CHAPTER XVII—THE REPUTABLE OLD GENTLEMAN IS MAYOR
THE Philadelphia machine was a training school for repeaters. Those ten thousand sent to our cause by Morton's friend, went about their work like artillerymen about their guns. Each was good for four votes. As one of the squad captains said:
“There's got to be time between, for a party to change his face an' shift to another coat an' hat. Besides, it's as well to give th' judges an hour or two to get dim to your mug, see!”
Big Kennedy had set his foot upon the gang spirit, and stamped out of existence such coteries as the Tin Whistles and the Alley Gang, and I copied Big Kennedy in this. Such organizations would have been a threat to me, and put it more in reach of individual leaders to rebel against an order. What work had been done by the gangs was now, under a better discipline and with machine lines more tightly drawn, transacted by the police.
When those skillful gentry, meant to multiply a ballot-total, came in from the South, I called my Chief of Police into council. He was that same bluff girthy personage who, aforetime, had conferred with Big Kennedy. I told him what was required, and how his men, should occasion arise, must foster as far as lay with them the voting purposes of our colonists.
“You can rely on me, Gov'nor,” said the Chief. He had invented this title for Big Kennedy, and now transferred it to me. “Yes, indeed, you can go to sleep on me doin' my part. But I'm bothered to a standstill with my captains. Durin' th' last four or five years, th' force has become honeycombed with honesty; an', may I be struck! if some of them square guys aint got to be captains.”
“Should any get in your way,” said I, “he must be sent to the outskirts. I shall hold you for everything that goes wrong.”
“I guess,” said the Chief thoughtfully, “I'll put the whole racket in charge of Gothecore. He'll keep your emigrants from Philadelphia walkin' a crack. They'll be right, while Gothecore's got his peeps on 'em.”
“Has Gothecore had experience?”
“Is Bill Gothecore wise? Gov'nor, I don't want to paint a promise so brilliant I can't make good, but Gothecore is th' most thorough workman on our list. Why, they call him 'Clean Sweep Bill!' I put him in th' Tenderloin for six months, an' he got away with everything but th' back fence.”
“Very well,” said I, “the care of these colonists is in your hands. Here's a list of the places where they're berthed.”
“You needn't give 'em another thought, Gov'nor,” observed the Chief. Then, as he arose to depart: “Somethin's got to be done about them captains turnin' square. They act as a scare to th' others. I'll tell you what: Make the price of a captaincy twenty thousand dollars. That'll be a hurdle no honest man can take. Whoever pays it, we can bet on as a member of our tribe. One honest captain queers a whole force; it's like a horse goin' lame.” This last, moodily.
In the eleventh hour, by our suggestion and at our cost, the Republican managers put up a ticket. This was made necessary by certain inveterate ones who would unite with nothing in which Tammany owned a part. As between us and the labor forces, they would have offered themselves to the latter. They must be given a ticket of their own whereon to waste themselves.
The campaign itself was a whirlwind of money. That princely fund promised by Morton was paid down to me on the nail, and I did not stint or save it when a chance opened to advance our power by its employment. I say “I did not stint,” because, in accord with Tammany custom, the fund was wholly in my hands.
As most men know, there is no such post as that of Chief of Tammany Hall. The office is by coinage, and the title by conference, of the public. There exists a finance committee of, commonly, a dozen names. It never meets, and the members in ordinary are 'to hear and know no more about the money of the organization than of sheep-washing among Ettrick's hills and vales. There is a chairman; into his hands all moneys come. These, in his care and name, and where and how and if he chooses, are put in bank. He keeps no books; he neither gives nor takes a scrap of paper, nor so much as writes a letter of thanks, in connection with such treasurership. He replies to no one for this money; he spends or keeps as he sees fit, and from beginning to end has the sole and only knowledge of either the intake or the outgo of the millions of the machine. The funds are wholly in his possession. To borrow a colloquialism, “He is the Man with the Money,” and since money is the mainspring of practical politics, it follows as the tail the kite, and without the intervention of either rule or statute, that he is The Boss. Being supreme with the money, he is supreme with the men of the machine, and it was the holding of this chairmanship which gave me my style and place as Chief.
The position is not wanting in its rewards. Tammany, for its own safety, should come forth from each campaign without a dollar. There is no argument to carry over a residue from one battle to the next. It is not required, since Tammany, from those great corporations whose taxes and liberties it may extend or shrink by a word, may ever have what money it will; and it is not wise, because the existence of a fund between campaigns would excite dissension, as this leader or that one conceived some plan for its dissipation. It is better to upturn the till on the back of each election, and empty it in favor of organization peace. And to do this is the duty of the Chairman of the Finance Committee; and I may add that it is one he was never known to overlook.
There was nothing notable in that struggle which sent the reputable old gentleman to the city fore as Mayor, beyond the energy wherewith the work required was performed. Every move ran off as softly sure as could be wished. The police did what they should. Those visitors from below turned in for us full forty thousand votes, and then quietly received their wages and as quietly went their way. I saw to it that, one and all, they were sharply aboard the ferryboats when their work was done. No one would care for them, drunken and mayhap garrulous, about the streets, until after the last spark of election interest had expired. The polls were closed: the count was made; the laborites and their Moses was beaten down, and the reputable old gentleman was declared victor by fifteen thousand. Those rich ones, late so pale, revived the color in their cheeks; and as for Tammany and myself, we took deep breaths, and felt as ones from whose shoulders a load had been lifted.
It was for me a fortunate upcome; following that victory, my leadership could no more be shaken than may the full-grown oaks. Feeling now my strength, I made divers machine changes of the inner sort. I caused my executive leaders to be taken from the assembly districts, rather than from the wards. There would be one from each; and since there was a greater number of districts than wards, the executive array was increased. I smelled safety for myself in numbers, feeling, as Big Kennedy advised, the more secure with twenty than with two. Also the new situation gave the leaders less influence with the Aldermen, when now the frontiers of the one no longer matched those of the other. I had aimed at this; for it was my instant effort on becoming Chief to collect within my own fingers every last thread of possible authority. I wanted the voice of my leadership to be the voice of the storm; all others I would stifle to a whisper.
While busy within the organization, deepening and broadening the channels of my power, I did not neglect conditions beyond the walls. I sent for the leaders of those two or three bands of Democracy which professed themselves opposed to Tammany Hall. I pitched upon my men as lumber folk in their log-driving pitch upon the key-logs in a “jam.” I loosened them with office, or the promise of it, and they instantly came riding down to me on the currents of self-interest, and brought with them those others over whom they held command.
Within the twelvemonth Tammany was left no rival within the lines of the regular party; I had, either by purring or by purchase, brought about the last one's disappearance. It was a fair work for the machine, and I could feel the gathering, swelling confidence of my followers uplifting me as the deep sea uplifts a ship.
There was a thorn with that rose of leadership, nor did my hand escape its sting. The papers in their attacks upon me were as incessant as they were vindictive, and as unsparing as they were unfair. With never a fact set forth, by the word of these unmuzzled and uncaring imprints I stood forth as everything that was thievish, vile, and swart.
While I made my skin as thick against these shafts as I could, since I might neither avoid nor return them, still they pierced me and kept me bleeding, and each new day saw ever a new wound to my sensibilities. It is a bad business—these storms of black abuse! You have but to fasten upon one, even an honest one, the name of horse-thief and, behold you! he will steal a horse. Moreover, those vilifications of types become arrows to glance aside and bury themselves in the breasts of ones innocent.
Blossom was grown now to be a grave stripling girl of fifteen. Anne conceived that she should be taught in a school. She, herself, had carried Blossom to a considerable place in her books, but the finishing would be the better accomplished by teachers of a higher skill, and among children of Blossom's age. With this on her thought, Anne completed arrangements with a private academy for girls, one of superior rank; and to this shop of learning, on a certain morning, she conveyed Blossom. Blossom was to be fitted with a fashionable education by those modistes of the intellectual, just as a dressmaker might measure her, and baste her, and stitch her into a frock.
But insult and acrid grief were lying there in ambush for Blossom—Blossom, then as ever, with her fear-haunted eyes. She was home before night, tearful, hysterical—crying in Anne's arms. There had been a cartoon in the papers. It showed me as a hairy brutal ape, the city in the shape of a beautiful woman fainting in my arms, and a mighty rock labeled “Tammany” in one hand, ready to hurl at my pursuers. The whole was hideous; and when one of the girls of the school showed it to Blossom, and taunted her with this portrait of her father, it was more than heart might bear. She fled before the outrage of it, and would never hear the name of school again. This ape-picture was the thing fearful and new to Blossom, for to save her, both Anne and I had been at care to have no papers to the house. The harm was done, however; Blossom, hereafter, would shrink from all but Anne and me, and when she was eighteen, save for us, the priest, and an old Galway serving woman who had been her nurse, she knew no one in the whole wide world.
The reputable old gentleman made a most amazing Major. He was puffed with a vanity that kissed the sky. Honest, and by nature grateful, he was still so twisted as to believe that to be a good Mayor one must comport himself in an inhuman way.
“Public office is a public trust!” cried he, quoting some lunatic abstractionist.
The reputable old gentleman's notion of discharging this trust was to refuse admittance to his friends, while he sat in council with his enemies. To show that he was independent, he granted nothing to ones who had builded him; to prove himself magnanimous, he went truckling to former foes, preferring them into place. As for me, he declined every suggestion, refused every name, and while there came no open rupture between us, I was quickly taught to stay away.
“My luck with my father,” said Morton, when one day we were considering that lofty spirit of the reputable old gentleman, “is no more flattering than your own, don't y' know. He waves me away with a flourish. I reminded him that while he might forget me as one who with trowel and mortar had aided to lay the walls of his career, he at least should remember that I was none the less his son; I did, really! He retorted with the story of the Roman father who in his rôle as judge sentenced his son to death. Gad! he seemed to regret that no chance offered for him to equal though he might not surpass that noble example. Speaking seriously, when his term verges to its close, what will be your course? You know the old gentleman purposes to succeed himself. And, doubtless, since such is mugwump thickness, he'll be renominated.”
“Tammany,” said I, “will fight him. We'll have a candidate on a straight ticket of our own. His honor, your father, will be beaten.”
“On my soul! I hope so,” exclaimed Morton. “Don't you know, I expect every day to find him doing something to Mulberry Traction—trying to invalidate its franchise, or indulging in some similar piece of humor. I shall breathe easier with my parent returned to private life—really!”
“Never fear; I'll have the city in the hollow of my hand within the year,” said I.
“I will show you where to find a million or two in Wall Street, if you do,” he returned.
The downfall of the reputable old gentleman was already half accomplished. One by one, I had cut the props from beneath him. While he would grant me no contracts, and yield me no offices for my people, he was quite willing to consider my advice on questions of political concern. Having advantage of this, I one day pointed out that it was un-American to permit certain Italian societies to march in celebration of their victories over the Pope long ago. Why should good Catholic Irish-Americans be insulted with such exhibitions! These Italian festivals should be kept for Italy; they do not belong in America. The reputable old gentleman, who was by instinct more than half a Know Nothing, gave warm assent to my doctrines, and the festive Italians did not celebrate.
Next I argued that the reputable old gentleman should refuse his countenance to the Irish exercises on St. Patrick's Day. The Irish were no better than the Italians. He could not make flesh of one and fish of the other. The reputable old gentleman bore testimony to the lucid beauty of my argument by rebuffing the Irish in a flame of words in which he doubted both their intelligence and their loyalty to the land of their adoption. In another florid tirade he later sent the Orangemen to the political right-about. The one powerful tribe he omitted to insult were the Germans, and that only because they did not come within his reach. Had they done so, the reputable old gentleman would have heaped contumely upon them with all the pleasure in life.
It is not needed that I set forth how, while guiding the reputable old gentleman to these deeds of derring, I kept myself in the background. No one knew me as the architect of those wondrous policies. The reputable old gentleman stood alone; and in the inane fullness of his vanity took a deal of delight in the uproar he aroused.
There was an enemy of my own. He was one of those elegant personalities who, in the elevation of riches and a position to which they are born, find the name of Tammany a synonym for crime. That man hated me, and hated the machine. But he loved the reputable old gentleman; and, by his name and his money, he might become of utmost avail to that publicist in any effort he put forth to have his mayorship again.
One of the first offices of the city became vacant, that of chamberlain. I heard how the name of our eminent one would be presented for the place. That was my cue. I instantly asked that the eminent one be named for that vacant post of chamberlain. It was the earliest word which the reputable old gentleman had heard on the subject, for the friends of the eminent one as yet had not broached the business with him.
When I urged the name of the eminent one, the reputable old gentleman pursed up his lips and frowned. He paused for so long a period that I began to fear lest he accept my suggestion. To cure such chance, I broke violently in upon his cogitations with the commands of the machine.
“Mark you,” I cried, in the tones wherewith I was wont in former and despotic days to rule my Tin Whistles, “mark you! there shall be no denial! I demand it in the name of Tammany Hall.”
The sequel was what I sought; the reputable old gentleman elevated his crest. We straightway quarreled, and separated in hot dudgeon. When the select bevy who bore among them the name of the eminent one arrived upon the scene, the reputable old gentleman, metaphorically, shut the door in their faces. They departed in a rage, and the fires of their indignation were soon communicated to the eminent one.
As the result of these various sowings, a nodding harvest of enemies sprung up to hate and harass the reputable old gentleman. I could tell that he would be beaten; he, with the most formidable forces of politics against him solid to a man! To make assurance sure, however, I secretly called to me the Chief of Police. In a moment, the quiet order was abroad to close the gambling resorts, enforce the excise laws against saloons, arrest every contractor violating the ordinances regulating building material in the streets, and generally, as well as specifically, to tighten up the town to a point that left folk gasping.
No one can overrate the political effect of this. New York has no home. It sits in restaurants and barrooms day and night. It is a city of noisome tenements and narrow flats so small that people file themselves away therein like papers in a pigeonhole.
These are not homes: they grant no comfort; men do not seek them until driven by want of sleep. It is for the cramped reasons of flats and tenements that New York is abroad all night. The town lives in the streets; or, rather, in those houses of refreshment which, open night and day, have thrown away their keys.
This harsh enforcement of the excise law, or as Old Mike put it, “Gettin' bechune th' people an' their beer,” roused a wasps' nest of fifty thousand votes. The reputable old gentleman was to win the stinging benefit, since he, being chief magistrate, must stand the brunt as for an act of his administration.
Altogether, politically speaking, my reputable old gentleman tossed and bubbled in a steaming kettle of fish when he was given his renomination. For my own side, I put up against him a noble nonentity with a historic name. He was a mere jelly-fish of principle—one whose boneless convictions couldn't stand on their own legs. If the town had looked at my candidate, it would have repudiated him with a howl. But I knew my public. New York votes with its back to the future. Its sole thought is to throw somebody out of office—in the present instance, the offensive reputable old gentleman—and this it will do with never a glance at that one who by the effect of the eviction is to be raised to the place. No, I had no apprehensions; I named my jelly-fish, and with a straight machine-made ticket, mine from truck to keel, shoved boldly forth. This time I meant to own the town.