“The levying of blackmail on companies, either as a contribution to campaign expenses or as fees to pay for protection, is now one of the principal sources of a Boss’s revenue, and, in states like New York, goes a good way towards enabling him to defy hostile sentiment. It furnishes him with funds for subsidizing the legislature and the press.” (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1896.)
Bryce states that the collection of revenues of a political Ring flow from five sources, viz., public subscriptions, contributions from contractors and others expecting favors, surreptitious appropriations from the city or state treasury, assessments upon the office holders, and sale of offices and nominations to office. Breen says truly in the book already quoted that the majority of voters are utterly unaware of what is really going on in the party. There are, he says, “scarcely 5,000 persons in the City of New York who are aware of the secret and surreptitious methods governing the inside of politics or of the subterranean channels thereto by which gross wrongs are perpetrated. The secret combinations, conspiracies, deals and bribery are confined to the expert politician.” How few, for instance, know the facts in relation to the practice of the barter of high offices. One of the inevitable results of the development of the present system is the sale of nominations to public office negotiated by the boss for the benefit of the machine. The existence of this traffic though secretly conducted is well known in political circles. Sometimes the payment is direct; sometimes it is disguised in the shape of contributions to campaign funds made by the candidate or someone in his behalf.
“In the large cities, with New York at their head, practice established a sort of tariff for each set of offices according to the length of the term and the importance of the place. Thus a judgeship, that is to say, the nomination to it amounted to $15,000; a seat in Congress was rated at $4,000; for membership of a state legislature $1,500 was demanded; a like amount for the position of alderman in a city council, etc.” (Ostrogorski, Idem, p. 70.)
“Candidates for the judiciary in New York City have paid Tammany Hall $5,000 to $10,000 for their offices.” (Commons on Proportional Representation, p. 303.)
Dr. Clark writing in 1900 says:
“By credible accounts as much as $100,000 has been paid to get nominated by the Convention of the dominant party for Clerk, Register or Sheriff of the County of New York; half that sum for Treasurer of Pennsylvania, and, in proportion to their opportunities for others the like offices all over the country. A seat on the Supreme Judicial bench costs from $5,000 to $15,000. A nomination to Congress from the lean pastures of Vermont or New Hampshire can sometimes be had for a thousand dollars, but in the golden fields of California and Nevada it has cost fifty thousand.” (The Machine Abolished, p. 40.)
The figures contained in Bryce’s American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 119, as to ruling rates for political nominations under this much prized system of political brigandage are these: Alderman, $1,500; Legislature, $500 to $1,500; Judgeship, $5,000 to $15,000; Congress, $4,000. The New York County Clerk at one time collected about $80,000 a year in fees, of which the political machine required him to hand over two-thirds. Writing in 1899 Dorman B. Eaton states the regular price of a high judicial nomination is $10,000 to $15,000. (Government of Municipalities, p. 107.) Another more recent writer gives the figures for political assessments for the large city as follows: For County Clerk and Register, $15,000; Alderman, $13,000; Sheriff, $25,000; Comptroller, $10,000; Mayor, $20,000; Police Justice, $6,500.
Not only the offices but the party itself is sometimes for sale in this or that ward or city. The bargains between the Republican and Democratic machines in New York City and elsewhere have been so frequently denounced and exposed by the politicians themselves as to need no proof. It is a matter of common knowledge that the bosses are able at times in shrewd transactions with opposing bosses to barter certain public offices, batches of offices and measures for other similar merchandise, and to carry out the bargain; thus causing the votes cast at an election to have directly the opposite effect from that supposed to be desired by the voters, though perhaps many of the floaters or regulars among them would be perfectly satisfied with the “deal.” It must be borne in mind that the ultimate object of all these “deals” and this political traffic is money; the party managers are not looking for public honors but for cash; they are actually engaged in building up fortunes for themselves and their backers, who are public contractors and the like. “Hence it is the opportunity and desire for public pelf, directly or indirectly, and for gratifying personal ambition without reference to public service, that are the most potent influences in the formation and cohesiveness of the ‘machine.’” (Democracy, p. 269.)
An instance of the friendly relations between rival machines is mentioned by Bryce in writing of the effort to get the Democratic machine in Philadelphia in 1870 to help oust the Republican Gas Ring:
“But the Democratic wire-pullers, being mostly men of the same stamp as the Gas Ring, did not seek a temporary gain at the expense of a permanent disparagement of their own class. Political principles are the last thing which the professional city politician cares for. It was better worth the while of the Democratic chiefs to wait for their turn, and in the meantime to get something out of occasional bargains with their (nominal) Republican opponents, than to strengthen the cause of good government at the expense of the professional class.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 411.)