CHAPTER IV—THE BOSS ENTERS THE PRIMARY GRADE OF POLITICS
PERHAPS you will say I waste space and lay too much of foolish stress upon my quarrel with Sheeny Joe and its police-cell consequences. And yet you should be mindful of the incident's importance to me as the starting point of my career. For I read in what took place the power of the machine as you will read this printed page. I went behind the bars by the word of Big John Kennedy; and it was by his word that I emerged and took my liberty again. And yet who was Big John Kennedy? He was the machine; the fragment of its power which molded history in the little region where I lived. As mere John Kennedy he would be nothing. Or at the most no more than other men about him. But as “Big John Kennedy,” an underchief of Tammany Hall, I myself stood witness while a captain of police accepted his commands without a question, and a magistrate found folk guilty or innocent at the lifting of his finger. Also, that sweat of terror to sprinkle the forehead of Sheeny Joe, when in his moment of rebellion he found himself beneath the wrathful shadow of the machine, was not the least impressive element of my experience; and the tolerant smile, that was half pity, half amusement, as Big Kennedy set forth to the reputable old gentleman—who was only “a taxpayer”—the little limits of his insignificance, deepened the effect upon my mind of what had gone before.
True, I indulged in no such analysis as the above, and made no study of the picture in its detail; but I could receive an impression just as I might receive a blow, and in the innocence of my ignorance began instantly to model myself upon the proven fact of a power that was above law, above justice, and which must be consulted and agreed with, even in its caprice, before existence could be profitable or even safe. From that moment the machine to me was as obviously and indomitably abroad as the pavement under foot, and must have its account in every equation of life to the solution whereof I was set. To hold otherwise, and particularly to act otherwise, would be to play the fool, with failure or something worse for a reward.
Big Kennedy owned a drinking place. His barroom was his headquarters; although he himself never served among his casks and bottles, having barmen for that work. He poured no whisky, tapped no beer, donned no apron, but sat at tables with his customers and laid out his campaigns of politics or jubilated over victory, and seemed rather the visitor than the proprietor in his own saloon. He owned shrewdness, force, courage, enterprise, and was one of those who carry a pleasant atmosphere that is like hypnotism, and which makes men like them. His manner was one of rude frankness, and folk held him for a bluff, blunt, genial soul, who made up in generosity what he lacked of truth.
And yet I have thought folk mistaken in Big Kennedy. For all his loud openness and friendly roar, which would seem to tell his every thought, the man could be the soul of cunning and turn secret as a mole. He was for his own interest; he came and went a cold calculating trader of politics; he never wasted his favors, but must get as much as he gave, and indulged in no revenges except when revenge was needed for a lesson. He did what men call good, too, and spent money and lost sleep in its accomplishment. To the ill he sent doctors and drugs; he found work and wages for idle men; he paid landlords and kept the roofs above the heads of the penniless; where folk were hungry he sent food, and where they were cold came fuel.
For all that, it was neither humanity nor any milk of kindness which put him to these labors of grace; it was but his method of politics and meant to bind men to him. They must do his word; they must carry out his will; then it was he took them beneath the wing of his power and would spare neither time nor money to protect and prosper them.
And on the other side, he who raised his head in opposition to Big Kennedy was crushed; not in anger, but in caution. He weeded out rebellion, and the very seed of it, with as little scruple and for the same reason a farmer weeds a field.
It took me years to collect these truths of Big Kennedy. Nor was their arrival when they did come one by one, to make a shade of change in my regard for him. I liked him in the beginning; I liked him in the end; he became that headland on the coasts of politics by which I steered my course. I studied Big Kennedy as one might study a science; by the lines of his conduct I laid down lines for my own; in all things I was his disciple and his imitator.