A resolution introduced in the Democratic Club, on February 2, 1914, demanded that he retire from “all participation in the party’s affairs,” to which Mr. Murphy defiantly replied in an interview, “I am the leader of Tammany Hall. You can add that I am going to remain the leader of Tammany Hall no matter what some others might think they have to say about it.” Believing that at least thirty-two of the thirty-four Tammany district leaders would vote to continue him in power, “Boss” Murphy made this announcement with apparent confidence. Indeed, it was reported that the Executive Committee of Tammany Hall had voted to retain his leadership.
A few days later some extracts from a letter written by Richard Croker to John Fox were made public. “Murphy was a big handicap to McCall,” Mr. Croker wrote. “The Hall will never win under Murphy’s management. I hope some good man will get in and drive all them grafters contractors out.” On March 10, 1914, at a meeting of the Democratic Club, Charles F. Murphy, James E. Gaffney, Thomas F. Foley, George W. Plunkett and Thomas Darlington were rudely read out of that club on the nominal ground of non-payment of dues, whereupon Thomas F. Smith, Secretary of Tammany Hall, styled that action “a joke” and declared that “the club has cut no figure locally since 1896.”
Mr. Murphy remained “the Chief” of Tammany Hall.
The various official inquiries into the system of graft in State contracts conducted by Special Commissioner James W. Osborne and other officials continued after the election. In January, 1914, Bart Dunn, an associate Tammany leader of the Eighteenth Assembly District and a close friend of Charles F. Murphy, was convicted of conspiracy in highways construction graft, and sentenced to ten months in the penitentiary and to pay a fine of $500; he took an appeal and was let out on bail. Subsequently, however, he was compelled to serve six months in prison.
On February 15, 1914, after he had been summoned to testify again in an investigation by District Attorney Whitman, State Treasurer John J. Kennedy committed suicide. As State Treasurer, Kennedy was ex-officio a member of the State Canal Board which had control of contracts now under investigation; his son was, in conjunction with others, one of whom was under indictment, in the business of bonding contractors on canal and other State work. It was believed that worry arising from the forthcoming examination as to his son’s transactions, was the cause of Kennedy’s suicide.
At a hearing conducted by the District Attorney’s office, in New York City, on February 26, 1914, Mr. Sulzer again related, this time in testimony, the story of the $25,000 campaign contribution by Anthony N. Brady and that of $10,000 by Allan Ryan, both of which contributions were made in 1912. “Once,” Mr. Sulzer testified, “in a talk with Murphy, he told me that Ryan had given a check for $25,000 in 1912. Murphy said that he would report that, but not the $10,000. He said he would find a dummy for that. He also found dummies for Brady’s $25,000.” Mr. Sulzer explained that a certain $25,000 that Mr. Murphy had returned to Brady was not the $25,000 that Brady had contributed to the campaign of 1912. Brady, so Mr. Sulzer testified, had sued Murphy for $40,000 and Murphy had settled the suit for $25,000; the records would disclose this suit, Mr. Sulzer said.
Thus far some of the smaller grafters have been convicted and sentenced to jail, but the really powerful politicians involved have not suffered. After two months’ consideration of the charges of graft and official misconduct brought against C. Gordon Reel, State Engineer John A. Bensel, Duncan W. Peck, State Superintendent of Public Works—the three officials forming the highways Commission under the régime of which, it was charged, the large grafting had been going on—the Albany County Grand Jury, on April 28, 1914, reported that no indictments had been found against any of these men, nor against Charles A. Foley, Deputy Superintendent of Highways. According to facts disclosed by Mr. Osborne’s investigation, many of the 318 repair contracts let by Foley and passed by Reel, Bensel and Peck, were awarded only after contractors had contributed to the Democratic campaign fund. Numerous of the roads covered by these contracts were so badly constructed that they went to pieces within a year; and the State, so Mr. Osborne charged, thereby lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Final Report of the Joint Legislative Committee Appointed to Investigate the Public Service Commissions, March, 1917, p. 67.
[2] Ibid., p. 68.