“Policemen as a whole are the most gullible persons in the entire City Government when it comes to the question of the power of the political ‘boss.’ This is not surprising. Experience has taught them that if they displease the local powers they are apt to be transferred to a distant precinct. Therefore, they fear to take a chance. The wily leader takes advantage of this weakness. He uses his power at every opportunity, and when he meets with opposition he is prompt with his threats. Suppose, in the course of time, the offending policeman is shifted as a matter of routine. Then the leader struts about telling this offender’s fellow officers that he, the leader, had the man transferred.” And if a policeman showed independence, Mr. Bingham asserted, a word from the leader to the superior officers caused “complaints to be made, extra hours of duty, unpleasant details and the like, until the man’s life is made miserable.”
General Bingham declared that he had labored to stamp out these abuses, but unavailingly. “So bad did this political influence become in some precincts in Manhattan after Mayor McClellan began his contests at the primaries for the leadership of Tammany Hall, that I had to make radical changes in the personnel of those districts.”
It was absurdly easy for Mr. Murphy and his Tammany machine leaders to squelch Mayor McClellan’s plans for leadership. No auspicious time was it, however, to nominate a “regular Organization man” for Mayor; respectability had to be invoked and a hack politician obviously would not serve the purpose. Besides, there was resistance from Senator McCarren’s Brooklyn organization against the nomination of a distinctively Tammany “Organization” creature.
The candidate of Tammany Hall and its allies was William J. Gaynor. A Brooklyn lawyer, he had signalized his early career by causing John Y. McKane, then Democratic “boss” of Coney Island, to be convicted and imprisoned for ballot box frauds and for defying a court injunction. Elected to the State Supreme Court, Gaynor was a member of that body when nominated for Mayor; and by his constant exposures of the tyrannies and abuses committed by the police force he had become widely and favorably known as a man opposed to “The System.” Thus, Tammany could depict its candidate as a genuine and proved reformer. But apart from these representations, Gaynor was, in fact, a man of intellect, force and independence of character, deep understanding of public questions and of progressive, even advanced, views. A far different type he was from the usual run of ignorant grafting politicians.
By his strong denunciations of the looting done by surface-railway manipulators and by his emphatic declarations in favor of the building by the city itself of further subways, Gaynor won a large following. He seemed uncommonly sincere when he caustically arraigned the combination of railway promoters and financiers who, he said, were busy at the “old game” of seeking to enrich themselves manifold more by getting additional traction franchises. “My friends,” he asserted in a speech in Tammany Hall, on October 19, 1909, “we are going to build the subways. We do not intend that a single subway or a franchise for it shall be passed over to any of these men.” He made other pronouncements to the same effect.
The pushful, insistent Mr. Hearst was still backed by a political organization, now passing under the name of the Civic Alliance, but his course in accepting Mr. Murphy’s and Tammany’s support during his candidacy for Governor after having bitterly assailed them in previous campaigns when he was an independent candidate, had effectually alienated many of his former followers. By reason of the influence of his newspapers, he still, however, had considerable strength. He was the nominee of the Civic Alliance for Mayor. The Republican and Fusion candidate was Otto Bannard, a banker. Edward F. Cassidy was the Socialist Party’s candidate. One of the issues put forward by the Fusion campaigners was the continuing abominations of the “white slave” traffic, operated, it was asserted, with the connivance of the police.
Gaynor was elected. The vote resulted: Gaynor, 250,378; Bannard, 177,304; Hearst, 154,187; Cassidy, 11,768; Hunter (Socialist Labor) 1,256; Manierre (Prohibition) 866. Although, however, Gaynor won, yet by the election of many of the Fusion candidates (to the offices of Controller, President of the Board of Aldermen and presidents of boroughs) Tammany lost control of nearly all of the borough presidencies, and in turn of many of the departments and of the powerful Board of Estimate. In this Board Tammany now had only three votes.
FOOTNOTES
[1] When Ahearn was elected president of the Borough of Manhattan, it was “Boss” Murphy, with the “advice and consent” of the Tammany Executive Committee, who really chose his appointees to head the Department of Public Work, the Bureau of Highways, the Bureau of Sewers, the Bureau of Buildings, etc. Of course, Tammany district leaders were appointed; they were really responsible to the Tammany Executive Committee.
[2] See A Report on a Special Examination of the Accounts and Methods of the Office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan, Directed by Hon. George B. McClellan, Mayor, Commissioners of Accounts of the City of New York, July 16, 1907. This report gives the full findings of the Commissioners of Accounts. The full testimony is embodied in Vols. I to III of Testimony, Ahearn Investigation, 1907, Commissioners of Accounts.