Mr. Bermel was not, strictly speaking, a Tammany man; he was an auxiliary satrap. His removal from office had been asked for by Attorney-General Jackson and Deputy Attorney-General Nathan Viadiver, of New York State, at the conclusion of an inquiry into Bermel’s office.
Bermel was charged by the Attorney General and by the Queen’s Borough Property Owners’ Association with various acts. He was accused of conspiring with others to defraud New York City in the purchase or sale of land to New York City; he was charged with accepting money from persons interested in the sale of such lands, and was further charged with selling and using his influence in the land purchases in question. He was accused of failing to aid the Grand Jury in its investigations into these transactions, and was further charged with blocking the procedure of that body with his influence and money in refusing to testify in certain matters, and in other cases testifying falsely and removing his books from the Grand Jury’s jurisdiction. Another charge was that he swore falsely concerning his bank deposits, which evidence he sought to corroborate by the testimony of a witness who presented apparent confirmation in the shape of a written paper, which paper upon investigation was proved to be a false and fraudulent document.
Still further, Mr. Bermel was charged with receiving money for granting special privileges to contractors; with neglecting pavements and permitting material of a lower grade than specified to be used in contract work; with purchasing supplies for public buildings at exorbitant prices and with allowing the same high prices to be charged for repairs to public buildings. Additional charges were that he appointed incompetent subordinates and permitted persons who did no work to draw salaries. Close upon the announcement from Albany that Governor Hughes had appointed Samuel H. Ordway as Commissioner to take testimony, Bermel on April 29, 1908, resigned from office.[8]
The Aldermen on April 30, 1908, elected Lawrence Gresser to fill Mr. Bermel’s unexpired term as President of the Borough of Queens, and on November 2, 1909, Mr. Gresser was elected by the people to that office for the four ensuing years. In 1911 charges were preferred by citizens of Queens County against Gresser. A number of these charges were sustained by Samuel H. Ordway, the Commissioner appointed by the Governor to take testimony and report. Commissioner Ordway, however, explained in his report made June 16, 1911: “Of those [charges] that are sustained, none, in my opinion, establishes corruption or dishonesty on the part of Mr. Gresser. I believe that he is an honest man and would not be a party to any corrupt acts either for his own benefit or that of his associates. But I am of the opinion that he has been inefficient and incompetent, and has been neglectful of his duty to protect the city and the Borough of Queens against fraud and corruption on the part of his subordinates.”[9] After an argument made by Robert S. Binkerd, Secretary of the City Club, asking for Mr. Gresser’s removal, Governor Dix removed Gresser from office.
But Tammany men were not the only officials against whom charges were brought. It had long been a subject of increasing general comment that District Attorney Jerome, much noted as such a leading reformer, who had been so conspicuously active in sending petty offenders to prison, had failed to bring about the conviction of any high insurance officials and had not brought about the indictment of a single traction system manipulator.
On September 8, 1907, a voluminous petition was sent by various New York business men and other citizens to Governor Hughes. This petition recited in detail the specific transactions thus complained of, made a scathing criticism of District Attorney Jerome for having failed to prosecute those responsible, and demanded that the Attorney General of New York State be forthwith directed to bring prosecution.
Evidence submitted, on December 1, 1907, to the Grand Jury in General Sessions showed that Thomas F. Ryan and associates had bought in 1902 from Anthony N. Brady for $250,000 the franchise of a company called the Wall and Cortland Street Ferries Railroad Company, a corporation having a dormant franchise for a road that had never been built.[10] They had then sold this franchise to a dummy corporation, called the Metropolitan Securities Company, for $965,607.19. Part of this sum went to the syndicate’s brokers; the precise amount of funds divided among Ryan, Widener, Dolan and the estates of William C. Whitney and William L. Elkins was $692,292.82.[11] The surviving members of this group subsequently settled the transaction by making restitution of this sum soon after the facts had been made public and after charges had been made against Jerome. On the very day that Mr. Ryan and associates had bought the non-existent Wall and Cortlandt Street Ferries Railroad, they had also bought, for $1,600,000, the People’s Traction Company, owning a paper road never built, and the New York, Westchester and Connecticut Traction Company, a small railway, which a short time previously had been sold in bankruptcy proceedings for $15,000.[12] It was charged that in this transaction also, there was another grand division of funds.
These particular transactions, however, were in reality insignificant compared to the disappearance of $16,000,000 from the treasury of the Third avenue Railway,[13] and vaster total transactions charged, aggregating, as we have previously noted, about $90,000,000. The fact was brought out in the investigation by the Public Service Commission that all the books of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company in which its affairs from 1891 onward to 1902 were recorded, had been sold to a purchaser who promised to destroy them.[14] Street car lines bought for a few hundred thousand dollars were, it was charged, capitalized at ten or twenty times that sum, and then followed a process by which vast amounts were charged in duplication of construction accounts.
Lemuel Ely Quigg (who for six years had been a member of Congress) admitted that in the four years preceding 1907 he had received $217,000 from the Metropolitan Street Railway Company.[15] This was charged to a construction fund, part of which was another sum of $798,000 paid to different persons whose names were concealed. Further facts in a legislative investigation in 1910 (to which we shall hereafter refer) supplied certain other missing links.