They call us "Pat" on this side of the Atlantic, and I think I prefer it, but I have no particular quarrel with "Mick." Both names are conveniently short.
"There's nothing more than friendliness at first. Then, perhaps a week later, there's something said about a contract or a new loan that is to be floated. Influence, a word in the right quarter, comes in useful in these cases. Our man, the man we're talking of, doesn't know very clearly what the talk is about. He doesn't know that he has any influence; but it rather pleases him to feel that the other men think he has. There is a hint dropped about a subscription to the party funds and—well, that's how it's done."
I grasped at ideas which flitted past me. There always are "party funds." Politics cannot go on without them. There always are desirable things, whether contracts, rakes off, appointments, or—as in our monarch-ridden states—titles. But I wonder where the blame for the corruption really lies, the heavy part of the blame. Tammany Mick had a good heart to start with and he was not a man of much ability.
However, these are only the speculations of an inquisitive man. They do not matter. New York smashed Tammany last autumn and perhaps will keep it smashed. But a mere alliance of anti-Tammany forces will not permanently get the better of a well-constructed machine, nor is enthusiasm for clean government good in a long-distance race. An American poet has noted as one of the characteristics of truth that, though slain, it will rise again, and of error that when vanquished it dies among its worshippers. In politics it is the machine which possesses truth's valuable powers of recuperation, and idealism which gets counted out after a knockdown blow. It seems as if a machine will only go under finally in competition with another more efficient machine, and the new, more efficient machine is just as great a danger to political morality as the old one was. This is the vicious circle in which democracies go round and round. Perhaps the truth is that politics, like art, are non-moral in nature, that politicians have nothing to do with right or wrong, honesty or dishonesty.
CHAPTER III
THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
I walked through New York late at night, shortly after I landed, and had for companions an Englishman who knew the city well and an American. The roar of the traffic had ceased. The streets were almost deserted. Along Fifth Avenue a few motors rushed swiftly, bearing belated revelers to their homes. Save for them, the city was as nearly silent as any city ever is. We talked. It was the Englishman who spoke first.
"New York and the sound of blasting go together," he said. "They are inseparably connected in my mind. New York is built on rock out of material blasted off rock with dynamite. This fact explains New York. It is the characteristic thing about New York. No other city owes its existence in the same way to the force of explosives shattering rock."
"New York," said the American, "is one of the soldiers of Attila the Hun."
The night was warm. He unbuttoned his overcoat as he spoke and flung it back from his chest. He squared his shoulders, looked up at the immensely lofty buildings on each side of us, looked round at the shadow-patched pavements, fixed his eyes finally on the lamps of a motor which was racing toward us from a great distance along the endless avenue. Then he pursued his comparison.
"Attila's soldier," he said, "went through some Roman city with his club over his shoulder. There were round him evidences of old civilizations which puzzled him. He gazed at the temples, the baths, the theaters with wondering curiosity; but he was conscious that he could smash everything and kill every one he saw. He was the barbarian, but he was also the strong man. New York is like that among the cities of the world."