CHAPTER XXV
COLLAPSE AND DISPERSION OF THE “RING”
1871-1872
The downfall of the “ring” was inevitable. No such stupendous series of frauds could reasonably be expected to continue, once the proper machinery for their exposure and for the awakening of the dormant public conscience was put in motion. Protests and complaints and even concerted opposition might for the time prove futile, as indeed they did; but the wind had been sown for the reaping of the whirlwind, and it could not be averted. One conspicuous instance of apparently futile criticism of the “ring” was the action of the New York City Council of Political Reform. This body, but recently organized, held a mass-meeting in Cooper Union, April 6, 1871, to consider “the alarming aspects of public affairs generally,” and to agree upon means for arousing the public to some remedial action. Speeches were made by Henry Ward Beecher, Judge George C. Barrett, William F. Havemeyer, William Walter Phelps and William M. Evarts. It was pointed out that the city debt had increased from about $36,000,000 in 1868 to over $136,000,000 at the close of 1870. But amazing as were the facts, the meeting produced no direct effect.
The immediate causes of the exposure were fortuitous and accidental. In December, 1870, Watson, who had become one of the chiefs in the Finance Department, was fatally injured while sleigh-riding, and died a week later. In the resultant change, Stephen C. Lyons, Jr., succeeded Watson, and Matthew J. O’Rourke succeeded Lyons as County Book-Keeper. Mr. O’Rourke gradually came upon the evidence of the enormous robberies. In the meantime some of the evidence had also come into the possession of James O’Brien, one of the Young Democracy leaders. Controller Connolly was on the point of paying out the $5,000,000 called for by the Viaduct Railroad act, as well as other sums, but learning of O’Brien’s knowledge of the situation, resolved to defer the payments. In the Summer of 1871 Mr. O’Rourke presented his evidence to the New York Times.
This newspaper published the figures in detail, producing fresh disclosures day after day, and showing indisputably that the city had been plundered on a stupendous scale. In two instances alone—in the printing bills and the bills for the erection and repairing of the County Court House—the Times averred that over $10,000,000 had been illegally squandered. Tweed had bought an obscure sheet, the Transcript, and had made it the official organ for city and county advertising. He had also formed the New York Printing Company, which not only did the city printing, but claimed the custom of many persons and corporations whom he was in a position either to aid or injure. These two properties served as the highly useful media with which to extort millions from the city treasury. The Times gave the incontestible figures, disclosing that the sum of nearly $3,000,000 was squandered for county printing, stationery and advertising during the years 1869, 1870 and 1871.
But the new County Court House, the Times demonstrated, was the chief means of directly robbing the city. All told, so far as could be learned, the sum of $3,500,000 had been spent for “repairs” in thirty-one months—enough, the Times said, to have built and furnished five new buildings such as the County Court House. Merely the furnishing, repairing and decorating of this building, it was shown, cost $7,000,000. One firm alone—Ingersoll & Co.—received, in two years, the gigantic sum of $5,600,000 “for supplying the County Court House with furniture and carpets.” In brief, the County Court House, it was set forth specifically, instead of costing between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000, as the “ring” all along had led the public to believe, had actually cost over $12,000,000, the bulk of which was stolen.
The members of the “ring” affected an air of unconcern regarding the disclosures. When Tweed was questioned as to the charges, he made his famous reply: “What are you going to do about it?” He professed not to care for newspaper attacks. Yet Thomas Nast’s terribly effective cartoons pierced him to the heart. “If those picture papers would only leave me alone,” he lamented, “I wouldn’t care for all the rest. The people get used to seeing me in stripes, and by and by grow to think I ought to be in prison.” Mayor Hall put on an air of jocose indifference, occasionally replying to the charges by references to the alleged frauds in the Federal Government,[1] but oftener by wondrously facetious jests such as: “Counts at Newport are at a discount”; “shocking levity—the light-ship off Savannah has gone astray”; “these warm, yet occasionally breezy days, with charmingly cool mornings and evenings, are an indication that we are likely to have what befell Adam—an early Fall.”[2]
The public, however, was at last aroused, and the impudent flippancy of Tweed, Hall and others only added to the public indignation. Though the Times was but imperfectly armed with proofs, each day’s revelations brought the citizens to a keener realization of the unprecedented enormity of the thefts, and the resolve was made by leading members of both parties in the city to unite and crush the “ring.” A call for a mass-meeting, to be held in Cooper Union, September 4, was met by a tremendous outpouring of citizens. William F. Havemeyer, the former Mayor, presided, and 227 vice-presidents and 15 secretaries were chosen from among the foremost names in the community. Among the speakers were Robert B. Roosevelt and Judge Edwards Pierrepont. Now, for the first time, the public obtained a really definite idea of the magnitude of the sum stolen by the “ring” and its followers. Resolutions were reported by Joseph H. Choate, stating that the acknowledged funded and bonded debt of the city and county was upward of $113,000,000—over $63,000,000 more than it was when Mayor Hall took office—and that there was reason to believe that there were floating, contingent or pretended debts and claims against the city and county which would amount to many more millions of dollars, and which would be paid out of the city treasury unless the fiscal officers were removed and their proceedings arrested. The resolutions concluded by directing the appointment of an Executive Committee of Seventy, to overthrow the “ring,” abolish abuses, secure better laws, and by united effort, without reference to party, obtain a good government and honest officers to administer it.
The first move decided upon by the Committee of Seventy was to make a thorough examination of the city’s accounts. A sub-committee was on the point of doing this when, on the morning of September 11, it was reported that the Controller’s office, in the City Hall, had been broken into on the previous night and the vouchers, more than 3,500 in all, stolen. The “ring” confederates pretended that the vouchers had been abstracted from a glass case—an absurd explanation considering that after spending $400,000 for safes the city officials should have chosen such a flimsy receptacle. Later, the charred remains of these vouchers were discovered in an ash-heap in the City Hall attic.
As if to yield to public opinion, Mayor Hall at once asked Connolly to resign as Controller. Connolly refused, on the ground that such a step without impeachment and conviction on trial would be equal to a confession of guilt. Secretly, however, fearing that the other members of the “ring” intended to make a scape-goat of him, he was disposed to make terms with the Committee of Seventy to save himself. Upon the advice of Havemeyer, he appointed Andrew H. Green, Deputy Controller. With Mr. Green in that post, the Committee of Seventy could expect a tangible computation of the “ring’s” thefts. Alive to their danger, the other members of the “ring” in terror tried to force Connolly to resign, so as to end the powers he had delegated to the new Deputy Controller. Mayor Hall insisted that in making Mr. Green Acting Controller, Connolly’s action was equivalent to a resignation, and with much bluster said he would treat it as such.
In October the sub-committee made a hasty examination of such of the city accounts as were available, and were enabled to report that the debt of the city was doubling every two years; that $3,200,000 had been paid for repairs on armories and drill rooms, the actual cost of which was less than $250,000; that over $11,000,000 had been charged for outlays on the unfinished County Court House,[3] the entire cost of building which, on an honest estimate, would be less than $3,000,000; that safes, carpets, furniture, cabinet-work, painting, plumbing, gas and plastering, had cost $7,289,466, the real value of which was found to be only $624,180; that $460,000 had been paid for $48,000 worth of lumber; that the printing, advertising, stationery, etc., of the city and county had cost in two years and eight months, $7,168,212; that a large number of persons were on the payrolls of the city whose services were neither rendered nor needed; and that figures upon warrants and vouchers had been altered fraudulently and payments made repeatedly on forged endorsements.