Full of bitterness was this campaign. Perhaps the most effective speakers against Tammany Hall were John A. Hennessy and former Governor Sulzer. Mr. Hennessy in a public speech on October 23, 1913, specifically charged that he held a note for $35,000 that had been signed by a Justice of the Supreme Court who had been Mr. Murphy’s alternative candidate for Mayor. “I do not say that the $35,000 was ever paid to anybody. I don’t suspect him of any vices that would induce him to borrow $35,000.… If he has had to pay $35,000 or more for his [Supreme Court] nomination, why he simply followed a tradition in the organization to which he belonged.”
Mr. Hennessy charged Mr. McCall with not answering the question of where he got his campaign money, and asked Mr. McCall whether, in 1902 (when McCall was a candidate for the Supreme Court nomination) he, McCall, had not met George W. Plunkett, a Tammany district leader—the originator of the term “honest graft”—in a room in the Hoffman House, and whether Anthony N. Brady was not in another room at the same time. “I want to ask Judge McCall,” Mr. Hennessy continued, “whether his sponsor, Charlie Murphy, had not seen Anthony Brady in respect to McCall’s nomination in the Hoffman House, and I want to ask Judge McCall if the gentleman who brought him and Plunkett together to discuss that nomination, did not have something to do with Murphy and Mr. Brady in respect of that nomination.” Mr. Hennessy charged that one man that Mr. McCall paid was Plunkett, but he (Hennessy) did not know whether he paid Murphy, or whether he paid the amount to somebody who paid Murphy; he (Hennessy) did not undertake to assert that.
The Anthony N. Brady here mentioned was a traction magnate, who, beginning as a clerk in Albany, had by means of legislative manipulation giving richly valuable railway and other franchises, accumulated an estate of $90,000,000.
In several speeches Mr. Hennessy pointedly asserted that James Stewart, a contractor, had paid $25,000 to a former friend of Charles F. Murphy, and inquired whether J. Sergeant Cram (a prominent Tammany light) had not received $5,000, and Norman E. Mack another $5,000.
At a public meeting on October 25, 1913, Mr. Sulzer declared that he had sent to Charles F. Murphy $10,000 that Allan Ryan (Thomas F. Ryan’s son), had contributed to his campaign fund, and that Mr. Murphy had never accounted for it.
Mr. Sulzer named John H. Delaney (later State Commissioner of the Department of Efficiency and Economy), as the messenger who had carried the $10,000 in bills to Mr. Murphy. This money, Mr. Sulzer asserted, had originally been handed to him (Sulzer) in his New York office by Mr. McGlone, Allan Ryan’s secretary, and that he (Sulzer) gave the $10,000 to Delaney, who took it uptown and gave it to Murphy. “Late that afternoon,” Mr. Sulzer continued, “I saw Mr. Murphy at Delmonico’s. During our conversation, I said, ‘Did John give you the ten from Ryan?’ Mr. Murphy replied: ‘Yes, that’s all right, but it’s only a drop in the bucket. You’ll have to do better than that.’ So far as I know,” Mr. Sulzer continued, “and I am pretty well advised, Mr. Murphy never accounted for that $10,000, any more than he accounted for the Brady $25,000 which I refused and which he accepted from Judge Beardsley [Brady’s legal representative]. At all events, I think Mr. Murphy should tell the voters what he did with the money.” Mr. Sulzer declared that he (Sulzer) was still in debt, and that “I am a poorer man to-day than I was when I became a candidate for Governor.” No one acquainted with Sulzer’s career could doubt that had he been essentially corrupt, he could have become a millionaire from huckstering of legislation when he was Speaker of the Assembly; there was no bribing him, however, with money; he was, in fact, a poor man.
Mr. Sulzer then declared that Thomas F. Ryan was “Boss” Murphy’s master.
This, in fact, was the very point made by the Socialists: that the political “bosses” were only the tools of the great financial and industrial magnates; and that where the political “bosses” gathered in their millions, the magnates accumulated their tens or hundreds of millions of dollars as their individual fortunes. Why, queried the Socialists, concentrate attention on the instruments? Why not, said they, attack the power of the whole social, political and industrial system of which the political “boss” was merely one expression? This system, according to the Socialist party, was the capitalist system for the overthrow of which they declared and agitated. They pointed out that behind Mr. Murphy and Tammany Hall, as well as behind the Republican organization where it was in power, were traction, railroad, telephone, electric lighting, industrial and other financial interests all selfishly utilizing the power embodied in political “bosses” for their own ends and aggrandizement, and that these were the real powers that could make and unmake political “bosses.”
Gaffney, Cram and Plunkett had all denied allegations aimed at them; Murphy and McCall had remained silent. But on October 26, 1913, McCall and Murphy both issued statements. Mr. McCall denied the charge that he had paid $35,000 for the nomination for the Supreme Court in 1902. Mr. Murphy made public an affidavit in which he (Murphy) denied that McCall had ever paid him anything at any time, and branding the charge as false. On the next day Mr. Murphy gave out a long statement making a sweeping denial of Mr. Sulzer’s statements; he asserted that he had received the $25,000 from Anthony N. Brady, but that he had returned the money the next day; he also denied that he had ever received $10,000 from Ryan.
Mr. Hennessy returned to the attack. On the same day he charged that a seat in the United States Senate (to succeed Senator Root) had been offered to Sulzer if he would yield to Mr. Murphy, and that it was Mr. McCall who acted as the intermediary.