Mr. Croker was born near Cork, Ireland, November 24, 1843. His father was a blacksmith, who emigrated to America in 1846, and settled in a squatter’s shanty in what is now the upper portion of Central Park. From his thirteenth to his nineteenth year young Croker worked as a machinist. At a very early age he distinguished himself in the semi-social fist-fights which were a part of the life of the “gang” to which he belonged. He became, tradition has it, the leader of the “Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang,” and fought a number of formal prize-fights, in which he came out victor.
At the beginning of the Tweed régime, according to his testimony before the Fassett Committee, he was an attendant under Judge Barnard and other Judges in the Supreme Court. Upon leaving that place, for some reason not known, he served as an engineer on a Fire Department steamer.[1] In 1868 and 1869 he was elected an Alderman. With a majority of his fellow-members, he sided with the Young Democracy against Tweed, and was accordingly, with the rest of the board, legislated out of office (April, 1870). But he must have made his peace with the “Boss” soon after, for Controller Connolly appointed him Superintendent of Market Fees and Rents. In 1873 he was elected Coroner. On election day, November 3, 1874, during a street row growing out of a political quarrel between Mr. Croker and James O’Brien, John McKenna was shot dead. Bystanders maintained that Mr. Croker fired the shot, and the Grand Jury indicted him for the crime. The trial jury, after being out for seventeen hours, failed to agree. Public opinion at the time was divided, but it is the preponderance of opinion among those who are in a position to know, that Mr. Croker did not fire the fatal shot.
In 1876 he was reelected Coroner. In 1883 he ran for Alderman, with the understanding that if elected, thus establishing the fact of his constituents’ approval, Mayor Edson would appoint him a Fire Commissioner. During the canvass, a Police Captain, one of Croker’s protégés, was responsible for a brutal clubbing, the feeling over which had the effect of reducing his plurality to about 200. Mayor Edson, however, gave him the appointment, and he was reappointed by Mayor Hewitt. His alleged connection with the fund of $180,000 to be used in behalf of Hugh J. Grant, in 1884, has already been mentioned. In 1885 he caused the nomination of the latter for Sheriff. Mr. Grant, while in that office, according to Mr. McCann’s testimony, gave $25,000, in five presents of $5,000 each, to Mr. Croker’s two-year-old daughter Flossie.[2]
Neither Mr. Croker nor Mr. Grant denied this transaction, though both declared the sum was $10,000 and not $25,000.[3] Mr. Grant furthermore declared that he gave it in consideration of Flossie being his god-child.
Mr. Croker showed the sagacity common to a long line of Tammany chiefs in the municipal campaign of 1886. It was a time of great excitement. The labor unions, including the Knights of Labor, had reached the highest point in organization and in solidarity of feeling ever attained by them in the history of the city. Knowing their strength, they were ripe for independent political action, and they were rendered all the more ready for it by the earnest social propaganda carried on at the time by Single-Taxers, Socialists and social reformers generally.
The conviction of certain members of a union for carrying on a boycott against the Thiess establishment, on Fourteenth street, proved the one impulse needed for the massing together of all the various clubs and unions into one mighty movement. The convictions were believed to be illegal, and moreover to have been fraudulently obtained—and Tammany was held responsible. Before long the nucleus of an independent political party was formed. Henry George, then at the height of his popularity, was looked upon as the logical leader, and he was asked to become the new party’s candidate for Mayor. To this request he gave an affirmative answer, contingent upon the securing of 25,000 signatures to his nominating petition.
Mr. Croker saw the danger, and he took immediate steps to avert it. According to the open letter of Henry George to Abram S. Hewitt, October 17, 1897, Mr. Croker, in behalf of Tammany Hall and the County Democracy, tried to buy off George by offering him a nomination regarded as equivalent to an election. George, of course, refused; the 25,000 names, or a great part of them, were secured; a nominating convention was held; George was formally nominated, and the United Labor party was launched. A spirited campaign in George’s behalf was at once begun, and was responded to by the masses with remarkable enthusiasm.
Mr. Croker was equal to the crisis. The agitation among the masses must be met by the nomination of a representative of the conservative interests, and a general appeal be made for the “saving of society.” Accordingly he chose as the Tammany candidate the County Democracy’s choice, Abram S. Hewitt.
The Republicans nominated Theodore Roosevelt. His candidacy, however, was not regarded so seriously as otherwise it might have been, for the contest narrowed down at once to a class struggle between George and Mr. Hewitt. Anarchy and every other social ill were prophesied by the conservatives as the certain results of the former’s election, and Republicans were openly urged to support the latter.