PASSING OF A GREAT PARTY BOSS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 763, 11 March 1910, Page 4

PASSING OF A GREAT PARTY BOSS.

The death .of ex-Senator.'T, C. Piatt marks the close of • perhaps the greatest political careor.the United. States has , ever known. He. devoted himself early to the mastery of the game ; of r .polities, and rose to be United. States Senator, at the .' comparatively early age- of fortyeight. .His ambitions , were . backed, by an uncommonly keen intelligence, and,he quickly built up a "party machine", of extraordinary efficiency, tor .which . task the art of manipulating legislators' and debauching voters- was practised to per'' lection. .... - ... •.' . It was perhaps his. astuteness in fathoming human nature that;moro than anything else gained .him such- ■ enormous power. The "Evening Post" of New"-.York said of him; not long ago,- "that he could take a high-spirited, '-. conscientious, and capable young man, give him. his head when he became, restless under, the .di*' cipliue. of the depraved parry organisation, promise, him a career of great usefulness and honour, entangle him in one compromise after another, threaten him with extinction unless .absolutely . compliant, and-finally, bind him to the machine, -helpless and hopeless." "-,'.-.■•' The insurance investigations, under th« direct-. and pitiless cross-examination , : by the present Governor- of New York State, Hughes, • elicited from Piatt, without pretence or . hypocrisy, how,- with amazing, smoothness and-cleverness, he toyed with the big corporations, and took from them vast sums of money, all of which ,wm judiciously expended for party/purposes, and- made his will formidable' ana .supreme. It .has been-the relentless and deadly hatred of Piatt lor .Tammany Hall that incited the latter organisation to such a- pitch of daring and infamy,- and from -him Tanimnny learned the art of political cunning as distinct from sheer brutality.' - - Concluding a review of Piatt's achievements on his -retirement- from the Senate last year, the "Evening Post" . further said: tho long,run it is the idealist who, wins, and the gross materialist who goes down to shameful defeat Piatt and Plalf s inlluenco have wrought nothing but harm in State-and Nation. A life so sordid, unilluminatcd by lofty impulse unredeemed by anything resembling, devotion to duty,, can secure, but one. verdict in history;'and; in "this ih'stanco,, Piatt's, contemporaries anticipate the condemnation, of posterity." '. ~'