The “Board” met once for but ten minutes, and turned the whole “auditing” business over to Tweed. This sounds like a joke, but is true. Tweed then went to work, and “audited” as hard as he could, Garvey and other scamps bringing in the raw material in the shape of “claims,” and he never stopped till he had “audited” about 6,000,000 dols. worth. Connolly’s part in the little game then came in, and that worthy citizen drew his warrants for the money, which that simple-minded “scholar and gentleman” the Mayor endorsed, without having the least idea what was going on. Tweed’s share of the plunder amounted to about 1,000,000 dols. in all. The Joint Committee, reporting on the condition of the city’s finances, declared that the discoverable stealings of three years are 19,000,000 dols., which is probably only half the real total.
Never was a more unblushing rascal, as Mr. Tilden said in his account of Tweed’s sovereignty. The Tammany Ring
controlled the State Legislature, the police, and every department or functionary of the law; several of the judges on the bench were its servile instruments, and issued decrees at its command; it secured the management of the election “machine,” and “ran” it at its own free will and pleasure; a large part of the press was absolutely at its disposal. In the course of three years it had paid to eleven newspapers the sum of 2,329,482 dols. (about £466,000) nominally for advertisements, most of which were never even published, or never seen. Not only the City government, but the lion’s share of the State government also had fallen into the hands of “Boss” Tweed and his confederates. Millions of dollars were stolen by the conspirators by means of “street openings,” “improvements,” new pavements, and other frauds. The Ring took from the public treasury a sum amounting to over £1,500,000 for furnishing and “repairing” a new Court-house. The charges for plastering alone came to about £366,000. For carpets, warrants were drawn for £120,000, although there were scarcely any carpets in the building. The floors were either bare, or covered with oil-cloth. Nearly £100,000 was alleged to have been paid for iron safes, and over £8,200 for “articles” not defined and never found. The total sum stolen was over £4,000,000.
WILLIAM M. TWEED.
Tweed’s brief but dazzling career—for he was indeed a hero clad in Hell-fire—is said by President Andrews to have cost the City of New York 160,000,000 dols. The fine levied by Germany on the City of Paris after the War of 1870-1 was only one-fourth that amount. Fraud may be more costly than War. The total direct property loss occasioned by the great fire at Chicago in 1871, when three square miles of buildings were burned down, and 98,500 persons rendered homeless, was only 30,000,000 dols. above the plunder of Tweed and his gang. Thus Fraud can be almost as ruinous as Fire.
MR. TILDEN.
Tweed was a fellow, if not of infinite jest like poor Yorick, at least of infinite insolent humour. In 1871 he boasted that he had amassed a fortune of 20,000,000 dols. Nor did he in the least scruple to avow the means by which he acquired it. President Andrews, of Brown University, in telling the history of the last quarter century, says, “He used gleefully to show his friends the safe where he kept money for bribing legislators, finding those of the Tammany-Republican stripe easiest game. Of the contractor who was decorating his country place at Greenwich he inquired, pointing to a statue, ‘Who the hell is that?’ ‘That is Mercury, the god of merchants and thieves,’ was the reply. ‘That’s bully,’ said Tweed; ‘put him over the front door.’”
Tweed was to the last popular with the masses of the people. Even when the whole town was ringing with proofs of his guilt, he stood as candidate for the Senate of New York State, and was elected. He had distributed in the poorer districts some £10,000 worth of coal and flour, and one of his champions brought down the house by declaring that “Tweed’s heart has always been in the right place, and, even if he is a thief, there is more blood in his little finger and more marrow in his big toe than the men who are abusing him have in their whole bodies.”