It was disclosed that every member of the Tammany Society or of the organization’s executive committee, held office, or was a favored contractor. Over $700,000 of city orders went to favored contractors without bidding. Various city departments were “characterized by unparalleled ignorance and unfairness.” The payrolls in some of the most important departments had increased $1,500,000 between July 1, 1898, and September 1, 1899, and the employees had increased over 1,000, excluding policemen, firemen and teachers. The testimony proved the increasing inefficiency and demoralization of the Police and Fire Departments. It further proved the existence of a ramified system of corruption similar to that revealed by the Lexow Committee.
The disclosures attracting the greatest public attention were those relating to the Ice Trust, the Ramapo project, and Mr. Croker’s relations to the city government. On April 14 the committee exposed a conspiracy between the Ice Trust and the Dock and other departments of the city government, to create and maintain a monopoly of New York’s ice supply. Six days after the exposure, Mayor Van Wyck, as he subsequently admitted in his testimony before Judge Gaynor, acquired 5,000 shares, worth $500,000, of the Ice Trust stock, alleging that he paid $57,000 in cash for them; but although urged to substantiate his statement, did not produce proof that he actually paid anything. It was shown conclusively before the committee that the arrangement between the Ice Trust and the city officials was such as to compel the people to pay 60 cents a hundred pounds, and that the trust had stopped the sale of five-cent pieces of ice, practically cutting off the supply of the very poor. Many other Tammany officials were equally involved. Proceedings were begun some time after, looking to an official investigation of the Ice Trust’s affairs, and charges against Mayor Van Wyck were filed with Gov. Roosevelt. The latter were finally dismissed by the Governor in November, 1900.
In August, the committee uncovered the Ramapo scheme. The Ramapo Water Company, with assets “of at least the value of $5,000,” sought to foist upon the city a contract calling for payment from the city treasury of an enormous amount in annual installments of about $5,110,000, in return for at least 200,000,000 gallons of water a day, at $70 per million gallons. This was proved to be an attempt toward a most gigantic swindle. Had not Controller Coler exposed and frustrated the scheme, the Tammany members of the Board of Public Improvements would have rushed the contract to passage.
Mr. Croker’s testimony threw a flood of light upon his political views and standards as well as his powers and emoluments as “boss.” He acknowledged that he had a powerful influence over the Tammany legislators at Albany, whose actions he advised, and that he exercised the same influence upon local officials. He readily conceded that he was the most powerful man he knew of.[2] “We try to have a pretty effective organization,” he said; “that is what we are there for.”[3]
Mr. Croker also admitted that judicial candidates were assessed in their districts.[4] In fact, some of the Judges themselves named the respective sums to the committee. Judge Pryor testified that he had been asked for $10,000 for his nomination for a vacant half-term in the Supreme Court.[5] Other judicial candidates, it was understood, paid from $10,000 to $25,000 for nominations.[6] Mr. Croker maintained that the organization was entitled to all the judicial, executive, administrative—in brief, all offices—because “that is what the people voted our ticket for.”[7] Mr. Croker refused to answer many questions tending to show that he profited by a silent partnership in many companies which benefited directly or indirectly by his power. “The man who is virtual ruler of the city,” said Frank Moss and Francis E. Laimbeer, counsel to the committee, in their report, “can insure peace and advantage and business to any concern that takes him and his friends in, and can secure capital here or abroad to float any enterprise, when he guarantees that the city officials will not interfere with it.” Mr. Croker was asked many other questions touching this subject, but gave little information. He declined to answer the question whether $140,000 of the stock of the Auto-Truck Company had been given to him without the payment of a dollar; it was his “private affair.”[8]
“We are giving the people pure organization government,” he said. He referred to the thoroughness of discipline in the Wigwam, and stated that the only way to succeed was to keep the whip in hand over his henchmen. It took “a lot of time,” and he “had to work very hard at it.” Tammany was built up, he said, not only upon the political principles it held, but upon the way its members sustained one another in business. “We want the whole business, if we can get it”; “to the party belong the spoils”; “we win, and we expect every one to stand by us”; “I am working for my pocket all the time,” were some of Mr. Croker’s answers, most of them told in anything but grammatical English.
The general opinion obtained that the committee’s work would have been far more effective and free from charges of partizan bias if Thomas C. Platt, the Republican “boss,” had been summoned concerning his alleged political connection with the great corporations and financial interests, as Mr. Croker had been.
Apparently the disclosures made no deep impression on the city administration, for matters went along pretty much as before. On March 9, 1900, the New York Times published a detailed statement, which it later reiterated, that the sum of $3,095,000 a year was being paid by the gambling-house keepers of the city to the “gambling-house commission,” which, it said, was composed of two State Senators, a representative of the poolroom proprietors, and the head of one of the city departments. This commission, the account stated, received and passed upon applications, established the tariff to be paid by the applicants, and supervised the collections. Later, in the same month, the Grand Jury handed down a presentment arraigning the city officials for the sway enjoyed by the criminal and vicious classes.[9]
Neither the Grand Jury’s presentment nor the Times’s detailed statements had the slightest effect on the conduct of the city administration. In November, however, a marked change occurred. For several years certain reform societies and ecclesiastical bodies, particularly the Episcopal Church, had sought to mitigate the open flaunting of immorality in the tenement houses of a particular police district on the East Side. The attempts had been resisted, not only by those living upon the proceeds of this immorality, but by the police themselves; and two ministers who had complained to certain police officials had been grossly insulted.
Immediately after the Presidential election, Bishop Henry C. Potter, of the Episcopal Church, in a stinging letter of complaint, brought the matter to the attention of Mayor Van Wyck. It was the psychologic moment for such an action, and it produced immediate results. Mr. Croker paused in his preparations for his usual trip to England long enough to give orders to put down the immorality complained of, and he appointed a committee of five to carry his mandate into effect, or at least to make some satisfactory show of doing so. He went further than this, for his orders included a general ukase to the lawbreakers of the city to “go slow,” or in other words, to observe, until further advices from headquarters, a certain degree of moderation in their infractions of law and their outrages upon decency.