PART 12: THE HISTORY OF TAMMANY HALL

The History of Tammany Hall

By Gustavus Myers

CHAPTER XXIX
The Dictatorship of Richard Croker
(concluded) 1897-1901

NOW that Tammany was reinstalled in almost absolute power, Mr. Croker set about choosing the important city officials to be appointed by the Mayor.  He frankly admitted before the Mazet Committee, in 1899, that practically all of them were selected by him or his immediate associates.  Requiring a routine assistant in the work of “bossing,” Mr. Croker selected John F. Carroll, who thereupon resigned the office of Clerk of the Court of General Sessions, which yielded, it was estimated, about $12,000 a year, to take a post with no apparent salary.  Mr. Croker then returned to horse-racing in England.

The public pronouncements of the organization continued to voice the old-time characteristic pretensions of that body’s frugality, honesty and submission to the popular will.  In October, 1898, the county convention in the Wigwam passed resolutions commending “the wise, honest and economical” Tammany administration of Greater New York, and denouncing the “corruption, extravagance and waste of the infamous mismanagement” by the previous reform administration.  Yet at this very moment the Bar Association was protesting against Mr. Croker’s refusal to renominate Judge Joseph F. Daly,[1] on the ground of his refusing to hand over the patronage of his court.  The convention itself, despite its fine words, acted merely as the register of the will of one man, with scarcely the formality of a contest;  and the public had again become agitated over the certainty of grave scandals in the public service.

Tammany’s election fund this year was generally reputed to be in the neighborhood of $100,000.  As much as $500 was spent in each of several hotly contested election districts.  Tammany won, but by a margin less than had been expected and, in fact, arranged for.  The State Superintendent of Elections, John McCullough, in his annual report (January, 1899) to Gov. Roosevelt, gave good grounds for believing that Tammany had been deprived of a large support on which it had counted.  Of 13,104 persons registered from specified lodging houses in certain strong Tammany districts, only 4,034 voted.  It was evident that colonization frauds on a large scale had been attempted, and had been frustrated only by the vigilance of Superintendent McCullough.

The state of administrative affairs in the city grew worse and worse, nearly approximating that of 1893-94.  The Legislature again determined to investigate, and accordingly sent to the city the special committee of the Assembly, popularly known as the “Mazet Committee.”  This body’s prestige suffered from the charge that its investigation was unduly partizan.  Moreover, it was generally felt by the public that its work was inefficiently carried on.  Nevertheless, it produced a considerable array of facts showing the existence of gross maladministration.

It was disclosed that every member of the Tammany Society or of the organization’s executive committee, held office, or was a favored contractor.  Over $700,000 of city orders went to favored contractors without bidding.  Various city departments were “characterized by unparalleled ignorance and unfairness.”  The payrolls in some of the most important departments had increased $1,500,000 between July 1, 1898, and September 1, 1899, and the employees had increased over 1,000, excluding policemen, firemen and teachers.  The testimony proved the increasing inefficiency and demoralization of the Police and Fire Departments.  It further proved the existence of a ramified system of corruption similar to that revealed by the Lexow Committee.

The disclosures attracting the greatest public attention were those relating to the Ice Trust, the Ramapo project, and Mr. Croker’s relations to the city government.  On April 14 the committee exposed a conspiracy between the Ice Trust and the Dock and other departments of the city government, to create and maintain a monopoly of New York’s ice supply.  Six days after the exposure, Mayor Van Wyck, as he subsequently admitted in his testimony before Judge Gaynor, acquired 5,000 shares, worth $500,000, of the Ice Trust stock, alleging that he paid $57,000 in cash for them;  but although urged to substantiate his statement, did not produce proof that he actually paid anything.  It was shown conclusively before the committee that the arrangement between the Ice Trust and the city officials was such as to compel the people to pay 60 cents a hundred pounds, and that the trust had stopped the sale of five-cent pieces of ice, practically cutting off the supply of the very poor.  Many other Tammany officials were equally involved.  Proceedings were begun some time after, looking to an official investigation of the Ice Trust’s affairs, and charges against Mayor Van Wyck were filed with Gov. Roosevelt.  The latter were finally dismissed by the Governor in November, 1900.

In August, the committee uncovered the Ramapo scheme.  The Ramapo Water Company, with assets “of at least the value of $5,000,” sought to foist upon the city a contract calling for payment from the city treasury of an enormous amount in annual installments of about $5,110,000, in return for at least 200,000,000 gallons of water a day, at $70 per million gallons.  This was proved to be an attempt toward a most gigantic swindle.  Had not Controller Coler exposed and frustrated the scheme, the Tammany members of the Board of Public Improvements would have rushed the contract to passage.

Mr. Croker’s testimony threw a flood of light upon his political views and standards as well as his powers and emoluments as “boss.”  He acknowledged that he had a powerful influence over the Tammany legislators at Albany, whose actions he advised, and that he exercised the same influence upon local officials.  He readily conceded that he was the most powerful man he knew of.[2]  “We try to have a pretty effective organization,” he said;  “that is what we are there for.”[3]

Mr. Croker also admitted that judicial candidates were assessed in their districts.[4]  In fact, some of the Judges themselves named the respective sums to the committee.  Judge Pryor testified that he had been asked for $10,000 for his nomination for a vacant half-term in the Supreme Court.[5]  Other judicial candidates, it was understood, paid from $10,000 to $25,000 for nominations.[6]  Mr. Croker maintained that the organization was entitled to all the judicial, executive, administrative — in brief, all offices — because “that is what the people voted our ticket for.”[7]  Mr. Croker refused to answer many questions tending to show that he profited by a silent partnership in many companies which benefited directly or indirectly by his power.  “The man who is virtual ruler of the city,” said Frank Moss and Francis E. Laimbeer, counsel to the committee, in their report, “can insure peace and advantage and business to any concern that takes him and his friends in, and can secure capital here or abroad to float any enterprise, when he guarantees that the city officials will not interfere with it.”  Mr. Croker was asked many other questions touching this subject, but gave little information.  He declined to answer the question whether $140,000 of the stock of the Auto-Truck Company had been given to him without the payment of a dollar;  it was his “ private affair.”[8]

“We are giving the people pure organization government,” he said.  He referred to the thoroughness of discipline in the Wigwam, and stated that the only way to succeed was to keep the whip in hand over his henchmen.  It took “a lot of time,” and he “had to work very hard at it.”  Tammany was built up, he said, not only upon the political principles it held, but upon the way its members sustained one another in business.  “We want the whole business, if we can get it”;  “to the party belong the spoils”;  “we win, and we expect every one to stand by us”;  “I am working for my pocket all the time,” were some of Mr. Croker’s answers, most of them told in anything but grammatical English.

The general opinion obtained that the committee’s work would have been far more effective and free from charges of partizan bias if Thomas C. Platt, the Republican “boss,” had been summoned concerning his alleged political connection with the great corporations and financial interests, as Mr. Croker had been.

Apparently the disclosures made no deep impression on the city administration, for matters went along pretty much as before.  On March 9, 1900, the New York Times published a detailed statement, which it later reiterated, that the sum of $3,095,000 a year was being paid by the gambling-house keepers of the city to the “gambling-house commission,” which, it said, was composed of two State Senators, a representative of the pool-room proprietors, and the head of one of the city departments.  This commission, the account stated, received and passed upon applications, established the tariff to be paid by the applicants, and supervised the collections.  Later, in the same month, the Grand Jury handed down a presentment arraigning the city officials for the sway enjoyed by the criminal and vicious classes.[9]

Neither the Grand Jury’s presentment nor the Times’s detailed statements had the slightest effect on the conduct of the city administration.  In November, however, a marked change occurred.  For several years certain reform societies and ecclesiastical bodies, particularly the Episcopal Church, had sought to mitigate the open flaunting of immorality in the tenement houses of a particular police district on the East Side.  The attempts had been resisted, not only by those living upon the proceeds of this immorality, but by the police themselves;  and two ministers who had complained to certain police officials had been grossly insulted.

Immediately after the Presidential election, Bishop Henry C. Potter, of the Episcopal Church, in a stinging letter of complaint, brought the matter to the attention of Mayor Van Wyck.  It was the psychological moment for such an action, and it produced immediate results.  Mr. Croker paused in his preparations for his usual trip to England long enough to give orders to put down the immorality complained of, and he appointed a committee of five to carry his mandate into effect, or at least to make some satisfactory show of doing so.  He went further than this, for his orders included a general ukase to the lawbreakers of the city to “go slow,” or in other words, to observe, until further advices from headquarters, a certain degree of moderation in their infractions of law and their outrages upon decency.

CHAPTER XXX
Tammany Under Absentee Direction
1901-1902

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

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

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

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

“ People are simply ignorant of conditions on the East Side [of New York City].  If those conditions existed in some other communities there would be a Vigilance Committee speedily organized, and somebody would get lynched.  The continued greed and extortion of the Police Captains who charge five hundred dollars for a disorderly resort to open in their precinct, and then collect fifty to a hundred [dollars] per month, has, however, made even vice unprofitable.  Details, I know, are revolting and not nice to read, but yet the people ought to know about them.  Just yesterday I sentenced to six months in the penitentiary the keepers of one of the most depraved houses of the East Side.  I firmly believe that they were merely the agents of the man who owns not one but many of such places.  He is well known as a politician in a certain notorious district.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The result of the election was that Mr. Low was elected Mayor by a plurality of 31,636.  Nearly all of the other anti-Tammany candidates for the large offices were also elected, although Tammany’s candidate for the Borough of the Bronx — Louis F. Haffen — was successful.  The total vote stood:  Low, 296,818;  Shepard, 265,177.  For other political parties a small vote was cast: Benjamin Hanford, candidate for Mayor of the Social Democratic party, received 9,834 votes;  Keinard, Socialist Labor candidate for Mayor, polled 6,218 votes, and Manierre, Prohibition candidate for Mayor, 1,264 votes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With this announcement Mr. Nixon vanished from the scene of Tammany politics.  As a matter of fact, certain Tammany district leaders were already planning to bring about a change of actual leadership.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXI
Charles F. Murphy’s Autocracy
1902-1903

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This millionaire leader of Tammany Hall was by no means an unpleasant man to meet.  He had a certain diffidence and he was not a good talker;  his old habit of attentively listening was too strongly fixed.  Physically strong, his deep voice and direct, concise manner when he did speak were impressive and always concentrated on the business at hand.  He had none of the ordinary vices;  he drank liquor occasionally, it was true, but his drinks were sparse and the times far separated.  In smoking he did not indulge, neither did he swear, nor gamble at cards, although he was not a stranger to stock market speculations.  A communicant of the Epiphany Roman Catholic Church, he attended mass every Sunday, and gave liberal donations to the church.  Unlike Mr. Croker, Mr. Murphy never cared to make the Democratic Club his headquarters;  every night, when a district leader, Mr. Murphy could be found, from 7:0 to 10 o’clock, leaning against a lamp post at the northwest corner of Twentieth Street and Second Avenue.  Everybody in the district knew that he would be there, accessible to anybody who wanted to talk to him.  Such were the career and characteristics of the new leader of Tammany Hall — a dictator in fact, yet preserving all of the tokens of democratic accessibility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. McClellan was elected Mayor by a plurality of 62,696.  The vote resulted :  McClellan, 814,782;  Low, 252,086.  Furman, candidate for Mayor of the Social Democratic party, received 16,596 votes;  Hunter, the Socialist Labor party’s candidate for Mayor, 5,205 votes.  For the Prohibition ticket 869 votes were cast.  In this election Tammany also elected its candidates, including Grout and Fornes, to all of the other important city offices, except the Presidency of the Borough of Richmond.  The results of the election practically gave Tammany Hall full control of the city.
to be continued...

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

2 Stenographic minutes, p. 451.

3 Ibid., p. 465.

4 Ibid., p. 6806.

5 Ibid., p. 523.

6 Ibid., pp. 6891, etc.

7 Ibid., p. 464.

8 Stenographic minutes, p. 683.

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

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

2 Ibid.

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

4 Report of speech in the New York Herald, October 27, 1901.

5 This speech was published in the New York Sun and other newspapers on the following day.

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

2 Ibid., p. 58.

3 See a long letter from a leading reformer published in the New York Herald, April 1, 1903.