At this time the graft of Tammany Hall was only in process of becoming “honest”; the main sources of revenue of Richard Croker and his henchmen were still the saloonkeeper and the “madam.” There came forth a knight-at-arms to wage war upon this infamy, a lawyer by the name of William Travers Jerome. He made speeches, telling what he had seen and learned about prostitution in New York; and I went to some of these meetings and listened with horrified soul. No longer could I doubt that women did actually sell their bodies; I heard Jerome tell about the brass check that you purchased at the counter downstairs and paid to the victim of your lust. I heard about a roomful of naked women exhibited for sale.
Like many others in the audience, I took fire, and turned out to help elect Jerome. I went about among everybody I knew and raised a sum of money and took it to the candidate at the dinner hour at his club. He thanked me cordially and took the money; but my feelings were a trifle hurt because he did not stay to chat with me while his dinner got cold. Having since run for office myself, and had admirers swarm about to shake my hand, I can appreciate the desire of a public man to have his dinner hour free.
At this election I was one of a group of Columbia students who volunteered as watchers in the interests of the reform ticket. I was assigned to a polling place over on the East Side, a strong Tammany district; all day I watched to prevent the stuffing of the ballot box, and after the closing hour I saw to an honest count of the votes that had been cast. I had against me a whole set of Tammany officials, one or two Tammany policemen, and several volunteers who joined in as the quarrel grew hot. I remember especially a red-faced old police magistrate, apparently summoned for the purpose of overawing this presumptuous kid who was delaying the count. But the great man failed of his effort, because I knew the law and he didn’t; my headquarters had provided me with a little book of instructions, and I would read out the text of the law and insist upon my right to forbid the counting of improperly marked ballots.
I was probably never in greater danger in my life, for it was a common enough thing for an election watcher to be knocked over the head and dumped into the gutter. What saved me was the fact that the returns coming in from the rest of the city convinced the Tammany heelers that they had lost the fight anyhow, so a few extra votes did not matter. The ballots to which I objected were held for the decision of an election board, as the law required, and everybody went home. The Tammany police magistrate, to my great surprise, shook hands with me and offered me a cigar, telling me I would be all right when I had learned about practical politics.
I learned very quickly, for my hero-knight, Jerome, was elected triumphantly and did absolutely nothing, and all forms of graft in New York City went on just as they always had. They still went on when the speakeasy was substituted for the saloon, and the night club for the brothel. The naked women are now on the stage instead of in private rooms; and the drinking is out in the open.
There is one story connected with this campaign that I ought to tell, as it came home to me in a peculiar way. It was known during the campaign as “Jerome’s lemon story.” Said the candidate on the stump to his cheering audience: “Now, just to show you what chances there are for graft in a city like New York, let us suppose that there is a shortage of lemons in the city, and two ships loaded with lemons come into port. Whichever ship can get its cargo first to the market can make a fortune. Under the law, the city fruit inspectors are required to examine every box of lemons. But suppose that one of them accepts a bribe, and lets one cargo be landed ahead of the other—you can see what graft there would be for somebody.” Such was the example, made up out of his head, so Jerome declared; the story appeared in the morning papers, and during the day Jerome chanced to meet a city inspector of fruit whom he knew intimately. “Say, Bill,” demanded this official, “how the hell did you find out about those lemons?”
The story impressed me especially for the reason that I happened to know this particular inspector of fruit; he was the brother of an intimate friend of my mother’s. We knew all the family gossip about “Jonesy,” as we called him; we heard not merely the lemon story but many others, and knew that Jonesy was keeping a wife in one expensive apartment and a mistress in another—all on a salary of two thousand dollars a year. Bear this gentleman in mind, for when we come to the days of The Jungle, I shall tell a still funnier story. In a serious emergency I had to get Jonesy on the telephone late at night, before the morning papers went to press; the only way this could be managed was to call up his wife and ask her for the telephone number of his mistress. Let no one say that romance is dead in the modern world!
X
It was at this time that I was writing the half-dime novels, or killing Spaniards. I spent the summer in the home of an old sea captain, in the little town of Gananoque, Ontario, on the St. Lawrence River. The old captain was ill of tuberculosis, and his wife fed me doughnuts for breakfast and ice cream left over from the night before, and whenever I caught a big pike, we had cold baked fish for three days.
I did my writing late at night, when everything was quiet; and one night I was writing a vivid description of a fire, in which the hero was to rescue the heroine. I went into detail about the starting of the fire, portraying a mouse chewing on a box of matches. Just why a mouse should chew matches I do not know; I had heard of it somehow, and no guarantee went with my stories in those days. I described the tongues of flame starting in the box and spreading to some papers, and then licking their way up a stairway. I described the flames bursting from a window; then I laid down my pencil—and suddenly the silence of the night outside was broken by a yell of “Fire!”