The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

No; after Big Kennedy's death, I could name you none save Morton whose advice I cared for, or towards whom I leaned in any thought of confidence. Some have said that this distance, which I maintained between me and my underlings, was the secret of my strength. It may have been; and if it were I take no credit, since I expressed nothing save a loneliness of disposition, and could not have borne myself otherwise had I made the attempt. Not that I regretted it. That dumb concession of themselves to me, by my folk of Tammany, would play no little part in pulling down a victory in the great conflict wherein we were about to engage.

Tammany Hall was never more sharply organized. I worked over the business like an artist over an etching. Discipline was brought to a pitch never before known. My district leaders were the pick of the covey, and every one, for force and talents of executive kind, fit to lead a brigade into battle. Under these were the captains of election precincts; and a rank below the latter came the block captains—one for each city block. Thus were made up those wheels within wheels which, taken together, completed the machine. They fitted one with the other, block captains with precinct captains, the latter with district leaders, and these last with myself; and all like the wheels and springs and ratchets and regulators of a clock; one sure, too, when wound and oiled and started, to strike the hours and announce the time of day in local politics with a nicety that owned no precedent.

There would be a quartette of tickets; I could see that fact of four corners in its approach, long months before the conventions. Besides the two regular parties, and the mugwump-independents—which tribe, like the poor, we have always with us—the laborites would try again. These had not come to the field in any force since that giant uprising when we beat them down with the reputable old gentleman. Nor did I fear them now. My trained senses told me, as with thumb on wrist I counted the public pulse, how those clans of labor were not so formidable by three-fourths as on that other day a decade and more before.

Of those three camps of politics set over against us, that one to be the strongest was the party of reform. This knowledge swelled my stock of courage, already mounting high. If it were no more than to rout the administration now worrying the withers of the town, why, then! the machine was safe to win.

There arose another sign. As the days ran on, rich and frequent, first from one big corporation and then another—and these do not give until they believe—the contributions of money came rolling along. They would buy our favor in advance of victory. These donations followed each other like billows upon a beach, and each larger than the one before, which showed how the wind of general confidence was rising in our favor. It was not, therefore, my view alone; but, by this light of money to our cause, I could see how the common opinion had begun to gather head that the machine was to take the town again.

This latter is often a decisive point, and one to give victory of itself. The average of intelligence and integrity in this city of New York is lower than any in the land. There are here, in proportion to a vote, more people whose sole principle is the bandwagon, than in any other town between the oceans. These “sliders,” who go hither and yon, and attach themselves to this standard or ally themselves with that one, as the eye of their fancy is caught and taught by some fluttering signal of the hour to pick the winning side, are enough of themselves to decide a contest. Wherefore, to promote this advertisement among creatures of chameleon politics, of an approaching triumph for the machine, and it being possible because of those contributed thousands coming so early into my chests, I began furnishing funds to my leaders and setting them to the work of their regions weeks before the nearest of our enemies had begun to think on his ticket.

There was another argument for putting out this money. The noses of my people had been withheld from the cribs of office for hungry months upon months. The money would arouse an appetite and give their teeth an edge. I looked for fine work, too, since the leanest wolves are ever foremost in the hunt.

Emphatically did I lay it upon my leaders that, man for man, they must count their districts. They must tell over each voter as a churchman tells his beads. They must give me a true story of the situation, and I promised grief to him who brought me mistaken word. I will say in their compliment that, by the reports of my leaders on the day before the poll, I counted the machine majority exact within four hundred votes; and that, I may tell you, with four tickets in the conflict, and a whole count which was measured by hundreds of thousands, is no light affair. I mention it to evidence the hair-line perfection to which the methods of the machine had been brought.

More than one leader reported within five votes of his majority, and none went fifty votes astray.

You think we overdid ourselves to the point ridiculous, in this breathless solicitude of preparation? Man! the wealth of twenty Ophirs hung upon the hazard. I was in no mood to lose, if skill and sleepless forethought, and every intrigue born of money, might serve to bring success.