IT ISN’T THE COWL THAT MAKES THE MONK.
PUCK, August 28th, 1889.
The first attempt of the Tammany Hall organization to swing into line with the national democracy, and to put municipal government in New York on a business-like basis, was received with a general incredulity that was natural enough under the circumstances. In a sense it was a most unfortunate thing that Tammany’s sincerity in the purpose of self-improvement was not more readily recognized by those whose opposition to Tammany rule was based on a broad-minded and reasonable distrust of factional control of party power. When Tammany Hall began to expel objectionable members and to put only able and trustworthy men in charge of public affairs, that powerful organization removed what had hitherto been the chief reproach against it. Yet the corruption and inefficiency which had characterized Tammany’s management in the past were but an accident of factional rule and not an organic element. This most obvious objection to the Tammany organization being removed, the average citizen was quite willing to accept the idea of Tammany Hall’s supremacy without reflecting at all upon the danger of allowing a part of a party to substitute its will for that of the majority.
Unhappily—if government by faction is a dangerous and objectionable scheme, as Puck has always contended—the most earnest and conspicuous opponents of Tammany Hall were rather theorists than practical folk. They were not in touch with the people, and had little knowledge of plain work-a-day life. In the common phrase, they meant well, but they didn’t know. In the face of a most striking and remarkable advance in efficient and economical municipal government they continued their fight against Tammany on the same lines upon which they had begun it years before, when the organization was undoubtedly open to the charge of gross malfeasance in office. This was a mistake, tactically—that it was also a mistake, practically, time may show. Tammany had little difficulty in showing that, whatever she might have done in the past, she had now taken to governing New York uncommonly well and uncommonly cheaply. That was enough to satisfy the minds of most citizens as to the advisability of renewing the contract with Tammany; and in 1890 and in 1892 Tammany riveted her rule upon New York as tight as a collar on a steamboat shaft. No matter what that rule may be, good, bad or indifferent, it is factional rule, and as such, to Puck’s thinking, dangerous and founded on injustice. If it ever brings mischief to New York, we must not forget that the responsibility lies with the theorists who made opposition hopeless by persistently conducting it upon untenable grounds.
