The men who, in the course of a party convention, are doing this marching and countermarching, this forming and dissolving into committees and delegations, and who appear like acolytes going through mystical rites and ceremonies, are only self-seeking men, without a real political idea in their heads. Their evolutions are done to be seen by the masses of the people, who will give them party support if these forms are complied with.
We all know well another interesting perversion of function. A legislator is by political theory a wise, enlightened man, pledged to intellectual duties. He gives no bonds. He is responsible only under the Constitution and to his own conscience. Therefore, if the place is to be filled by a dummy, almost anybody will do. A town clerk must be a competent man, even under boss rule; but a legislator will serve the need so long as he is able to say “ay” and “no.” The boss, then, governs the largest and the most complex business enterprise in the State; and he is always a man of capacity. He is obliged to conduct it in a cumbersome and antiquated manner, and to proceed at every step according to precedent and by a series of fictions. When we consider that the legislators and governors are, after all, not absolute dummies; that among them are ambitious and rapacious men, with here and there an enemy or a traitor to the boss and to his patrons, we see that the boss must be well equipped with the intellect of intrigue. And remember this: he must keep both himself and his patrons out of jail, and so far as possible keep them clear of public reprobation.
We have not as yet had any national boss, because the necessity for owning Congress has not as yet become continuous; and the interests which have bought the national legislature at one time or another have done it by bribing individuals, in the old-fashioned way.
Turning now to New York city, we find the political situation very similar to that of the country town already described. The interests which actually control the businesses of the city are managed by very few individuals. It is only that the sums involved are different. One of these men is president of an insurance company whose assets are $130,000,000; another is president of a system of street railways with a capital stock of $30,000,000; another is president of an elevated road system with a capital of the same amount; a fourth is vice-president of a paving company worth $10,000,000; a fifth owns $50,000,000 worth of real estate; a sixth controls a great railroad system; a seventh is president of a savings-bank in which $5,000,000 are deposited; and so on. The commercial ties which bind the community together are as close in the city as in the country town. The great magnates live in palaces, and the lesser ones in palaces, also. The hardware-dealer of the small town is in New York the owner of iron-works, a man of stainless reputation. The florist is the owner of a large tract of land within the city limits, through which a boulevard is about to be cut. The retired merchant has become a partner of his nephew, and is developing one of the suburbs by means of an extension of an electric road system. But the commercial hierarchy does not stop here; it continues radiating, spreading downward. All businesses are united by the instruments and usages which the genius of trade has devised. All these interests together represent the railroad of the country town. They take no real interest in politics, and they desire only to be let alone.
For the twenty years before the Strong administration the government of the city was almost continuously under the control of a ring, or, accurately speaking, of a Happy Family. Special circumstances made this ring well nigh indestructible. The Boss-out-of-Power of the Happy Family happens to be also the boss of the State legislature. He performs a double function. This is what has given Platt his extraordinary power. It will have been noticed that some of the masses of wealth above mentioned are peculiarly subject to State legislation: they subscribe directly to the State boss’s fund. Some are subject to interference from the city administration: they subscribe to the city boss’s fund.
We see that by the receipt of his fund the State boss is rendered independent of the people of the city. He can use the State legislature to strengthen his hands in his dealings with the city boss. After all, he does not need many votes. He can buy enough votes to hold his minority together and keep Tammany safely in power, and by now and then taking a candidate from the citizens he advertises himself as a friend of reform.
As to the Tammany branch of the concern, the big money interests need specific and often illegal advantages, and pay heavily over the Tammany counter. But as we saw before, public officers, if once corrupted, will work only for money. Every business that has to do with one or another of the city offices must therefore now contribute for “protection.” A foreign business that is started in this city subscribes to Tammany Hall as a visitor writes his name in a book at a watering-place. It gives him the run of the town. In the same way, the State-fearing business man subscribes to Platt for “protection.” No secret is made of these conditions. The business man regards the reformer as a monomaniac who is not reasonable enough to see the necessity for his tribute. In the conduct of any large business, this form of bribery is as regular an item as rent. The machinery for such bribery is perfected. It is only when some blundering attempt is made by a corporation to do the bribing itself, when some unbusinesslike attempt is made to get rid of the middleman, that the matter is discovered. A few boodle aldermen go to jail, and every one is scandalized. The city and county officers of the new city of New York will have to do with the disbursing of $70,000,000 annually,—fully one half of it in the conduct of administration. The power of these officers to affect or even control values, by manipulation of one sort or another, is familiar to us all from experience in the past.
So much for business. Let us look at the law. The most lucrative practice is that of an attorney who protects great corporate interests among these breakers. He needs but one client; he gets hundreds. The mind of the average lawyer makes the same unconscious allowance for bribery as that of the business man. Moreover, we cannot overlook the cases of simple old-fashioned bribery to which the masses of capital give rise. In a political emergency any amount of money is forthcoming immediately, and it is given from aggregations of capital so large that the items are easily concealed in the accounts. Bribery, in one form or another, is part of the unwritten law. It is atmospheric; it is felt by no one. The most able men in the community believe that society would drop to pieces without bribery. They do not express it in this way, but they act upon the principle in an emergency. A leader of the bar, at the behest of his Wall Street clients, begs the reform police board not to remove Inspector Byrnes, who is the Jonathan Wild of the period. The bench is fairly able. But many of the judges on the bench have paid large campaign assessments in return for their nominations; others have given notes to the bosses. This reveals the exact condition of things. In a corrupt era the judges pay cash. Now they help their friends. The son or the son-in-law of a judge is sure of a good practice, and referees are appointed from lists which are largely dictated by the professional politicians of both parties.
It would require an encyclopædia to state the various simple devices by which the same principle runs through every department in the life of the community. Such an encyclopædia for New York city would be the best picture of municipal misgovernment in the United States during the commercial era. But one main fact must again be noted: this great complex ring is held together by the two campaign funds, the Tammany Hall fund and the Republican fund. They are the two power houses which run all this machinery.