“Fellow-citizens of the City and State of New York, this report of the doings of the Committee of Seventy would be incomplete if it did not fully unfold to you the perils and the difficulties of our condition. You know too well that the Ring which governs us for years governed our Legislatures by bribing their members with moneys stolen from their trusts. That, seemingly, was supreme power and immunity. But it was not enough. A City Charter to perpetuate power was needed. It was easily bought of a venal Legislature with the proceeds of a
new scoop into the city treasury. Superadded to this the Ring had devised a system, faultless and absolutely sure, of counting their adversaries in an election out of office and of counting their own candidates in, or of rolling up majorities by repeating votes and voting in the names of the absent, the dead, and the fictitious. Still their intrenched camp of villainy was incomplete. It was deficient in credit. This is a ghastly jest, the self-investment of the robbers of the world with a boundless financial credit. And yet the Ring clothed themselves with it. They entrenched themselves within the imposing limits of some of our most powerful bank and trust companies. They created many savings banks out of the forty-two which exist in the city and county of New York. This they did within the last two years. The published lists of directors will enable you to identify these institutions. Now the savings bank is a place to which money travels to be taken care of; and if the bank has the public confidence, people put their money in it freely at low rates of interest, and the managers use the funds in whatever way they please. In the Ring savings banks there are on deposit to-day, at nominal rates of interest, many millions of dollars. It is believed that into these banks the Ring have taken the city’s obligations and converted them into money, which has been sent flowing into the various channels of wasteful administration, out of which they have drawn into their pockets millions on millions. The craft of this contrivance was profound. It wholly avoided the difficulty of raising money on the unlawful and excessive issues of city and county bonds, and took out of public sight transactions which, if pressed upon the national banks, would have provoked comment and resistance, and have precipitated the explosion which has shaken the country. I think that among the assets of the savings banks of this city, county and State will be found not far from $50,000,000 of city and county debt taken for permanent investment. For the first time in the history of iniquity has the bank for the saving of the wages of labor been expressly organized as a part of a system of robbery; and for the first time in the history of felony have the workmen and workwomen, and the orphans and the
children of a great city unwittingly cashed the obligations issued by a gang of thieves and plunderers.”
Having made themselves secure, as they believed, the Ring laughed at the idea of punishment, if detected. They not only controlled the elections, but they also controlled the administration of justice. The courts were filled with their creatures, and were so distorted from the purposes of the law and the ends of justice, that no friend of the Ring had any cause to fear punishment at their hands, however great his crime. The majority of the crimes committed in the city were the acts of the adherents of the Ring, but they escaped punishment, as a rule, except when a sacrifice to public opinion was demanded. If the criminal happened to be a politician possessing any influence among the disreputable classes, he was sure of acquittal. The magistrate before whom he was tried, dared not convict him, for fear of incurring either his enmity, or the censure of the leaders of the Ring to whom his influence was of value. So crime of all kinds increased in the city.
Under the protection of the New Charter, the Ring began a systematic campaign of robbery. Section four of the County Tax Levy, one of their measures, provided that liabilities against the county, the limits of which coincide with those of the city, should be audited by the Mayor, the Comptroller and the President of the Board of Supervisors, or in other words, Mayor Hall, Comptroller Connolly, and Mr. William M. Tweed, and that the amount found to be due should be paid. “These Auditors,” says Mr. Tilden, “met but once. They then passed a resolution, which stands on the records of the city in the handwriting of Mayor Hall. It was passed on his motion, and what was its effect? It provided that all claims certified by Mr. Tweed and Mr. Young, Secretary of the old Board of Supervisors, should be received, and, on sufficient evidence, paid.” Thus the door was thrown open to fraud, and the crime soon followed. “Mayor Hall,” continues Mr. Tilden, “is the responsible man for all this. He knew it was a fraudulent violation of duty on the part of every member of that Board of Audit to pass claims in the way they did.”
The door being thus thrown open to fraud, the thefts of the public funds became numerous. All the appropriations authorized by law were quickly exhausted, and large sums of money were drawn from the treasury, without the slightest warrant of law.
The new Court House in the City Hall Park was a perfect gold mine to the Ring. Immense sums were paid out of the treasury for work upon this building, which is still unfinished. Very little of this money was spent on the building, the greater part being retained, or stolen by the Ring for their own private benefit. The Court House has thus far cost $12,000,000, and is unfinished. During the years 1869, 1870, and a part of 1871, the sum of about $8,223,979.89 was expended on the new Court House. During this period, the legislative appropriation for this purpose amounted to only $1,400,000. The Houses of Parliament in London, which cover an area of nearly eight acres, contain 100 staircases, 1100 apartments and more than two miles of corridors, and constitute one of the grandest architectural works of the world, cost less than $10,000,000. The Capitol of the United States at Washington, the largest and most magnificent building in America, will cost, when completed, about $12,000,000, yet, the unfinished Court House in New York has already cost more than the gorgeous Houses of Parliament, and as much as the grand Capitol of the Republic.
