful excitement. Then the long talkers get in their work,
• 1:58:51
  that is two or three orders, or good for an hour each. Heat
• 1:58:56
  never has any effect on these men. They use every minute of their time.
• 1:59:00
  Sometimes human nature gets the better of a man in the audience and he
• 1:59:04
  begins to nod, but he always wakes up with a hurrah for the declaration
• 1:59:10
  of independence. The greatest hero of the occasion is the Grand Sakim of the
• 1:59:15
  Tammany Society, who presides. He and the rest of us Sakams come on
• 1:59:20
  the stage wearing stovepipe hats according to the constitution, but we can shed ours
• 1:59:26
  right off, while the Grand Sakam is required to wear his hat all through
• 1:59:30
  the celebration. Have you any idea what that means? Four hours under a
• 1:59:36
  big silk hat in a hall where the heat registers one hundred and ten and
• 1:59:42
  the smoke twoin fifty, and the Grand Sakim is expected to look pleasant all
• 1:59:45
  the time and say nice things when introducing the speakers. Often his hand goes
• 1:59:50
  to his hat unconscious. Like then he catches himself up in time and looks
• 1:59:56
  around like a man who is in the tenth story of a burning builder seeking
• 2:00:00
  a way to escape. I believe that Fourth of July's silk hat shortened the
• 2:00:04
  life of one of our Grand Sacams, the late Supreme Court Justice Smith.
• 2:00:10
  And I know that one of our sacams refused the office of Grand Sacam because
• 2:00:14
  he couldn't get up sufficient patriotism to perform this four hour hat act. You
• 2:00:19
  see, there's degrees of patriotism, just as there's degrees in everything else.
• 2:00:26
  You don't hear of the Citizens Union people holding Fourth of July celebrations under a
• 2:00:30
  five pound silk hat or any other way, do you. The CITs take
• 2:00:34
  the Fourth like a dog I had when I was a boy. That dog
• 2:00:38
  knew as much as some sits, and he acts just like them about the
• 2:00:43
  glorious day. Exactly forty eight hours before each Fourth of July, the dog
• 2:00:46
  left her house and run and hid himself in the bronx woods. The day
• 2:00:50
  after the fourth he turned up at home as regular as clockwork. He must
• 2:00:55
  have known what a dog is up against on the fourth. Anyhow, he
• 2:00:59
  kept the way the name parted in the middle of Aristocrats act in just the
• 2:01:03
  same way. They don't want to be annoyed with firecrackers and the declaration of
• 2:01:09
  independence, and when they see the fourth coming, they hustle off to the
• 2:01:13
  woods like my dog. Tammany don't only show its patriotism at Fourth of July
• 2:01:17
  celebrations. It's always on deck when the country needs its services. After the
• 2:01:24
  Spanish American War broke out, John J. Sannole, the Tammany leader of
• 2:01:28
  the twenty fifth district, wrote to Governor Black, offering to raise a Tammany
• 2:01:32
  regiment to go to the front. If you want proof, go to Tammany
• 2:01:36
  Hall and see the beautiful set of engrossed resolutions about this regiment. It's true
• 2:01:42
  that the governor didn't accept the offer, but it showed Tammany's patriotism. Some
• 2:01:46
  enemies of the organization have said that the offer to raise the regiment was made
• 2:01:51
  after the governor let it be known that no more volunteers were wanted. But
• 2:01:57
  that's the talk of envious slanderers. Now a word about Tammany's love for the
• 2:02:02
  American flag. Did you ever see a Tammany Hall decorated for a celebration.
• 2:02:09
  It's just a mass of flags. They even take down the window shades and
• 2:02:13
  put flags in place of them. There's flags everywhere except on the floors.
• 2:02:16
  We don't care for her expense where the American flag is concerned, especially after
• 2:02:21
  we have won an election. In nineteen o four, we originated the custom
• 2:02:27
  of giving a small flag to each man as he entered Tammany Hall for the
• 2:02:30
  Fourth of July celebration. It took like wildfire. The men waved their flags
• 2:02:35
  whenever they cheered, and the site made me feel so patriotic that I forgot
• 2:02:41
  all about civil service for a while. And the good work of the flags
• 2:02:45
  didn't stop there. The men carried them home and gave them to the children,
• 2:02:48
  and the kids got patriotic too. Of course, it all cost a
• 2:02:53
  pretty penny, but what of that We had won at the polls the preceding
• 2:02:58
  November, had the office and could afford to make an extra investment in patriotism.
• 2:03:04
  End of Chapter seventeen. Chapter eighteen on the use of money in politics.
• 2:03:12
  The Civil Service gang has always howling about candidates and off office holders putting
• 2:03:16
  up money for campaigns, and about corporations chipping in. They might as well
• 2:03:23
  howl about giving contributions to churches. A political organization has to have money for
• 2:03:28
  its business as well as a church, and who has more right to put
• 2:03:32
  up than the men who get the good things that are going Take, for
• 2:03:36
  instance, a great political concern like Tammany Hall. It does missionary work like
• 2:03:42
  a church. It's got big expenses and it's got to be supported by the
• 2:03:46
  faithful. If a corporation sends in a check to help the good work of
• 2:03:50
  the Tammany Society, why shouldn't we take it like other missionary societies. Of
• 2:03:56
  course, the day may come when we'll reject the money of the rich as
• 2:03:59
  teams, but it hadn't come when I left Tammany Hall at eleven twenty five
• 2:04:04
  am to day. Not long ago, some newspapers had fits because the assemblyman
• 2:04:12
  from my district said he put up five hundred dollars when he was nominated for
• 2:04:15
  the Assembly last year. Every politician in town laughed at these papers. I
• 2:04:19
  don't think there was even a citizens Union man who didn't know that candidates of
• 2:04:25
  both parties have to chip in for campaign expenses. The sum they pay are
• 2:04:30
  according to their salaries and the length of their terms of office if elected.
• 2:04:35
  Even candidates for the Supreme Court have to fall in line. A Supreme Court
• 2:04:42
  judge in New York County gets seventeen thousand, five hundred a year, and
• 2:04:46
  he's expected, when nominated to help along the good cause with a year's salary.
• 2:04:51
  Why not? He has fourteen years on the bench ahead of him,
• 2:04:57
  and ten thousand other lawyers would be will to put up twice as much to
• 2:05:01
  be in his shoes. Now, I ain't saying that we sell nominations.
• 2:05:06
  That's a different thing altogether. There's no auction and no regular bidden. The
• 2:05:13
  man is picked out, and somehow he gets to understand what's expected of him
• 2:05:17
  in the way of a contribution, and he ponies up all from gratitude to
• 2:05:23
  the organization that honored him. See let me tell you an instance that shows
• 2:05:29
  the difference between selling nominations and arranging them in the way I described. A
• 2:05:35
  few years ago, a Republican district leader controlled the nomination for Congress in his
• 2:05:40
  congressional district. Four men wanted it. At first, the leader asked for
• 2:05:45
  bids privately, but decided at last that the best thing to do was to
• 2:05:50
  get the four men together in the back room of a certain saloon and have
• 2:05:54
  an open auction. When he had his men lined up, he got on
• 2:05:58
  a chair, told of the value of the goods for sale, and ask
• 2:06:01
  for bids in regular auctioneer style. The highest bidder got denomination for five thousand
• 2:06:06
  dollars. Now that wasn't right at all. These things ought to be always
• 2:06:12
  fixed up nice and quiet. As to officeholders, they would be in grates
• 2:06:18
  if they didn't contribute to the organization that put them in office. They needn't
• 2:06:24
  be assessed. That would be against the law. But they know what's expected
• 2:06:29
  of them, and if they happen to forget, they can be reminded polite
• 2:06:33
  and courteous. Dan Donnigan, who used to be the Wiskinsky of the Tammany
• 2:06:40
  Society and received contributions from grateful office holders, had a pleasant way of reminding
• 2:06:47
  if a man forgot his duty to the organization that made him, Dan would
• 2:06:51
  call him the man, smile as sweet as you please, and say you
• 2:06:56
  haven't been around at the hall lately have you. If the man tried to
• 2:07:00
  slide around the question, Dan would say it's getting off cold. Then he
• 2:07:06
  would have a fit of shivering and walk away. What could be more polite
• 2:07:12
  and at the same time more to the point, no force, no threats,
• 2:07:17
  only little shivered, which any man is liable to even in the summer.
• 2:07:23
  Just here, I want to charge one more crime to the infamous Civil
• 2:07:28
  Service law. It has made men turn ungrateful. A dozen years ago,
• 2:07:33
  when there wasn't much civil service business in the city government, and when the
• 2:07:38
  administration would turn out to almost any man holding office, Dan shivered took effect
• 2:07:44
  every time, and there was no ingratitude in the city departments. But when
• 2:07:47
  the Civil Service Law came in and all the clerks got led pipe cinches on
• 2:07:53
  their jobs, ingratitude spread right away. Dan shivered and shook till his bones
• 2:07:59
  rattled, but many of the city employees only laughed at him. One day,
• 2:08:03
  I remember he tackled a clerk in the public Works department who used to
• 2:08:07
  give up pretty regular and after the usual question began to shiver, the clerk
• 2:08:13
  smiled. Dan shook till his hat fell off. Clerk took ten cents out
• 2:08:18
  of his pocket, handed it to Dan and said, poor man, go
• 2:08:22
  and get a drink to warm yourself up. One that's shameful. And yet
• 2:08:28
  if it hadn't been for the Civil service law, that clerk would be contributing
• 2:08:33
  right along to this day. The civil service law don't cover everything. However,
• 2:08:39
  there's lots of good jobs outside his clutch, and the men that get
• 2:08:45
  them are grateful every time. I'm not speaking to Tammany Hall alone. Remember
• 2:08:50
  it's the same with Republican federal and state office holders and every organization it has
• 2:08:56
  or has had jobs to give out, except of course, the the CITs
• 2:09:01
  held office only a couple of years, and knowing that they would never be
• 2:09:05
  in again, each sit officeholder held on for dear life to every dollar they
• 2:09:11
  came his way. Some people say they can't understand what becomes of all the
• 2:09:16
  money that's collected for campaigns. They would understand fast enough if they were district
• 2:09:22
  lead them. There's never been half enough money to go around. Besides expenses
• 2:09:28
  for meetings, bands and all that, there's the bigger bill for the district
• 2:09:33
  workers who get men to the polls. There is workers who are mostly men
• 2:09:37
  who want to serve their country, but can't get jobs in the city department
• 2:09:41
  on account of the civil service law. They do the next best thing by
• 2:09:46
  keeping track of the voters and seem that they come to the polls and vote
• 2:09:50
  the right way. Some of these deserving citizens have to make enough on registration
• 2:09:56
  and election days to keep them the rest of the year. Isn't it right
• 2:10:01
  that they should get a share of the campaign money? Just remember that there's
• 2:10:05
  thirty five assembly districts in New York County and thirty six district leaders reaching out
• 2:10:11
  for the Tammany dough bag for something to keep up the patriotism of ten thousand
• 2:10:16
  workers. And you wouldn't wonder that the cry for more more is going up
• 2:10:22
  from every district organization now and forevermore am in end of Chapter eighteen, Chapter
• 2:10:30
  nineteen, The successful politician does not drink. I have explained how to succeed
• 2:10:37
  in politics. I want to add that no matter how well you learn to
• 2:10:41
  play the political game, you won't make a lasting success of it if you're
• 2:10:46
  a drinking man. I never take a drop of any kind of intoxicating liquor.
• 2:10:52
  I ain't no fanatic. Some of the saloon keepers are my best friends
• 2:10:56
  and I don't mind going into a saloon any day with my friends, but
• 2:11:01
  as a matter of business, I leave whiskey and beer and the rest of
• 2:11:05
  that stuff alone. As a matter of business, too, I take for
• 2:11:09
  my lieutenants in my district men who don't drink. I tried the other kind
• 2:11:15
  of for several years, but it didn't pay. They cost too much.
• 2:11:20
  For instance, I had a young man who was one of the best hustlers
• 2:11:24
  in town. He knew every man in the district, was popular everywhere,
• 2:11:28
  and could induce a half dead man to come to the polls on election day
• 2:11:33
  but regularly. Two weeks before election, he started on a drunk and I
• 2:11:39
  had to hire two men to guard him day and night and keep him sober
• 2:11:43
  enough to do his work. That cost a lot of money, and I
• 2:11:46
  dropped the young man after a while. Maybe you think I'm unpopular with the
• 2:11:52
  saloon keepers because I don't drink. You're wrong. The most successful saloon keepers
• 2:11:58
  don't drink themselves, and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition just
• 2:12:05
  like their own. I have a saloon under my headquarters. If a saloon
• 2:12:09
  keeper gets into trouble, he always knows that Senator Plunkett is the man to
• 2:12:13
  help him out. If there is a bill in the legislature making it easier
• 2:12:18
  for the liquor dealers, I am for it every time. I am one
• 2:12:22
  of the best friends the saloon men have, but I don't drink their whiskey.
• 2:12:28
  I won't go through the temperance lecture Dodge and tell you how many bright
• 2:12:33
  young men I've seen fall victims two in temperance, but I'll tell you that
• 2:12:39
  I could name some dozens young men who had started on the road to statesmanship,
• 2:12:45
  who could carry their districts every time, and who could turn out any
• 2:12:48
  vote you wanted at the primaries. I honestly believe that drink is the greatest
• 2:12:54
  curse of the day, except, of course, civil service, and that
• 2:12:58
  has driven more young men to ruin them anything except civil service examinations. Look
• 2:13:05
  at the great leaders of Tammany Hall, no regular drinkers among them. Richard
• 2:13:11
  Crocker's strongest drink was vichy. Charlie Murphy takes a glass of wine at dinner
• 2:13:16
  sometimes, but it don't go beyond that. A drinking man wouldn't last two
• 2:13:20
  weeks as leader of Tammany Hall, nor can a man manage an assembly district
• 2:13:26
  longfy drinks. He's got to have a clear head at all times. I
• 2:13:31
  could name ten men who in the last few years lost their grip in their
• 2:13:37
  districts because they began drinking. There's now thirty six district leaders in Tammany Hall,
• 2:13:45
  and I don't believe a half dozen of them ever drink anything except at
• 2:13:48
  meals. People have got an idea that because the liquor men are with us
• 2:13:54
  in campaigns, our district leaders spend most of their time leaning against bars.
• 2:14:00
  There couldn't be a wronger idea. The district leader makes a business of politics,
• 2:14:05
  gets his livin out of it, and in order to succeed, he's
• 2:14:09
  got to keep sober, just like in any other business. Just take his
• 2:14:13
  examples, Big Tim and Little Tim Sullivan. They're known all over the country
• 2:14:20
  as the Bowery Leaders, and as there's nothing but saloons on the Bowery,
• 2:14:26
  people might think that they are hard drinkers. The fact is that neither of
• 2:14:31
  them has ever touched a drop of liquor in his life or even smoked a
• 2:14:35
  cigar. Still, they don't make no pretenses of being better than anybody else,
• 2:14:41
  and don't go round, deliverin temperance lectures. Big tim made money out
• 2:14:46
  of liquor selling it to other people. That's the only way to get good
• 2:14:52
  out of liquor. Look at all the Tammany heads of city departments. There's
• 2:14:58
  not a real drinkin man in a lot. Yes, there are some prominent
• 2:15:01
  men in the organization who drink sometimes, but they are not the men who
• 2:15:05
  have power. Their ornaments, fancy speakers and all that who make a fine
• 2:15:11
  show behind the footlights. But am I in it when it comes to directing
• 2:15:16
  the city government and the Tammany organization. The men who sit in the executive
• 2:15:20
  committee room at Tammany Hall and direct things are men who celebrate on Apollinaris and
• 2:15:28
  Vitchy. Let me tell you what I saw on election night in eighteen ninety
• 2:15:35
  seven when the Tammany tickets swept the city up to ten p M. Crocker,
• 2:15:39
  John F. Carroll, Tim Sullivan, Charlie Murphy and myself sat in
• 2:15:43
  the committee room receiving returns. When nearly all the city was heard from,
• 2:15:50
  and we saw that Van Wyck was elected by a big majority. I invited
• 2:15:54
  the crowd to go across the street for a little celebration. A lot of
• 2:15:58
  small politicians followed us, expecting to see magnums of champagne opened. The waiters
• 2:16:03
  in the restaurant expected it two and you never saw a more disgusted lot of
• 2:16:09
  waiters when they got our orders. Here's the orders. Crocker bitchy and bicarbonate
• 2:16:15
  of soda, Carol Seltzer lemonade, Sullivan Apollinaris, Murphy bitchy plunket, ditto.
• 2:16:24
  Before midnight we were all in bed, and next morning we were upright
• 2:16:28
  and early attended to business while other men were nursing swelled heads. Is there
• 2:16:33
  anything the matter with temperance as a pure business proposition? End of Chapter nineteen,
• 2:16:41
  Chapter twenty, Bosses preserved the Nation. When I retired from the Senate,
• 2:16:46
  I thought I would take a good long rest. Such arrest as a
• 2:16:50
  man need who has held office for about forty years and has held four different
• 2:16:56
  offices in one year and drawn salaries from three of them at the same time.
• 2:17:01
  Drawn so many salaries is rather fatiguing, you know. And as I
• 2:17:07
  said, I started out for a rest. But when I seen how things
• 2:17:09
  were going in New York State and how a great, big black shadow hung
• 2:17:15
  over us. I said to myself, no rest for you, George.
• 2:17:18
  Your work ain't done. Your country still needs you, and you mustn't lay
• 2:17:22
  down yet. What was the great big black shadow? It was the primary
• 2:17:30
  election law amended so as to knock out what are called the party bosses by
• 2:17:35
  letting in everybody at the primaries and given control over them to state officials.
• 2:17:39
  Oh, yes, that is a good way to do up the so called
• 2:17:43
  bosses. But have you ever thought what would become of the country if the
• 2:17:48
  bosses were put out of business and their places were taken by a lot of
• 2:17:52
  cart tailed orators and college graduates. It would mean chaos. It would be
• 2:17:58
  just like taking a lot of dry goods clerk and sending them to run express
• 2:18:03
  trains on the New York Central Railroad. It makes my heart bleed to think
• 2:18:07
  of it. Ignorant people are always talking against party bosses, but just wait
• 2:18:11
  till the bosses are gone. Then, and not until then will they get
• 2:18:16
  the right sort of epitaphs. As Patrick Henry or Robert Emmett said, look
• 2:18:22
  at the bosses of Tammany Hall in the last twenty years. What magnificent men
• 2:18:28
  to them? New York City Owes pretty much all it is today. John
• 2:18:31
  Kelly, Richard Crocker, and Charles F. Murphy. What names in American
• 2:18:37
  history compares with them except Washington and Lincoln. They built up the grand Tammany
• 2:18:41
  organization, and the organization built up New York. Suppose the city had depended
• 2:18:48
  for the last twenty years on irresponsible concerns like the Citizens Union, where would
• 2:18:52
  it be now? You can make a pretty good guess if you recall the
• 2:18:56
  strong and low administrations when there was no and the heads of departments were at
• 2:19:01
  odds all the time with each other, and the mayor was at odds with
• 2:19:05
  a lot of them. They spent so much time in arguing on making grandstand
• 2:19:11
  play that the interests of the city were forgotten. Another administration of that kind
• 2:19:15
  would put New York back a quarter of a century. Then see how beautiful
• 2:19:20
  a Tammany city government runs with a so called boss directing the whole shooting match.
• 2:19:26
  The machinery moves so noiselessly that you wouldn't think there was any If there's
• 2:19:33
  any differences of opinion, the Tammany leaders settles them quietly and his orders go
• 2:19:37
  every time. How nice it is for the people to feel that they can
• 2:19:41
  get up in the morning without him afraid of seeing the papers that the Commissioner
• 2:19:46
  of Water Supply has sandbagged the dock commissioner, and that the mayor and heads
• 2:19:50
  of the departments have been taken to the police court as witnesses. That's no
• 2:19:54
  joke. I remember that under Strong some commissioners came very near sandbag another.
• 2:20:01
  Of course, a newspaper is like the reform administration. Why because these administrations,
• 2:20:07
  with their daily rows, furnish as racing news, as prize fights or
• 2:20:11
  divorce cases, tammany don't care to get in the papers. He goes right
• 2:20:15
  along attendant to business quietly and only wants to be let alone. That's one
• 2:20:20
  reason why the papers are against us. Some papers complain that the bosses get
• 2:20:24
  rich while devoting their lives to the interests of the city. What of it.
• 2:20:28
  If opportunities for turning an honest dollar comes their way, why shouldn't they
• 2:20:33
  take advantage of them, just as I have done. As I said in
• 2:20:37
  another talk, there is honest graft and dishonest graft. The bosses go in
• 2:20:41
  for the former. There is so much of it in this big town that
• 2:20:46
  they would be fools to go for dishonest graft. Now the primary election law
• 2:20:52
  threatens to do away with the boss and make the city government a menagerie.
• 2:20:56
  That's why I can't take the rest. I counted on going to propose a
• 2:21:01
  bill the next session of the legislature repeal on this dangerous law and leaving the
• 2:21:05
  primaries entirely to the organizations themselves as they used to be. Then will return
• 2:21:11
  the good old times when our district leaders could have nice, comfortable primary elections
• 2:21:16
  at some place selected by themselves and let in only the men they approved of
• 2:21:20
  as good democrats. Who was a better judge of the democracy of a man
• 2:21:26
  who offers his vote than the leader of the district, who is better equipped
• 2:21:28
  to keep out undesirable voters. The men who put through the primary law are
• 2:21:33
  the same crowd that stand for the civil service blight, and they have the
• 2:21:39
  same objects in view, the destruction of governments by party, the downfall of
• 2:21:45
  the Constitution, and held generally end of Chapter twenty Chapter twenty one concerning excise.
• 2:21:54
  Although woman not a drinking man myself, I'm worn with the poor liquor
• 2:21:58
  dealers of New York City who are taxed and oppressed for the benefit of the
• 2:22:03
  farmers up the state. The range liquor law is infamous. It takes away
• 2:22:07
  nearly all the profits of the saloon keepers and then turns in a large part
• 2:22:13
  of the money to the state treasury to relieve the hay seeds from taxes.
• 2:22:18
  Ah. Who knows how many honest, hard working saloon keepers have been driven
• 2:22:22
  to untimely graves by this law. I know personally of a half dozen who
• 2:22:28
  committed suicide because they couldn't pay the enormous license fee, and I've heard of
• 2:22:33
  many others. Every time there is an increase of the fee, there is
• 2:22:37
  an increase in the suicide record of the city. Now some of these Republican
• 2:22:43
  hay Seeds are talking about making the liquor tax fifteen hundred dollars or even two
• 2:22:48
  thousand dollars a year. That would mean the suicide of half of the liquor
• 2:22:52
  dealers in the city. Just see how these poor fellows were oppressed all around.
• 2:22:58
  First, liquor is taxed in the hands of the manufacturer by the United
• 2:23:03
  States government. Second, the wholesale dealer pays a special tax to the government.
• 2:23:09
  Third, the retail dealer is specially taxed by the United states government.
• 2:23:13
  Fourth, the retail dealer has to pay a big tax to the state government.
• 2:23:20
  Now, liquor dealing is criminal or inn inate. If it's criminal,
• 2:23:24
  the man engaged in it ought to be sent to prison. If it ain't
• 2:23:28
  criminal, they ought to be protected and encouraged to make all the profit they
• 2:23:33
  honestly can. If it's right to tax a saloon keeper one thousand dollars,
• 2:23:37
  it's right to put a heavy tax on dealers and other beverages in milk,
• 2:23:41
  for instance, and make the derryman pay up. But what a howl would
• 2:23:46
  be raised if a bill was introduced in Albany to compel the farmers to help
• 2:23:52
  support the state government. What would be said of a law that put a
• 2:23:56
  tax of say sixty dollars on a grocer, one hundred and fifty on a
• 2:24:00
  dry goods man in five hundred more if he includes the other goods that are
• 2:24:03
  kept in a country store. If the Rain's law gave the money extorted from
• 2:24:09
  the saloon keepers to the city, there might be some excuse for the tax.
• 2:24:13
  We would get some benefit from it. But it gives a big part
• 2:24:16
  of the tax to local option. Localities where the people are always shouting that
• 2:24:22
  liquor dealon is immoral ought these good people be subjected to the immoral influence of
• 2:24:28
  money taken from the saloon, tainted money. Out of respect for the tender
• 2:24:33
  consciouces of these pious people, the Rain's law ought to exempt them from all
• 2:24:39
  contamination from the plunder that comes from the saloon traffic. Say mark that sarcastic.
• 2:24:46
  Some people who ain't used to find sarcasm might think I'm in it.
• 2:24:52
  The range people make a pretense that the high license fee promotes temperance. It's
• 2:24:58
  just the other way around. It makes more in temperance, and what is
• 2:25:01
  bad, it makes the monopoly in dram shops. Soon the saloons will be
• 2:25:07
  in the hands of a vast trust, and any stuff can be sold for
• 2:25:11
  whiskey or beer. It's getting that way already. Some of the poor liquor
• 2:25:16
  dealers in my district have been forced to sell wood alcohol for whiskey, and
• 2:25:22
  many deaths have followed. A half dozen men died in a couple of days
• 2:25:26
  from this kind of whiskey, which was forced down their throats by the high
• 2:25:30
  liquor tax. If they raise the tax higher, wood alcohol will be too
• 2:25:35
  costly and I guess some dealers will have to get down to kerosene oil and
• 2:25:39
  add to the Rockefeller millions. The way the Rains Law divides the different classes
• 2:25:46
  of licenses is also an outrage. The sumptuous hotel saloons with ten thousand dollars
• 2:25:52
  paintings and bricky brac and oriental splendors gets off easier than a shanty on the
• 2:25:58
  rocks by the water's edge. In my mind, district where boatmen drink their
• 2:26:01
  grog and the only ornaments is a three cornered mirror nailed to the wall and
• 2:26:07
  a chromo of the fight between Tom Hire and Yankee Sullivan. Besides, a
• 2:26:13
  premium is put on places that sell liquor, not to be drunk on the
• 2:26:16
  premises, but to be taken home. Now, I want to declare that
• 2:26:20
  from my experience in New York City, I would rather see RUMs sold in
• 2:26:26
  the dram shops unlicensed, provided the rum is swallowed on the spot, than
• 2:26:31
  to encourage by a low tax bucket shops from which the stuff is carried into
• 2:26:35
  the tenements at all hours of the day and night, and make drunkenness and
• 2:26:39
  debauchery among the women and children. A bucket shop in the tenements district means
• 2:26:46
  a cheap so called distillery, where raw spirits poisonous color and matter and water
• 2:26:52
  are sold for brandy and whiskey at ten cents a quart and carried away in
• 2:26:56
  buckets and pitchers. I have always known notice that there are many undertakers wherever
• 2:27:01
  the bucket shop flourishes, and they have no dull seasons. I want to
• 2:27:07
  understood that I am not an advocate of the liquor dealers or of drinking.
• 2:27:13
  I think every man would be better off if he didn't take any intoxication drink
• 2:27:16
  at all. But as men will drink, they ought to have good stuff
• 2:27:20
  without impoverishing themselves by going to fancy places, and without risking death by going
• 2:27:26
  to poor places. The state should look after their interests, as well as
• 2:27:31
  the interest of those who drink nothing stronger than milk. Now, as to
• 2:27:37
  the liquor dealers themselves, they ain't criminals. That can't and Hympkirtz say they
• 2:27:41
  are. I know lots of them, and I know that as a rule
• 2:27:46
  they're good, honest citizens who conduct their business in a straight, honorable way.
• 2:27:52
  At a convention of the liquor dealers a few years ago. A big
• 2:27:56
  city official welcomed them on behalf of the city and said, go on elevating
• 2:28:01
  your standard higher and higher. Go on with your good work. Heaven will
• 2:28:05
  bless you. That was putting it just a little strong, But this sentiment
• 2:28:09
  was all right, And I guess the speaker went a bit further than he
• 2:28:13
  intended in his enthusiasm over meeting such a fine set of men, perhaps dining
• 2:28:18
  with them. End of chapter twenty one. Chapter twenty two, A parting
• 2:28:24
  word on the future of the Democratic Party in America. The Democratic Party of
• 2:28:31
  the nation ain't dead, though it's been given a lifelike imitation of a corpse
• 2:28:35
  for several years. It can't die while it's got Tammany for its backbone.
• 2:28:41
  The trouble is that the party's been chasin after theories and standing up nights reading
• 2:28:46
  books instead of studying human nature and acting according as I've advised in telling how
• 2:28:50
  to hold your district. In two presidential campaigns, the leaders talked themselves red
• 2:28:56
  in the face about silver beIN the best money in gold. Hemn no good,
• 2:29:01
  and they tried to prove it out of books. Do you think the
• 2:29:05
  people cared for all that guff? No? They hardly endorsed what Richard Crocker
• 2:29:11
  said at Dae Hoffmann House one day in nineteen hundred. What's the use of
• 2:29:16
  discussing what's the best kind of money, said Crocker. I'm in favor of
• 2:29:20
  all kinds of money. The more the better. See how real Tammany statesmen
• 2:29:24
  can settle in twenty five words of problem that monopolized two campaigns, then imperialism.
• 2:29:33
  The Democratic Parties spent all its breath on that. In the last national
• 2:29:37
  campaign its position was all right, sure, but you can't get people excited
• 2:29:43
  about the Philippines. They've got too much at home to interest them. They're
• 2:29:48
  too busy making a living to bother about the niggers in the Pacific. The
• 2:29:52
  party's got to drop all them put you to sleep issues and come out in
• 2:29:56
  nineteen oh eight for something that will wake them the people up, something that
• 2:30:01
  will make it worthwhile to work for the party. There's just one issue that
• 2:30:05
  would set this country on fire. The Democratic Party should say in the first
• 2:30:09
  plank of its platform, we hereby declare, in National Convention assembled, that
• 2:30:16
  the paramount issue, now, always and forever is the abolition of the iniquitous
• 2:30:22
  and malicious civil service laws which are destroying all patriotism ruin in the country and
• 2:30:31
  taking away good jobs from them that earn them. We pledge ourselves, if
• 2:30:35
  our ticket is elected, to repeal those laws at once and put every civil
• 2:30:41
  service reformer in jail. Just imagine the wild enthusiasm of the party if that
• 2:30:46
  plank was adapted, and the rush of Republicans to join us and restore in
• 2:30:50
  our country to what it was before this college professor's nightmare called civil service reform
• 2:30:56
  got hold of it. Of course, it would be all right to work
• 2:31:01
  in the platform some stuff about the tariff and sound money in the Philippines has
• 2:31:05
  no platform seems to be complete without them. But they wouldn't count. The
• 2:31:11
  people would read only the first plank, then hanker for election day to come
• 2:31:15
  to put the Democratic Party in office. I see a vision. I see
• 2:31:18
  the Civil service monster lying flat on the ground. I see the Democratic Party
• 2:31:24
  standing over it, with foot on its neck and wearing the crown of victory.
• 2:31:28
  I see Thomas Jefferson looking out from McCloud and saying, give him another
• 2:31:33
  sack, dogglar finish him. And I see millions of men waving their hats
• 2:31:39
  and singing glory, Hallelujah. End of Chapter twenty two. Chapter twenty three
• 2:31:46
  Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader. Note this chapter is based on extracts
• 2:31:50
  from Plunkett's diary and on my daily observation of the work of the District Leader
• 2:31:56
  w LR. The life of the taw Many District Leader is strenuous. To
• 2:32:01
  his work is due the wonderful recupertive power of the organization. One year it
• 2:32:07
  goes down in defeat, and the prediction is made that it will never raise
• 2:32:11
  its head. The district Leader, undaunted by defeat, collects his scattered forces,
• 2:32:16
  organizes them as only Tammany knows how to organize, and a little while
• 2:32:22
  the organization is as strong as ever. No other politician in New York or
• 2:32:26
  elsewhere is exactly like the Tammany District Leader or works as he does. As
• 2:32:31
  a rule, he has no business or occupation other than politics. He plays
• 2:32:37
  politics every day and night in the year, and his headquarters bears the inscription
• 2:32:41
  never closed. Everybody in the district knows him, everybody knows where to find
• 2:32:48
  him, and nearly everybody goes to him for assistance of one sort or another,
• 2:32:52
  especially the poor of the tenements. He is always obliging. He will
• 2:32:58
  go to the police courts to put in a good way word for the drunks
• 2:33:01
  and disorderlies, or pay their fines. If a good word is not effective,
• 2:33:05
  he will attend christenings, weddings and funerals. He will feed the hungry
• 2:33:09
  and help bury the dead. A philanthropist not at all. He is playing
• 2:33:15
  politics all the time. Brought up in Tammany Hall, he has learned how
• 2:33:20
  to reach the hearts of the great mass of voters. He does not bother
• 2:33:24
  about reaching their heads. It is his belief that arguments in campaign literature have
• 2:33:30
  never gained votes. He seeks direct contact with the people, does them good
• 2:33:35
  turns when he can, and relies on their not forgetting him on election day.
• 2:33:39
  His heart is always in his work, too, for his subsistence depends
• 2:33:43
  on its results. If he holds his district, then Tammany is in power.
• 2:33:48
  He is amply rewarded by a good office and the opportunities that go with
• 2:33:52
  it. What these opportunities are has been shown by the quick rise to wealth
• 2:33:58
  of so many Tammany district readers. With the examples before him of Richard Crocker,
• 2:34:03
  once leader of the twentieth district, John F. Carroll, formerly leader
• 2:34:07
  of the twenty ninth, Timothy dry Dollar Sullivan, late leader of the sixth,
• 2:34:13
  and many others. He can always look forward to riches and ease while
• 2:34:18
  he is going through the drudgery of his daily routine. This is a record
• 2:34:24
  of a day's work by Plunkett. Two am, aroused from sleep by the
• 2:34:28
  ringing of his doorbell, went to the door and found a bartender who asked
• 2:34:33
  him to go to the police station and bail out a saloon keeper who had
• 2:34:37
  been arrested for violating the excise law. Furnished bail and returned to bed.
• 2:34:41
  At three o'clock, six am, awakened by fire engines passing his house,
• 2:34:48
  hastened to the scene of the fire, according to the custom of the Tammany
• 2:34:52
  district leaders to give assistance to the fire sufferers if needed. Met several of
• 2:34:56
  his election district captains, who are always under orders to look out for fires
• 2:35:01
  which are considered great vote getters, found several tenants who had been burned out,
• 2:35:07
  took them to a hotel, supplied them with clothes, fed them,
• 2:35:09
  and arranged temporary quarters for them. Until they could rent and furnish new apartments.
• 2:35:16
  Eight thirty a M. Went to the police court to look after his
• 2:35:18
  constituents. Found six drunks, secured the discharge of four by a timely word
• 2:35:24
  with the judge, and paid the fines of two. Nine AM appeared in
• 2:35:28
  the Municipal District Court, directed one of his district captains to act as counsul
• 2:35:33
  for a widow against whom dispossessed proceedings had been initiated, and obtained an extension
• 2:35:39
  of time, paid the rent of a poor family about to be dispossessed,
• 2:35:43
  and gave them a dollar for food. Eleven A M at home again found
• 2:35:48
  four men waiting for him. One had been discharged by the Metropolitan Railway Company
• 2:35:54
  for neglect of duty and wanted the district leader to fix things. Another wanted
• 2:35:58
  a job on the road, sought a place on the subway, and the
• 2:36:01
  fourth of plumber was looking for work with the Consolidated Gas Company. The district
• 2:36:07
  leader spent nearly three hours fixing things for the four men and succeeded in each
• 2:36:11
  case. Three PM attended the funeral of an Italian as far as the ferry,
• 2:36:16
  hurried back to make his appearance at the funeral of a Hebrew constituent,
• 2:36:20
  went conspicuously to the front both in the Catholic church and the synagogue, and
• 2:36:26
  later attended the Hebrew confirmation ceremonies in the synagogue. Seven pm went to district
• 2:36:31
  headquarters and presided over a meeting of election district captains. Each captain submitted a
• 2:36:37
  list of all the voters in his district, reported on their attitude toward tammany
• 2:36:41
  suggested who might be won over and how they could be won told who were
• 2:36:46
  in need and who were in trouble of any kind, and the best way
• 2:36:50
  to reach them. District leader took notes and gave orders. Eight pm went
• 2:36:54
  to a church fair, took chances on everything, bought ice cream for the
• 2:36:58
  younger girls and the children, kissed the little ones, flattered the mother,
• 2:37:03
  and took their fathers out for something down on the corner. Nine pm at
• 2:37:07
  the clubhouse. Again, spent ten dollars on tickets for a church excursion and
• 2:37:13
  promised a subscription for a new church. Bell bought tickets for a baseball game
• 2:37:18
  to be played by two nines from his district. Listen to the complaints of
• 2:37:22
  a dozen pushcart peddlers who said they were persecuted by the police, and assured
• 2:37:26
  them he would go to police headquarters in the morning and see about it.
• 2:37:31
  Ten thirty pm attended a Hebrew wedding reception and dance, had previously sent a
• 2:37:35
  handsome wedding present to the bride. Twelve pm in bed. This is the
• 2:37:41
  actual record of one day in the life of Plunket. He does some of
• 2:37:46
  the same things every day, but his life is not so monotonous as to
• 2:37:50
  be wearisome. Sometimes the work of a district leader is exciting, especially if
• 2:37:56
  he happens to have a rival who intends to make a contest for the leadership
• 2:38:00
  at the primaries. In that case, he is even more alert, tries
• 2:38:03
  to reach the fires before his rival, sends out runners to look for drunks
• 2:38:07
  and disorderlies at the police stationed, and keeps a very close watch on the
• 2:38:13
  obituary columns of the newspapers. A few years ago, there was a bitter
• 2:38:16
  contest for the Tammany leadership of the ninth District between John C. Sheehan and
• 2:38:22
  Fred J. Goodwin. Both had long experience in Tammany politics and both understood
• 2:38:28
  every move of the game. Every morning, their agents went to their respective
• 2:38:33
  headquarters before seven o'clock and read through the death notices in all the morning papers.
• 2:38:37
  If they found that anybody in the district had died, they rushed to
• 2:38:41
  the homes of their principles with the information, and then there was a race
• 2:38:46
  to the house of the deceased to africandolences, and if the family were poor,
• 2:38:50
  something more substantial. On the day of the funeral, there was another
• 2:38:56
  contest, each faction trying to surpass the other in number and appearances of the
• 2:39:01
  carriages it sent to the funeral, and more than once they almost came to
• 2:39:05
  blows at the church or in the cemetery. On one occasion, the goodwe
• 2:39:09
  Nights played a trick on their adversaries which has since been imitated in other districts.
• 2:39:16
  A well known liquor dealer who had a considerable falling dide and both she
• 2:39:20
  Han and Goodwin were eager to become his political error by making a big showing
• 2:39:26
  at the funeral. Goodwin managed to catch the enemy napping. He went to
• 2:39:31
  all the livery stables in the district, hired all the carriages for the day,
• 2:39:35
  and gave orders to two hundred of his men to be on hand as
• 2:39:37
  mourners. She Han had never had any trouble about getting all the carriages that
• 2:39:43
  he wanted, so he let the matter go until the night before the funeral.
• 2:39:46
  Then he found that he could not hire a carriage in the district.
• 2:39:50
  He called his district committee together in a hurry and explained the situation to them.
• 2:39:54
  He could get all the vehicles they needed in the adjoining district, he
• 2:39:58
  said, But if he did that, Goodwin would rouse the voters of the
• 2:40:03
  ninth by declaring that he she had had patronized foreign industries. Finally, it
• 2:40:09
  was decided that there was nothing to do but to go over to sixth Avenue
• 2:40:13
  and Broadway for carriages. She had made a fine turnout at the funeral,
• 2:40:18
  but the deceased was hardly in his grave before Goodwin raised the cry of protection
• 2:40:22
  to home industries and announced his rival for patronizing livery stable keepers outside of his
• 2:40:30
  district. The heir had its effect in the primary campaign. As all events,
• 2:40:35
  Goodwin was elected leader. A recent contest for the leadership of the second
• 2:40:41
  District illustrated further the strenuous work of the Tammany District leaders. The contestants were
• 2:40:46
  Patrick Diver who had managed the district for years, and Thomas F. Foley
• 2:40:52
  both were particularly anxious to secure the large Italian vote. They not only attended
• 2:40:58
  all the Italian cre listenings and funerals, but also kept a close lookout for
• 2:41:03
  the marriages in order to be on hand with wedding presents. At first,
• 2:41:07
  each had his own reporter in the Italian Quarter to keep the crack of the
• 2:41:11
  marriages. Later fully conceived a better plan. He hired a man to stay
• 2:41:16
  all day at the City Hall Marriage Bureau, where most Italian couples go through
• 2:41:20
  the civil ceremony, and telephoned to him at his saloon when anything was doing
• 2:41:24
  at the bureau. Foley had a number of presents ready for use, and
• 2:41:28
  whenever he received a telephone message from his man, he hastened to the City
• 2:41:31
  Hall with a ring or watch or a piece of silver and handed it to
• 2:41:35
  the bride with his congratulations. As a consequence, when Diver got the news
• 2:41:41
  and went to the home of the couple with his present, he always found
• 2:41:45
  that Foley had been ahead of him. Toward the end of the campaign,
• 2:41:48
  Diver also stationed a man at the marriage bureau, and then there were daily
• 2:41:52
  foot races and fights between the two healers. Sometimes the rivals came into conflict
• 2:41:58
  at the death bed. One night, a poor Italian peddler died in Roosevelt
• 2:42:03
  Street. The news reached Diver and Fully about the same time, and as
• 2:42:07
  they knew the family of the man was destitute, each went to an undertaker
• 2:42:11
  and brought him to the Roosevelt Street tenement. The rivals and the undertakers met
• 2:42:16
  at the house and an altercation ensued. After much discussion, the Diver undertaker
• 2:42:20
  was selected. Foley had more carriages at the funeral, however, and he
• 2:42:24
  further impressed the Italian voters by paying the widow's rent for a month and sending
• 2:42:31
  her half a ton of coal and a barrel of flour. The rivals were
• 2:42:35
  put on their metal toward the end of the campaign by the wedding of a
• 2:42:39
  daughter of one of the original Cohens of the Baxter Street region. The Hebrew
• 2:42:43
  vote in the district is nearly as large as the Italian vote, and Diver
• 2:42:48
  and Foley set out to capture the Cohens and their friends. They stayed up
• 2:42:52
  nights thinking about what they would give the bride. Neither knew how much the
• 2:42:56
  other was prepared to spend on a wedding present or what form it would take.
• 2:43:01
  So spies were employed by both sides to keep watch on the jewelry stores,
• 2:43:05
  and the jewelers of the district were bribed by each side to impart the
• 2:43:09
  desired information. At last Fully heard that Diver had purchased a set of silver
• 2:43:15
  knives, forks and spoons. He at once bought a duplicate set and added
• 2:43:18
  a silver tea service. When the presents were displayed at the home of the
• 2:43:22
  bride, Diver was not in a pleasant mood, and he charged his jeweler
• 2:43:26
  with treachery. It may be added that Fully wanted the primaries. One of
• 2:43:31
  the fixed duties of a Tammany district leaders is to give two outings every summer,
• 2:43:37
  one for the men of his district and the other for the women and
• 2:43:39
  children, and a beefsteak dinner and a ball every winter. The scene of
• 2:43:43
  the outings is usually one of the groves around the sound. The ambition of
• 2:43:48
  the district leader on these occasions is to demonstrate that his men have broken all
• 2:43:54
  records in the matter of eating and drinking. He gives out the exact number
• 2:43:58
  of pounds of beef, poultry, butter, igs, et cetera, that
• 2:44:01
  they have consumed, and professes to know how many potatoes and ears of corn
• 2:44:05
  have been served. According to his figures, the average eating record of each
• 2:44:11
  man at the outing is about ten pounds of beef, two or three chickens,
• 2:44:15
  a pound of butter, a half peck of potatoes, and two dozen
• 2:44:18
  ears of corn. The drinking records, as given out are still more phenomenal.
• 2:44:22
  For some reason not yet explained, the district leader thinks that his popularity
• 2:44:28
  will be greatly increased if he can show that his followers can eat and drink
• 2:44:31
  more than the followers of any other district leader. The same idea governs the
• 2:44:37
  beefsteak dinners in the winter. It matters not what sort of steak is served
• 2:44:41
  or how it is cooked. The district leader considers only the question of quantity,
• 2:44:46
  and when he excels all others in this particular, he feels somehow that
• 2:44:52
  he is a bigger man and deserves more patronage than his associates in the Tammany
• 2:44:56
  Executive Committee. As to the the balls, they are the events of the
• 2:45:01
  winter in the extreme east Side and West Side society. Maimy and Maggie and
• 2:45:07
  Jenny prepare for them months in advance, and their young men save up for
• 2:45:13
  the occasion, just as they say for the summer trips to Coney Island.
• 2:45:16
  The district leader is in his glory at the opening of the ball. He
• 2:45:20
  leads the coalition with the prettiest women present his wife if he has one,
• 2:45:26
  permitting, and spends almost the whole night shaking hands with these constituents. The
• 2:45:31
  ball costs him a pretty penny, but he has found that the investment pays
• 2:45:37
  by these means. The Tammany District Leader reaches out into the homes of his
• 2:45:41
  district, keeps watch not only on the men, but also on the women
• 2:45:46
  and children, knows their needs, their likes and dislikes, their troubles,
• 2:45:50
  and their hopes, and places himself in a position to use his knowledge for
• 2:45:54
  the benefit of his organization and himself. Is it any wonder that skin handles
• 2:46:00
  do not permanently disable Tammany, and that it speedily recovers from what seems to
• 2:46:05
  be a crushing defeat. End of Chapter twenty three