In a public speech on the following day, October 28, 1913, Mr. Hennessy demanded the tracing of Mr. Brady’s $25,000, and suggested that it might be well to examine the executors of Brady’s estate and find out whether Brady had deposited $25,000 two days after Judge Beardsley had handed that money to Mr. Murphy. “I knew Mr. Brady very well,” Mr. Hennessy went on. “I have known Mr. Brady since he was selling groceries in Albany twenty-five or twenty-six years ago, … and I know that he never carried around $25,000 in bills every day in his pocket; so if he got this $25,000 in bills from Mr. Murphy, he undoubtedly deposited it somewhere.” Mr. Hennessy chided Mr. Murphy with having been told by his district leaders to answer him, after he (Murphy) had declared that he would not notice the charges, and said that Mr. Murphy was “shoving it off on a dead man.”
When, on October 29, 1913, former Judge Beardsley, counsel for the Brady estate, issued a statement asserting that the $25,000 was returned to Brady, Mr. Hennessy in a public speech demanded proof and charged that an alibi was being proved over the body of a dead man. Mr. Hennessy made the charge that in the campaign of 1910 Mr. Murphy had collected fully $150,000 for which he had not accounted in the statement filed with the Secretary of State. “Most of this money,” Mr. Hennessy declared, “came from contractors who were clubbed into giving it.”
So this exciting campaign drew to a close amid sensational charges, counter charges, denials and reiterations.
Over in Queen’s Borough, the Democratic “boss” of that section, “Joe” Cassidy, was in serious difficulties; he had long, with some intermissions, ruled that part of the city; and although he was not a Tammany man, nor did Tammany rule Queens, in the strict sense of the meaning, yet he was an ally of Tammany and had always “consulted” Mr. Murphy.
Local “Boss” Cassidy and one of his lieutenants were under indictment for conspiring in selling a nomination in 1911, to the Supreme Court Bench to William Willett, Jr., and Willett was indicted for being a party to the conspiracy. During his trial later, Cassidy admitted that he was “boss,” but asserted his honesty. Questioned as to why he did not deposit a certain sum in bank, he replied, “I was used to carrying money in my pocket. I was lonesome without a roll in my pocket.” It may be said here that Willett was convicted, and likewise were Cassidy and one of his lieutenants by a jury on February 2, 1914; Cassidy and Willett were each sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of not less than a year in prison and a fine of $1,000, and Cassidy’s lieutenant “go-between,” Louis T. Walter, received a sentence of three months and a fine of $1,000. After serving a year in prison Cassidy was released and later (January 19, 1917) was restored to citizenship by Governor Whitman.
Intelligent people contemplated with wonderment the antiquated tactics that Tammany Hall was blindly following. Although the discussion of pressing economic problems was vitally concerning great masses of people, Tammany Hall seemed unaware of their existence. The rapid development of the trusts, the concentration of capitalist power and wealth, the tense unrest among different classes of people, were reflected in various political and industrial movements, but in Tammany Hall no attention was given to them. Oblivious to the great industrial changes and popular agitations and thought, Tammany still adhered to its old semi-feudalistic methods of “carrying its vote”; it concerned itself only with matters of offices, jobs, contracts and interested legislation; it depended upon immense campaign funds and the personal following of its leaders in marshaling the army of voters all of whom by jobs or other such self interest sought to perpetuate its power.
New York City had also grown too vast for the Tammany district leaders to control as they did in the decades when it was smaller and compact. Great numbers of people had moved from Manhattan to other boroughs; and this constant process of migration had much weakened the power of Tammany organization leaders in keeping in touch with the voters. The Jewish vote had grown to enormous proportions, and so had the Italian, but the Jewish vote was generally a vote racially independent of Tammany and not particularly sympathetic to the character, racial and religious, of its leaders.
Tammany Hall was overwhelmingly defeated. Mr. Mitchel’s plurality was 124,262. The vote resulted: Mitchel, 358,181; McCall, 233,919; Russell, 32,057. All of the anti-Tammany candidates for city offices were elected by varying pluralities. Mr. Sulzer was triumphantly elected to the Assembly. However, Tammany men could glean some slight consolation in this hour of disaster; Lieutenant Governor Martin Glynn, who had succeeded Sulzer as Governor, could be generally depended upon to appoint some Tammany men to various appointive offices; when his list of appointments was handed down they were not altogether disappointed. Tammany was especially jubilant in getting control of the Public Service Commission, not to mention a firmer hold in various State departments.
The results of the municipal election cut Tammany off from city, county and national patronage; in such an extremity Mr. Murphy had little to offer famishing followers except soothing words which counted for nothing where practical results were demanded.
The mutterings against Mr. Murphy in certain quarters grew to open rebellion; no longer was he fulsomely praised as a sagacious political strategist; he was now derisively called a stupid blunderer for his successive actions and particularly for his campaign of reprisal against Sulzer—a campaign producing so inflaming an effect against Tammany.