The records of the Board of Estimate in 1908 and 1909 bear out Mr. Mellen’s testimony; they show that nearly every request for alterations of the charter or extensions of time made by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad was granted. The Board of Estimate during the years in question consisted of Mayor McClellan; Controller Herman A. Metz; Patrick F. McGowan, President of the Board of Aldermen; John F. Ahearn, President of the Borough of Manhattan; Bird S. Coler, President of the Borough of Brooklyn; Louis F. Haffen, President of the Borough of the Bronx; Lawrence Gresser, President of the Borough of Queens, and George Cromwell, President of the Borough of Richmond.[8]
Continuing his testimony, Mr. Mellen stated, on May 20, 1914, that upon further recollection he found that the amount distributed to politicians in connection with securing the Westchester franchise and alterations to the charter, really totaled $1,500,000 or $1,600,000. Much of this amount was presented in the form of due bills sent in by Tammany politicians by means of messengers; Mr. Mellen personally handed over cash for the due bills, but the names of the recipients he said he could not remember. “Do you know,” Mr. Mellen was asked, “what all this Westchester and Portchester stock was doing in Tammany Hall?” “I know,” he replied, “what it was doing to me when I took it on. It was costing me lots of money.” “Do you know how all this stock reached Tammany Hall?” “I have not the slightest idea. I could suppose a lot of things, but I do not know anything about it.”
Submitting, on July 11, 1914, the results of its investigation to the United States Senate, the Interstate Commerce Commission reported that the facts as to the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway transaction constituted “a story of the profligate waste of corporate funds.” The fullest details are set forth in that report of the magnitude of the corruption used. Commenting upon Mr. Mellen’s testimony, the report declared: “The testimony is somewhat occult, but the character of the transaction is no less certain. This money was used for corrupt purposes, and the improper expenditures covered up by the transfer to the New Haven [New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company] of these worthless securities.… It seems very strange that Mr. Mellen was not able to identify with any particularity any one with whom he had these transactions except the late Thomas F. Byrnes. No comment is necessary to make clear to the mind the corrupt and unlawful nature of this transaction, and it would seem that the amount illegally expended could be recovered from Mr. Mellen and the directors who authorized it.…”[9]
There is now pending (1917) a suit in the United States District Court brought by the stockholders against the former directors of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company and against the company for the return of $165,000,000 alleged to have been lost to the treasury of that railroad in various ways.
To return, however, to the operations of the New York Contracting and Trucking Company: Another contract secured by that concern was a contract from the Consolidated Gas Company for grading the site for the Astoria gas plant; the franchise for the Astoria “Gas Grab” had been supported by Tammany.
By 1905 it was estimated that the New York Contracting and Trucking Company or its offshoots had received contracts aggregating $15,000,000—all contracts from corporations and interests benefiting from the city government or depending upon favors from it. Yet two years previously this very company was a nonentity as far as securing large contracts were concerned, and none of its heads had any experience in the contracting business. Now in a certain well-understood field, it was virtually free from competition.
None could now fail to note the great transition from the Tweed period when Tammany leaders used only the vulgar and criminal methods of stealing money out of the city treasury. Under Murphy’s leadership the obvious methods used were those of “honest graft”—the making of millions from contracts with public service corporations, and this was represented as legitimate business. Fully six Tammany district leaders were members of or “interested” in large contracting firms, although the heads of these, often of a nominal character, were not known as Tammany leaders. These concerns employed a total of many thousands of men, all of whom were expected to be useful at the primaries and elections.
At this time there was discernible the beginnings of a growing feeling that reform officials, while prosecuting gamblers and comparatively petty offenders of all stripes, somehow were singularly ineffective in bringing about the prosecution of corporation magnates charged with looting on a large scale. This feeling had not crystallized as yet, but it was felt in some quarters.
Some of District Attorney Jerome’s former supporters were impressed by the fact that despite his campaign promises, he had not caused the indictment or other prosecution of the men who had looted the Metropolitan Street Railway Company. James W. Osborne, a noted attorney, had declared in open court in 1903, that the “insiders” had, by means of duplicating of construction accounts, manipulation and in other ways, stolen $30,000,000. Mr. Amory declared and specified that an additional $60,000,000 had, by various processes of devious manipulation, gone to enrich the “insiders”—a total of $90,000,000.
On April 25, 1903, Mr. Osborne gave out this statement: “We have produced evidence before Magistrate Barlow which shows a crime has been committed, and now it is up to the District Attorney to say whether he will avail himself of that evidence and proceed against those who have committed the crime. We have charged in open court that $30,000,000 has been stolen, and that [statement] never has been disproved by the Metropolitan Company or its counsel. I told Mr. Nicoll, counsel for Mr. Vreeland [president of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company] openly he would not be able to disprove my charges.”