Much further testimony was brought out showing the enormous and continuous subsidizing of both old political parties and politicians by corporations wanting certain legislation enacted or smothered. On September 21, 1910, Mr. Vreeland admitted that the Metropolitan Street Railway Company had, prior to 1903, paid out fully $250,000 in “taking up” stocks that legislators and other politicians had been carrying with brokerage houses and which they desired converted into cash; this was one of the indirect methods of influencing political or legislative action in the interest of the company. G. Tracy Rogers testified that he had disbursed $82,475 in three years, and that most of it went to members of the railroad committees of the New York Legislature. In these hearings the names of a number of conspicuous legislators and the amounts received by them were brought out in the testimony.
Testimony, also under oath, on October 19, 1910, purported to show that a legislative corruption fund of $500,000 was raised at a meeting in Delmonico’s to defeat anti-race track gambling legislation at Albany in 1908; that Charles H. Hyde,[2] Chamberlain of New York City under Mayor Gaynor, attended this meeting, and that State Senator Frank Gardner went to Albany with Hyde because Hyde did not know the ways of legislators and how to approach them “properly.”
Hyde’s father-in-law was William A. Engeman, owner of the Brighton Beach race track; according to the testimony, Hyde made a subscription for Engeman (who had failed to pay), and later put in a bill for personal expenses covering the amount. The testimony further represented that there was a dispute as to who was to handle the bribery funds, and that $125,000 was given to James E. Gaffney “to take care of three or four members of the Legislature—Tammany men.” According further to the testimony, Senator Thomas F. Grady, Democratic leader at Albany and close friend and spokesman of “Boss” Murphy, received only $4,000 of the bribery fund. Two Republican State Senators wanted $25,000 each. The testimony also involved Senator Patrick H. McCarren. Senator McCarren was the Democratic “boss” of Brooklyn; he was an ally of Tammany Hall (for the Democratic organization in Brooklyn retained its autonomy separate from that of Tammany Hall, yet allied with it), and he was the legislative agent of various financial interests and trusts.
It appeared, according to the testimony, that Senator McCarren was angry that the handling of the race track fund was entrusted to others; he objected “to a strange man going up there, expecting to get away with such a proposition,” but later he was placated and lent his aid against the bill. When urging Senator Foelker, a Brooklyn Republican, to vote against the bill, McCarren was represented as saying to Foelker: “You need not fear the indignation of your constituents. If you are afraid of possible reelection or have any doubts about election time, I think I can fix it up for you so you can name your own opponent at the coming election.” This was the substance of the testimony of Assistant District Attorney Robert Elder, of Brooklyn, who narrated the facts revealed to him by former State Senator Frank Gardner, under indictment charged with attempting to bribe Foelker. (Here the fact should be noted that when Gardner was tried on this charge he was acquitted on February 23, 1911.) Mr. Foelker himself testified that he was offered $45,000 and then $50,000 to vote against the bill, which offer he refused; the vote on the bill was extremely close, and a single vote meant its passage or defeat.
At further hearings of the Legislative “Graft Hunt” Committee, Senator Eugene M. Travis, of Brooklyn, testified that an ineffectual effort had been made, at a time when the foes of the measure needed only one or two votes, to bribe him with $100,000 to vote against the bill prohibiting horse racing in New York State. Senator Travis specified three other Senators whom they attempted to bribe. August Belmont testified that the $500,000 fund was “mythical and absurd.” It was reported that representations made at the hearing on November 30, 1910, were to the effect that one jockey club alone had expended $33,000 while the anti-race track gambling legislation was pending, and that information from reliable sources tended to show that each of the other seven racing associations had expended a similar sum, or perhaps more. Further information, it was given out, was to the effect that each of ninety-three bookmakers had subscribed $3,000 each. The total of the above stated contributions would have amounted to $543,000—supposing the fund to have been a fact.
Whatever were the basic facts, pro and con, as to the alleged $500,000 fund for the defeat of the anti-race-track bill, the record shows that it was defeated on April 8, 1908, by a-vote of 25 to 25, and that among those voting against it were such Tammany Senators as Grady, Frawley, McManus, Sullivan and other Tammany men and Democrats,—in all seventeen Democrats and eight Republicans. A new State Senator having been elected in a special election in one district, the bill prohibiting gambling at race tracks was subsequently passed.
Nearly all of those involved made vehement denials. Senator McCarren had died on October 23, 1909—a year before these hearings. Although cooperating with “Boss” Murphy in elections, there was nevertheless considerable animosity between the two, arising, it was generally believed, from a suspicion that Mr. Murphy, inflated by his personal victory in electing McClellan in 1903, was attempting to extend his political territory to Brooklyn. Senator McCarren had openly protested against this “encroachment” and had threatened trouble if it were pushed. It was this jealously vigilant attitude on the part of the bosses of the other boroughs which prevented Tammany Hall from extending its regular organization outside the former city limits.
McCarren himself was a “sporting man” and reputed to be a “thoroughbred” at that. He had his own elaborate racing stable, and it was said of him that he once uncomplainingly lost $30,000 on a bet, although the decision of the racing judges was open to question. In 1908 the failure of the brokerage firm of Ennis & Stoppani revealed the fact that McCarren was “carrying” $250,000 worth of stock, for which he had paid nothing, and which resulted in a loss to him of about $107,000. No demand had been made by the brokers upon McCarren for margins; in view of this fact he could not have been compelled to pay losses; it was said of him, however, that he gave a check to the receiver and took the stock. He was a “heavy operator” in real estate and in the stock market, and had personal relations with H. H. Rogers, Anthony N. Brady, William C. Whitney, J. Pierpont Morgan, W. K. Vanderbilt, August Belmont and other Wall Street magnates, of whose interests he was a recognized pusher in the Legislature.
To return, however, to the hearings of the Legislative “Graft Hunt” Committee: facts brought out showed that the beet sugar interests had also debauched the Legislature and that State Senator John Raines, a leading Republican, received $9,000 in two years for pushing bounty bills to aid beet sugar interests. These facts were admitted by Henry F. Zimmerlin, former vice-president and Albany lobbyist of the Lyons Beet Sugar Refining Company.
The full testimony tended to show that insurance companies, traction companies, construction companies and other interests paid large sums to defeat legislation that they did not want enacted, or were blackmailed into paying other large sums to have “strike bills” suppressed. But the report of the Legislative Investigating Committee, made on February 1, 1911, was harmless as far as specific findings of corruption were concerned. As to the charges of traction and race track corruption, the Committee reported that no definite and substantial charge, verified by knowledge, had been filed with it, and that “in consequence it finds nothing definite in regard to the traction and race track charges that it examined.”[3] There were one or two indictments, but no one, either bribers or bribed, had to go prison, although in charges made in a detached subsequent case, one solitary State Senator, Stilwell, was convicted of bribery charges and sentenced to prison; he was a comparatively obscure politician.