CAPITALIST TRIUMPH BY FRAUD.
This was the familiar one of corruption and fraud. It was a method in the exercise of which the capitalists as a class had proved themselves adepts; they now summoned to their aid all of the ignoble and subterranean devices of criminal politics.
In the New York City election of 1886 three parties contested, the Labor party, Tammany Hall and the Republican party. Steeped in decades of the most loathsome corruption, Tammany Hall was chosen as the medium by which the Labor party was to be defrauded and effaced. Pretending to be the "champion of the people's rights," and boasting that it stood for democracy against aristocracy, Tammany Hall had long deceived the mass of the people to plunder them. It was a powerful, splendidly-organized body of mercenaries and selfseekers which, by trading on the principles of democracy, had been able to count on the partisan votes of a predominating element of the wage- working class. In reality, however, it was absolutely directed by a leader or "boss," who, with his confederates, made a regular traffic of selling legislation to the capitalists, on the one hand, and who, on the other, enriched themselves by a colossal system of blackmail. They sold immunity to pickpockets, confidence men and burglars, compelled the saloonkeepers to pay for protection, and even extorted from the wretched women of the street and brothels. This was the organization that the ruling class, with its fine assumptions of respectability, now depended upon to do its work of breaking up the political labor revolt.
The candidate of Tammany Hall was the ultra-respectable Abram S. Hewitt, a millionaire capitalist. The Republican party nominated a verbose, pushful, self-glorifying young man, who, by a combination of fortuitous circumstances, later attained the position of President of the United States. This was Theodore Roosevelt, the scion of a moderately rich New York family, and a remarkable character whose pugnacious disposition, indifference to political conventionalities, capacity for exhortation, and bold political shrewdness were mistaken for greatness of personality. The phenomenal success to which he subsequently rose was characteristic of the prevailing turgidity and confusion of the popular mind. Both Hewitt and Roosevelt were, of course, acceptable to the capitalist class. As, however, New York was normally a city of Democratic politics, and as Hewitt stood the greater chance of winning, the support of those opposed to the labor movement was concentrated upon him.
Intrenched respectability, for the most part, came forth to join sanctimony with Tammany scoundrelism. It was an edifying union, yet did not comprise all of the forces linked in that historic coalition. The Church, as an institution, cast into it the whole weight of its influence and power. Soaked with the materialist spirit while dogmatically preaching the spiritual, dominated and pervaded by capitalist influences, the Church, of all creeds and denominations, lost no time in subtly aligning itself in its expected place. And woe to the minister or priest who defied the attitude of his church! Father McGlynn, for example, was excommunicated by the Pope, ostensibly for heretical utterances, but in actuality for espousing the cause of the labor movement.
Despite every legitimate argument coupled with venomous ridicule and coercive and corrupt influence that wealth, press and church could bring to bear, the labor unions stood solidly together. On election day groups of Tammany repeaters, composed of dissolutes, profligates, thugs and criminals, systematically, under directions from above, filled the ballot boxes with fraudulent votes. The same rich class that declaimed with such superior indignation against rule by the "mob" had poured in funds which were distributed by the politicians for these frauds. But the vote of the labor forces was so overwhelming, that even piles of fraudulent votes could not suffice to overcome it. One final resource was left. This was to count out Henry George by grossly tampering with the election returns and misrepresenting them. And this is precisely what was done, if the testimony of numerous eye-witnesses is to be believed. The Labor party, it is quite clear, was deliberately cheated out of an election won in the teeth of the severest and most corrupt opposition. This result it had to accept; the entire elaborate machinery of elections was in the full control of the Labor party's opponents; and had it instituted a contest in the courts, the Labor party would have found its efforts completely fruitless in the face of an adverse judiciary.