[21] About this time the general committee was enlarged. Until now the delegates had been selected from each ward. In 1843 the practise was begun of sending them from each election district.
[22] Sixty thousand of these entered the port of New York yearly. The total immigration rose to 154,000 in 1846 and to 427,000 in 1854.
[23] Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1844-45, Vol. XI, No. 40.
[24] Within a few months after its organization the Empire Club had thirty-three parades and had been hired to go to Albany, Trenton, Tarrytown and other cities to help the Democracy. Whenever the Empire Club met a rival political club, a fight was sure to follow.
[25] Annual Message, 1845.
[26] Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol. XXIX, pp. 1-55.
[27] Tammany won by a minority vote both in 1845 and in 1846. That neither Tammany nor the Native Americans had enacted any competent reforms in the matter of the taxation of property was conclusively shown in an Aldermanic report of 1846. It appeared from this report that thirty million dollars’ worth of assessable property escaped taxation every year, and that no bona fide efforts were being made by the officials to remedy this state of affairs. Proceedings of the Board of Assistant Aldermen, Vol. XXIX, Document No. 24.