What is that secret? It is unquestionably to be traced, in part, to the sagacity which Tammany’s leaders have at all times shown in forecasting the changes of political issues, or availing themselves of the opportunities afforded by current events as they have arisen. Tammany has not only furnished the most capable politicians the country has possessed, but has managed to ally itself with the shrewdest ones to be found outside of its own organisation. It has always shown a willingness to trade in the gifts at its command, and rarely indeed has it got the worst of a bargain.
FIRST TAMMANY HALL, ERECTED 1811.
The writer in Harper, however, while attempting to explain the secret of Tammany, only raises a still more difficult question. How is it that Tammany should have been able to discern the signs of the times better than its rivals? How is it that Tammany has been able to furnish the most capable politicians the country has ever possessed, and how is it that it has displayed so much wisdom? There is one explanation, which, no doubt, commends itself to many of those who have spent their life in fighting Tammany Hall. Tammany has little regard for the innocence of the dove, but it has always displayed the wisdom of the serpent. Considering the place where the Author of all Evil found refuge after his discomfiture by St. Tammany, a Republican may be pardoned for suggesting that the wisdom of Tammany is due to the wisdom of the Old Serpent. Certainly, many innocent persons have been accused of dalliance with the foul fiend on much worse primâ facie evidence than that which is furnished by the universal admission that Tammany, out of the most uncompromising materials, has succeeded in achieving exploits which antecedently would have been absolutely impossible. For Tammany, although preserving and maintaining from first to last a discipline which is the despair of all the other political machines in the country, has never been without fierce internecine fights. It has cast out leader after leader, and the ferocity of the feuds within Tammany has exceeded that of any of the combats which have been waged against the common enemy. Nevertheless, notwithstanding all schisms, all reverses, all exposures, Tammany remains to this day the strongest, the best disciplined, and the most feared political organisation in the world.
TAMMANY HALL, OPENED 1860.
Mr. Croker, in the series of interviews which I reported in the October number of the Review of Reviews, argued with much force and plausibility that it was contrary to the law of human nature that an organisation could live and last so long if it were composed of Thugs and desperados, and that witness no doubt is true. Even so stout and stalwart an opponent of Tammany as Dr. Albert Shaw has frequently felt himself constrained to admit that the insane fashion in which New York has been governed rendered even the rule of Tammany preferable to the constitutional and legal chaos which was the only substitute. Dr. Shaw, speaking of the system under which New York has hitherto been governed, said:—
To know its ins and outs is not so much like knowing the parts and the workings of a finely adjusted machine as it is like knowing the obscure topography of the great Dismal Swamp considered as a place of refuge for criminals.
Again he wrote:—
In New York, the absurdly disjointed and hopelessly complex array of separate boards, functions, and administrative powers, first makes it impossible for the community to focalise responsibility anywhere in the formal mechanism of municipal government, and then makes it possible for an irresponsible self-centred political and mercenary society like Tammany to gain for itself the real control, and thus to assume a domination that ought to be centred in some body or functionary directly accountable to the people. Government by a secret society like Tammany is better than the chaos of a disjointed government for which there can be no possible location of central responsibility.