Occasionally when a quarrel broke out over the distribution of the spoils the most appalling disclosures were made; such as those on an investigation by the Grand Jury in 1853, when it appeared that the aldermen demanded a share in every city contract. On February 26th, 1853, the grand jury of New York County handed down a presentment with testimony to the effect that enormous sums of money had been expended for the procurement of street railroad franchises in New York City. It was ascertained that $50,000 had been paid in 1851 for the Eighth and Ninth Avenue Railroad franchises; that in 1852 $30,000 was paid in bribes for the Third Avenue Railroad franchise; that money was paid for aldermanic votes on franchises of the Catharine Street, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Grand Street and Wall Street ferries. Numerous other instances were given of bribery of members of the common council in connection with sale of city property and other contracts. Evidence as to police corruption was plentiful. The chief of police had received one hundred and sixty-three conveyances of property in one year. (Board of Aldermen Documents, Vol. XXI, part 2, No. 55, pp. 1333-35 and p. 1573; Myers’ History of Tammany Hall, 167.)
Out of sixty thousand votes polled in 1854, ten thousand were for sale. “In the city at this time were about ten thousand shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating and breaking up meetings.” In 1856 Josiah Quincy saw $25.00 paid for a single vote for a member of Congress. The day “was enlivened with assaults, riots and stabbings.”
The frauds and scandals in city affairs continued and grew from 1854 to 1860; it was impossible to learn from the city’s books how much was being plundered. In three years the taxes nearly doubled. From 1850 to 1860 the expenses of the city government increased from $3,200,000 to $9,758,000.
Politics in the old Sixth Ward of New York is briefly sketched by Frank Moss, at one time Police Commissioner, in his interesting work, The American Metropolis. No doubt civilization existed in that district from 1845 to 1865, the period referred to by Moss; there were churches and schools, family and business life as elsewhere. It was originally a fairly respectable neighborhood, but thanks to manhood suffrage, the political life of the community was thoroughly savage and its representatives savages, and it and they did much to degrade the whole ward. First we find “that hard-faced, heavy-handed old rapscallion Isaiah Rynders was the controlling spirit. There was nothing that Rynders could not or would not do, and there are many dark stories of his conduct during the draft riots of 1863.” He was the Boss of the district, his assistants were ruffians, his leaders and backers were office-holding politicians with the “Hon.” prefix to their notorious names. He was succeeded by Con Donoho, the head of the street cleaning department, whose gang finally trounced the Rynders gang into submission and who became thereafter “on close terms with the strongest political men of the city.” Moss finds thirty years later a similar alliance between crime and politics in the Eighth Ward of New York, among whose political rulers are, he says “pimps, gamblers, thugs, fighters and dive keepers.”
In 1860 the mayor was accused of selling appointments to offices. The Grand Jury in a presentment charged him with robbing the tax payers of $420,000. The New York Tribune in June 1860 publicly charged the municipal authorities with theft of public funds. Other newspaper criticism was silenced by orders for public advertising. The money voted for street cleaning was squandered, and the streets were so filthy that the death rate in 1863 was thirty-three per thousand. In a court proceeding in 1867 it incidentally transpired that $50,000 had been paid the common council for one gas franchise.
In 1857 the notorious William M. Tweed came into prominence and acquired political power which he retained for fourteen years, during which time he and his followers were steadily at work looting the city and squandering and amassing fortunes. The history of the Tweed régime of plunder in New York City is well known. In 1867 he was at the height of his power. Prior to that date all public contractors in New York City had been required to add ten per cent to their bills and pay over that percentage to certain politicians. In 1867 this percentage was increased to thirty-five per cent of which twenty-five per cent went to Tweed. The County Clerk’s and Register’s office brought in $40,000 to $80,000 a year each; the Sheriff’s office $150,000 a year. A part of this income was of course available for election purposes. Tweed and all his associates became rich notwithstanding that they lavished millions in the purchase of voters and public officials. Out of his stolen millions Tweed in the winter of 1871 gave $50,000 to the poor of his own ward and perhaps as much more throughout the city. This made him popular with the thriftless or pauper classes. Many of his transactions were in the nature of purchases of the state legislature at Albany. He influenced the press by means of advertising contracts, presents to reporters, etc. One newspaper got a profit of nearly $200,000 on a printing contract; another got $80,000 a year for advertising; presents to newspaper men ranged from $200 to $2500 a year. In 1871 the New York Sun proposed to erect a statue to the great man. At his daughter’s wedding the gifts were worth $100,000. From $36,000,000 in 1868 the city debt rose to $136,000,000 in 1871. The new county court house cost the city $12,000,000, of which $9,000,000 was undoubtedly stolen; repairs on armories the value of which was $250,000 were charged at $3,000,000 and so on. The total thefts of the Tweed ring amounted to somewhere between $100,000,000 and $200,000,000; the precise figure has never been ascertained. Had Tweed been less greedy, had his gang taken $25,000,000 instead of six times that sum they might have escaped. They went too far and the Tweed ring was overthrown in 1871 by a powerful citizens’ movement.
The reader may wonder what the decent people of New York were thinking, saying and doing all these years while these operations of the managers of the controllable vote were in progress. Just exactly what they are now thinking, saying and doing all over the country;—complaining and deploring that it can not be helped. Sometimes on the heels of some unusually scandalous disclosure a reform movement would be started, aided perhaps by young men intensely patriotic, fresh from school and college where they had read about our fine political structure in books that fail to refer to the rotten foundation. They learned by sad experience as others before them that the stream will rise no higher than its source; that with a controllable electorate kindly provided by the manhood suffrage constitution and an organization of scallawags, loafers and criminals to control it the politicians had the best of the situation. Bryce, who was in New York in 1870 and saw the Tweed Ring in its glory, gives us a fine picture of the effect of manhood suffrage in prostrating public conscience and energy. He says that the respectable democratic leaders winked at the Ring’s misdeeds for the sake of the vote; that the press had been purchased or subsidized; that the bench was controlled; that three-quarters of the citizens “paid little or nothing in the way of direct taxes, and did not realize that the increase of civic burdens would fall upon them as well as upon the rich.” Here you have the case as plain as day; the electorate, whose business and function it was to secure good government and prevent these evils, failed in its duty; it was itself corrupt and inefficient; and why? Because three-quarters of it paid little or no direct taxes. In other words, they were not property holders. Just as the human soul is undiscoverable except as revealed by the human body, so civilization exhibits itself in property; and the rabble who are unfamiliar with property and are devoid of sympathy with its rights, feel no interest in good government or in any other incident of civilization.
Bryce further says:
“Moreover, the Ring had cunningly placed on the pay rolls of the city a large number of persons rendering comparatively little service, who had become a body of janizaries, bound to defend the government which paid them, working hard for it at elections, and adding, together with the regular employees, no contemptible quota to the total Tammany vote. As for the Boss, those very qualities in him which repelled men of refinement made him popular with the crowd.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 391.)
Notwithstanding the Tweed disclosures there was no serious attempt to apply the only practical remedy by reforming the electorate. Here and there a voice was heard crying in the wilderness, but no one regarded it. In October 1876, a writer in the North American Review was clear-eyed enough to read the lesson of the Tweed Ring. He wrote: