HOW TAMANNY BALKS REFORM.

Evening Star, Issue 11452, 21 January 1901, Page 7

HOW TAMANNY BALKS REFORM.

New York is »-bubble with a movement against municipal corruption and official partnership with vice. Nest fall the terms of the present Tammany office-holders run out, and great hopes are entertained of organising a citizens' movement to put respectable men in power. Mr Piatt, the "boss" of the Republican machine, who, by refusing to support a citizens' candidate in 1897. and running a third candidate of his own, placed Tammany in power, promises to support a union anti-Tamntany ticket, and various committees have been organised for the purpose of arousing the voters early in the season, and promoting harmony amongst the various elements whose aid is needed to secure victory over Tammany. Great stimulus has been given to the movement by the revelations of workers among the tenement house poor.

Last summer clergymen connected with the Episcopal Pro-Cathedral, which is ;i mission station in the most crowded tenement house section, had occ'asion to complain to the police of the vicious women who were making their homes in respectable tenements, a.nd corrupting the children of their honest neighbors. They were met with ridicule ;ind coarse insult by the polite captain of the district and the inspector, his superior. The Diocesan Convention took The matter up. and instructed Bishop Potter to complain to the city authorities. To avoid the charge of working for political effect, the bishop waited until after the election. Then he sent a letter to the mayor demanding, not that the police suppress vice, which, he said, he knew was not to be expected, but to cease protecting it and interfering with the efforts of those who were working for better moral conditions. On the day of the receipt, of this letter by the mayor, and bsfore its publication, Richard'Croker. the Tammany "boss," seeing the necessity of doing something, made a speech to his subordinates, the Tammany district leaders, telling them that he heard vice flourished in some of their districts, and ordering them to tight it. Then he had Tammany Hall appoint a committee to consider the prevalence of vice, and sailed tor England. The Tammany Committee invited Bishop Potter and other highly respectable citizens to co-operate with them, but they all declined, well knowing that Tammany simply meant to side-track any true reform movement. This has made Mr Croker so angry that since his arrival in England he has denounced iill reformers as hypocrites, whose only object is political. Popular feeling is strongly aroused, and supports the determination of the reform leaders to make no compromise with Tainmany. Meanwhile the police are pretending great activity, and in some quarters closing up illegal resorts. The dive-keepers, however, refuse to interpret the action as anything but a temponuy spasm of faithfulness on the part of the officials who have hitherto protected them. and. with the public at large, the authorities, instead of getting any credit, simply earn additional reproach for their demonstrated failure hitherto to enforce the law, which is shown to be so easy of enforcement when it puits the official purpose. The president of the Police Board a few days ago, after having for two years shut his ears to all complaints and his eyes to all evidence of corruption, admitted that vice flourished because the police permitted it, and that they permitted it only because they were paid to do so. Acting impulsively on "the face value of Mr Choker's orders, he proposed to break up the nefarious practice; but he has since found that his authority was not equal to the task, and has income an apologist for what he now says is an abused force.

The Chamber of Commerce have just formed a committee of fifteen of our most eminent citizens to take general superviswn of the reform movement in an unofficial way, and advise with various bodies to promote unity of effort. It will be months yet before any'anti-Tammany candidate will be determined upon, but there is a lively discussion of names, with ah Understanding that no effort, to settle anything be How attempted. Work is being concentrated upon organisation and education, and tlie winter will 1 e a lively one in local jiblitics, lor ihe Tammany Administration has been so extravagant and so disgraceful iii its patronage of vice and crime that respectable people, icgardless of party, are early aroused to work for its overthrow.

I have hitherto written about, the C-vrrl-r New York Charter and its defects. .\ State Commission of Revision has just finish'! i's labors, and made a report. .It recommends the abolition of the two legislative boiifs, which have been a block to progress, :vi:d '.lie substitution of a single Chamber, wi;h larger membership and somewhat reduced y.r,~ ers. It leaves the mayor's term four ye.'rs. a;ld gives him power of removal of all appn'.nicd heads of departments throughout Hi; term, instead of in the first, six months, as now. The present Board bf Estimate, which a-tthn-rises .public expenditure, is at present co.nposed largely of Ihe mayor's appointees. This is changed Id include rm'y elective officers, like the mayor, the controller, and the presidents of the five boroughs. Thus, tbe mayor's predominance is lessened. The borough presidents receive hew powers, arid iiiany expensive departments are abolished or consolidated. The pbiicc forte is placed under a single Coinmissibfict. appointed ty the mayor, in place of. the present bi-parti-saii Cominissiori of four members, upon iVhich it is impossible to fix responsibility for bad administration-. This scheme must be ratified by lite Republican State Legislature to become operative, and it is doubtful if Mi; Piatt this. He wants tu establish a State police force for the city, but this plan meets with, strenuous opposition, evch among Republicans; as an invasion bf City home rule likely to react in favor of Tahlmany, nhd it is doubtful if be cart carry such a Jaw through a Legislature which is ordinarily absolutely inkier liis cohtfbl.—XfnV- York correspondent bf the Sydney ' Telegraph.'