I told them it was not sufficient, because if I did not do this, there would be a great deal of repeating done; and they said, “Never mind, it is none of your business; you do as we tell you; it has been carried on for a great length of time,” and I still kept on protesting. And once the chairman of inspectors and another inspector said if I didn’t shut up they would remove me from the board, and then the officer said if I would not stop he would take a hand in that too.
Q. The policeman said that to you?
A. Yes, sir; and then several times the repeaters came in openly, without any fear whatever, and they tried to vote, and each time I protested and challenged their votes; and one time a repeater came in and he passed the ballot clerk, he passed the chairman, but I recognised him as a repeater, and I challenged the man, and I said, “What is your name?” but the man had forgotten his name, because he was voting for the second—third—time, and so I caught hold of that man by the collar and ejected him, and the officer did not say one word; a second time a man came in to vote which I myself recognised as voting the second time in that election district; and another witness told me, whose name I do not know, that he was voting for the third time, and I waited until the man had voted, and I challenged his vote, and the man voted, and after he voted I caught hold of that man, and said, “Officer, I want you to arrest that man;” and the officer looked at the ceiling, not at me; he did not say a thing, and he did not arrest the man.
Q. Did you tell the officer what you wanted him to arrest him for?
A. I told him, the officer, that he voted for the second time to my own knowledge, and the third time to the knowledge of a witness, and wanted him to arrest him.
Q. And he looked at the ceiling?
A. He looked at the ceiling.—Ib., vol. i., pp. 216-17.
One voter was allowed to vote on the Christian name John. He could not remember the other name. At the close seventy-two more votes were found in the ballot-box than there had been voters in the booth.
A similar scene was described as occurring at the Third Election District by Jacob Subin, a Republican watcher, who deposed that he had seen Mr. Rosalsky, the captain of the Socialistic Labour Party, protest against a young man who actually attempted to vote in Mr. Rosalsky’s name under his very nose. Mr. Rosalsky grabbed hold of him and demanded that he should be locked up as a repeater caught in the act. Three Tammany heelers thereupon punched Mr. Rosalsky’s face for him. He called upon the policeman to protect him. That worthy stretched himself leisurely and replied, “Well, I guess I am pretty busy just now. I will see you after four o’clock, and will have more time to spend.” The heelers then were for mauling Rosalsky more severely; but the Tammany captain interfered, and, as an act of grace, secured his release on condition that he went right away. Rosalsky bolted for his life. After this Jacob Subin deemed it wiser to content himself with a simple protest when he saw such repeating as this:—
I have seen the Tammany Hall heelers bring in five or six men, drill them into line, and from the appearance of some of them they looked like Irishmen, and some like recent importations from Chatham Square or any of those dives, and most of those voted on Hebrew names; but the fun of it was that they could not pronounce the name under any circumstances that they were voting, and of course, as a rule, the chairman of the board of inspectors used to correct them, and in some instances they forgot their names entirely, and in such cases they went out of the line, and then the heelers would approach them and bestow such vile language upon them, and curse them and swear at them for being so stupid as not to recollect the name of the person they were voting under; and then they would drill them into line again, and I protested against them. I attempted to challenge them, and I was told unless I stopped monkeying with the regular way of doing business that I would be thrown through the window.—Vol. i., p. 303.