Triumph of Reform A HISTORY OF THE GREAT COPYRIGHT 1895 BY W. TEN EYCK HARDENBROOK, NEW YORK. THE NEW YORK Astor, Lencx and Tl den Foundations. 18577 T cannot be said that the objections to Tammany as a political organization within the city attracted any public attention until Tweed's day, or about 1870. It is true that the possibility of organizing the dangerous classes for purposes hostile to efficiency and purity in municipal government became apparent between 1852 and 1857, under the leadership of Fernando Wood. But the anti-slavery agitation at that time absorbed most of such attention as the public had to spare for political questions. It was plain that it was carrying the country toward a crisis of unknown magnitude, and all eyes were fixed on the growth of the Republican party, which was taking the slavery question out of the hands of the philanthropists and philosophers. The success of demagogues like Wood, therefore, in marshaling the emigrants who had begun to crowd into New York from 1846 on, for the seizure of the city government, was watched mainly from the Federal point of view. Its possible effect in strengthening the Democratic party at the Federal elections of 1856 and 1860 was what even the most thoughtful citizens mainly considered. The only defenses against such designs which occurred even to those who were most alarmed by them was the election of Republican Mayors, and the transfer to Commissioners at Albany, by Republican Legislatures, of a considerable portion of the municipai powers and patronage. The city was, in fact, mainly interesting to them at that time as the abode of a large Democratic majority. How to keep down this, majority was the municipal problem of that day, and the solution was held, according to the ideas of the time, to lie chiefly in depriving it of as many offices as possible. It was only when, after the war, it was shown by Tweed to be possible to use the Tammany Society as a means of getting control of the city government and to make the city government a means of robbing the city treasury, and to use the city funds as a means of purchasing legislation from the State Legislature, that the municipal question began to loom up before the public eye as a new question in American politics. It was, as presented to us, a new question in all politics. No human experience threw any light on the way to govern a great city through universal suffrage. But the possibility of approaching the problem from a non-partisan point of view, of divesting it of all State or Federal character, first dimly showed itself in the readiness of leading Democrats like Mr. Tilden, Mr. O'Conor, and Mr. Hewitt, to pursue men of their own party, accused of malfeasance in office, and in the prompt formation of a body composed of men of all parties, like the Committee of Seventy in 1870, to join in the work of reorganizing the city government after Tweed's overthrow. That the idea of non-partisanship, however, made, on the whole, but little impression was shown by the rapidity with which the Committee of Seventy rested from its labors, and with which the difficulties of city government passed out of the public mind. In fact, the Tammany Society, which had gone to pieces after Tweed's downfall, was restored, and in working order, under a new boss, John Kelly, within five years after that event. Moreover, the idea that good city government was only to be had through the triumph of the Republicans at the polls (the boss being always a Democrat), and that the best use that could be made of a city vote, on either side, was to prepare for a Presidential victory, was by 1877 completely in the ascendant once more. Governor Tilden, to his credit be it said, tried to revive the municipal idea by the appointment of a commission in that year to devise a framework of city government, which sat for some months and made a report. But the suggestion of a municipal Board of Audit, to be elected by a slightly limited suffrage, caused the peremptory rejection of its plan by both parties. It cannot be said that during all this time no attempts were made to reform Tammany. A body like Tammany, which exists mainly for the division of spoils, is constantly exposed to desertions caused by dissatisfaction with the rule. of division. All the workers cannot be satisfied, and the ordinary mode of expressing dissatisfaction, in the case of the more powerful, has always been to secede, hire another "Hall," and start another organization, called a "Democracy," distinguished either by the name of the leader of the revolt or by the name of the "Hall" in which the meetings are held. These secessions have always sought to justify their existence to the public by pleading disgust with Tammany corruption and a desire for reform, but as a general rule they always combat Tammany with machinery and agents exactly like those of Tammany itself, and disappear through a "deal" with Tammany, or absorption into Tammany. The Republican attempt instituted by Mr. Arthur when Collector of the Port, to control Tammany through a counter-machine, was of much the same character and has had much the same history. The main result of it was a series of "deals" which admitted the Republican "workers" to a share in the Tammany spoils, but exerted no influence whatever on the city government. The methods of corruption which have led to the explosion to which we owe the attempt at reform, of which these pages are a record, have differed considerably from those employed by Tweed. His chief mode of despoiling the treasury was the raising of bills by tradesmen doing city work. The present Tammany men resorted to much more subtle processes—such as the enormous multiplication of salaried offices, and secret tolls or blackmail levied on all persons having business with the city, or exposed to annoyance at the hands of the police or other officials, and the sale of legislation, or of immunity from legislation, to corporations or firms. As usual, the discovery of such disorders was due to excess. The increasing corruption of the police made concealment no longer possible, and brought about the uprising of which this book is a commemoration. What makes this uprising most worthy of commemoration is the fact that it has effected what appears to be a permanent lodgment in the popular mind of the non-partisan idea of city government. That this is the only possible solution of the tremendous problem of governing a vast concentration of wealth, trade, and commerce, through the votes of a great number of needy people, seems at last, after twenty years of slow growth, to have obtained a firm hold of the intelligence of that portion of the voting population which is most interested |