The Press. TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1898. TAMMANY IN NEW YORK.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 9991, 22 March 1898, Page 4

The Press. TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1898. TAMMANY IN NEW YORK.

Mr. W. T. Stkad has performed a good service to democracy by publishing, in a popular and accessible form, the gist of the Lexow Commission's report on municipal corruption in New York. The ten thousand odd pages of the report would find but few readers in America, and none at all outside it. " Satan's Invincible World Displayed" will find as many readers as any shilling shocker. And " shilling shocker" more aptly describes the Review of Reviews annual than ever it did the most extravagant detective's story of crime and corruption. New York ruled by the Tammany " Boss" is a city honeycombed with vice and iniquity. From its very early days the political octopus, which reaches out its arms from Tammany Hall, has a bad record for unscrupulous dishonesty. It is over sixty years ago that two Tammany leaders "skipped to Europe," after embezzling, the one £15,000, the ohher £250,000. It was '• Boss" William Tweed, however, who first gave to the operations of Tammany a scope that may fairly be be called colossal. In 1869 he secured himself the post of Deputy Street Commissioner, and signalised his first year .of office by issuing fraudulent warrants to the amount of threequarters of a million. Among the methods of corruption practised by him the following appeai"to have been those that commended themselves to his successors as the most profitable. He got an Act passed which made a little newspaper, owned by him the " official organ" of the city Government; and he was then enabled %to draw £200,000 a year as compensation for printing reports of the meetings of the Common Council. He established aJ stationer's company which supplied the city, and on an order for fourteen reams of paper, two dozen penholders, and a few ink pots, worth in all . not more than fifty dollars, a bill for ten thousand dollars was rendered audpaid. In the course of three yeara his " machine " paid half a million of public money to eleven newspapers nominally for advertisements, most of which were never even published. The Eing took from the public one and a half million sterling for furnishing and " repairing " a new Court-house. The sum of £120,000 was drawn for " carpets," though the floors were either bare or covered with oil cloth. Tweed ended his career in Ludley street gaol—protesting to the last that he was an ill-used, • much-injured " honest citizen," anil his mantle fell on " Honest John Kelly " and Richard Croker, who "re-organised and re-formed Tammany."

The report of the Lexow Commission, which sat in 1894, throws a lurid light on the methods of the "re-fornied Tammany." The esaential feature in the Tammany organisation , 'appears to be the taxation of vice. The Hall controls the " saloons," drinking dens and brothels of the great city. The whole police organisation appears to have been its agents, and it was the " usual custom" in every police precinct to levy blackmail according to a fixed scale upon these dens of iniquity. The captain of the precinct collected so many dollars per month as a "protection fee" from each saloon. His collector took a small percentage, the captain then took his share, and the rest he handed generally in an envelope to the inspector. Unless the latter was satisfied with the " boodle" money handed in by any particular captain, that officer would be promptly transferred to another district; and there appears to have been a keen rivalry among police captains to be stationed in precincts like the " Tenderloin," where the dens of iniquity were the most prosperous and the income from protection fees the largest. From the evidence before the Commission it appears that the ransom extorted from the vicious and criminal classes in a simple precinct by the police rarely amounted to less than, a thousand pounds per annum. Under such circumstances it is small wonder that police officers were willing to pay high prices for their commissions. The regular charge for promotion to a captaincy appears to have been about 15,000 dollars; and promotion by merit, without a political " pull"— the New York slang equivalent to our " right colour"—was declared by many witnesses to be practically unknown.

In addition to its control of the saloons and the police Tammany had other important financial resources. The most important of these was the control of the city contracts. The wealthy corporations which enjoy monopolies giving them control of the streets for the purposes of traction, lighting or electrical communication, were the " milch cows" of Tatmnany. These monopolies could only he terminated by the Legislature, and the Legislature could only act in obedience to the party machine. The Tammany boss had therefore merely to intimate to the corporations that their monopoly might be endangered, to make them painfully eager to contribute to the Tammany funds, when their continued existence would be guaranteed by the Legislature—at the expense of the taxpayers. All patronage, it need scarcely be said, was in the hands of Tammany. The ** spoils to the victors " policy is confessed with frank brutality, and even gloried in by several of the leaders. Mr. Roach, for example, declared, under examination, that he considered "to make " room for a friend, to secure a place on

" the city rolls for a political comrade, *.* was ample justification for insisting " upon the removal of any officer who "might happen to be in the way." Commissioner Martin admitted frankly that from 85 to 90 per cent, of all the appointments he had made when he was Chairmau of the Police Board were endorsed, in the first instance, by the district leader of Tammany Hall for the district in which the applicant resided. Under such a system promotion by merit was practically nonexistent. There exists, it is true, in New York, as there exists in New Zealaud a system of civil service examination. But ifc was proved before the Lexow Committee that, by the connivance of a police clerk, it was quite possible for candidates to be returned as having passed such examination, when, in fact, they had never been inside the examination room. " Personation " iin civil service examinations appears to be a regular profession, rewarded by a fixed scale of fees.

But " the worst treason of all " in Mr. Stead's view is the unscrupulous interference in elections exercised by the Tammany " bosses " through their agents—the officers of police and their own " election captains." " Arrest and brutal treatment of Republican voters and scrutineers, invasion of election booths, forcing of Tammany Hall, posters on Republican voters, general intimidation of voters by the police, illegal registration and ' repeating , aided and knowingly permitted by the police." Such is the Lexow's Committee summary of the means by which Tammany has made "the great city of New York as impotent to use the ballot box to protect itself as if it were a city in the dominions of the Great Mogul." In the general election in 1893 the Commission found, in the case of almost every ballot box, " there were found more ballots in the box than the clerk's number showed to have been delivered," and in a great number of districts more than the registration. Under connivance of the police extra papers had been " stuffed " into the boxes. Iv one district 5000 out of 12,770' votes counted were fraudulent; in another 567 ballots were found in the box, though there were but 508 names on the register. Iv some election districts there was a keen. rivalry as to who should vote " dummy" on most names, and the man who won the honours was an ex-convict, who Voted eighteen times in two election districts. And, be it remembered by those who clamour for extension of the municipal franchise, that this sink of corruption, this great metropolis of the land where modern Democracy had its birth, is governed in municipal matters on the basis of universal franchise. New York may well "despair of Democracy," and sigh for a clean respectable despotism.

We have no wish to point a. moral aud adorn a tale by suggesting fchafc New Zealand is yet within appreciable lengths of this state of corruption. Bat can au impartial observer of our public life say with confidence that we have not got our feet on tha~road to it? One cannot read this book without the uncomfortable feeling that the Tammany microbe has got into the blopd- of our body politic, and , that it is a particularly beastly and evil-looking niicrobp. Oar politicians make no more secret' than Mr. Choker of their belief in the " spoils to the victors' policy." More than one of them have on public platform confessed their. adherence to the doctrine of " colour." The C adman-Bees affair ; the Banking Committee business; the Pomohaka episode; the Anglo-Colonial Syndicate; the influences brought to bear during the Wellington election— all these thing 3 have an unhealthy tinge of Tammany about them. The Police Commission will have its story to tell of promotions by " pull;" and though personation is, we trust, as yet unknown in our Civil Service examinations, appointments are by no means invariably guided by the results. And Mr. Seddon is not without some ambition to become, on a smaller scale, a Tammany Boss. There is happily, however, this difference between New Zealand and New York. The American people are so callous to corruption that, despite the disclosures, they have elected Van Wyck their TsarMayor, and allowed Tammany Bosses to boss them once more. The people of New Zealand are far from being callous to corruption yet, as' they showed in Wellington a few days back ,* and they intend, we may be sure, to choke the Tammany microbe before it has time to poison the whole system.