CHAPTER XXX
TAMMANY UNDER ABSENTEE DIRECTION
1901-1902
In the municipal campaign of 1901 the anti-Tammany forces combined upon the nomination of Seth Low, a Republican, for Mayor, and upon the nominations of various other candidates for city offices. Tammany’s candidate for Mayor was Edward M. Shepard. Both Mr. Low and Mr. Shepard were acclaimed by their respective supporters as men of standing, prestige and public character. Mr. Low was a man of wealth who had become president of Columbia University. Mr. Shepard was a lawyer of note, although some critics pointed out that his practise was that of a corporation attorney, serving the great vested interests. It may be remarked that Mr. Shepard was a son of the brilliant Lorenzo B. Shepard, who, as stated in Chapter XVI of this work, became a leader of Tammany Hall at so early an age and was chosen Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society.
The scandals of Mayor Van Wyck’s administration were conspicuous issues of the campaign of 1901. But there were two particularly noteworthy features pressed by the reformers in their indictment of Tammany. One of these issues, which made so deep an impression upon the public mind, especially in the densely populous East Side of New York City, was the flagrant immorality under which young girls of the tenderest age were often decoyed into lives of shame. The question thus presented was neither that of the “suppression of vice” nor that of how people could be made virtuous by mandate of law. The question, as put to voters, was whether a system under which a corrupt, money-making combination of vicious lawbreakers with police and other officials should be allowed to continue in abhorrent traffic.
A widely-circulated pamphlet published by the City Club for the Women’s Municipal League presented a series of facts as attested by court records, the statements of City Magistrates, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and others, and as reported by the Committee of Fifteen, composed of reformers, probing into the question. The pamphlet declared that the facts justified the conclusion that the business of ruining young girls and forcing them into a life of shame, for the money there was in it for the dealers, had recently grown to considerable proportions; that its existence was known to the police; that the police made little or no effort to stop it; that the police, or those for whom they acted, probably derived profit from the traffic; and that a reasonably active and efficient Police Department could stop the traffic of a deliberate merchandizing of the virtue of women, usually young girls. Details were given of numerous cases which had been passed upon in the courts, and a long description of the traffic was included from a statement made on October 21, 1901, by District Attorney Eugene A. Philbin of New York County.[1]
Justice William Travers Jerome, of the Court of Special Sessions, had already made a similar statement. He was quoted in the New York Times, of June 27, 1901, as saying:
“People are simply ignorant of conditions on the East Side [of New York City]. If those conditions existed in some other communities there would be a Vigilance Committee speedily organized, and somebody would get lynched. The continued greed and extortion of the Police Captains who charge five hundred dollars for a disorderly resort to open in their precinct, and then collect fifty to a hundred [dollars] per month, has, however, made even vice unprofitable. Details, I know, are revolting and not nice to read, but yet the people ought to know about them. Just yesterday I sentenced to six months in the penitentiary the keepers of one of the most depraved houses of the East Side. I firmly believe that they were merely the agents of the man who owns not one but many of such places. He is well known as a politician in a certain notorious district.
“That house is but one of hundreds within a radius of one mile of this building [the Criminal Court House] where criminals are sometimes brought to justice. I will stake my reputation that there are scores within less than that distance from here in which there are an average of ten or twelve children from thirteen to eighteen years old.”[2]
Nominated for District Attorney of New York County by the anti-Tammany forces, Mr. Jerome’s speeches on these existing conditions made a keen impression and excited the deepest feeling, especially among the people of the East Side. Intricate questions of taxation and arrays of figures proving an exorbitant budget and the waste of public funds could not make the same appeal to their indignation as the portrayal of conditions menacing their home life and polluting their environment. The facts thus spread forth caused the most intense resentment against Tammany.