TAMMANY RULE

Evening Star, Issue 21510, 7 September 1933, Page 2

TAMMANY RULE

SECRET OF ITS SUCCESS OPPOSITION FORGES SPLIT PENALTY FOR HEW YORK The big question of Government in New York City to-day revolves around where rulership lies—whether it is vested in a sovereign people or in Tammany Hall; whether the s City Hall represents nothing more significant in municipal affairs than an exceedingly fine example of early American architecture, while the real business of government is carried forward under the auspices of Mr John F. Curry, Tammany chief, in the pink brick building facing Union square, writes Wyona Dashwood in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’ The question has become so pressing with this largest and richest of the nation’s cities, on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of the political excesses of Tammany overlordship, that the mobilisation against the Tiger’s suzerainty has crystallised into a major offensive nearly five months before the mayoralty election and two months before the campaign is scheduled to open. The New York City mayoralty became an elective offide in 1834, and for 100 vears it has been the cat s-paw of the Tammany Wigwam, save for three successful reform interims. Up to 1910, when John Purroy Mitchel was elected mayor on a fusion ticket, lammany had named two-thirda of the city’s mayors, and .since the Mitchel administration it has held unbroken sway at City Hall . ■ . To accomplish this grip on the city, the subjugation of the Republican Party here was necessary, and Tammany has used two ways to dispose of its enemies—break them or buy them It has not been able to break the Republican Party in New York because its membership includes men who represent the bone and sinew ofth6 party in the State and nation. These men will always form a basic framework around which a powerful political paity can bo built, but, although several of them have served national administrations, they have permitted the machinery of the New York City organisation to come under the control of professional politicians in the five counties. Thus, it is charged by no less an authority than Mr W. Kingsland Macy. E.epublican State chairman, that Jammany has been able, if not to buy. at least to make the Republican organisation in the city innocuous. It has been able to do this through various forms r patronage, so identifying the political fortunes of county and district leaders with those of Tammany that a political upset for the dominant party has become unwelcome even to them. THE MAN RESPONSIBLE. Mr Samuel S. Koenig, New York County Republican chairman, is held by Mr Macy and others high in the party as chiefly responsible for this state of affairs, and the ousting of this leader has become a main objective to the Macy forces, civic organisations, and overburdened taxpayers who seek to set up an honest and aggressive minority party which will defeat Tammany next November They hold that victory is impossible until there has been a Republic house-cleaning, and they cite history to prove this. This history shows that the twenty-year Koenig leadership is a record of fumbling, groping for candidates, advertising small hope of Republican victory. giving potential candidates the best excuse? for declining to accept and failure to support the candidate finally selected. Republican impotence got city-wide acknowledgment in the special mayoralty election last November, when, in the' face of a completely-discredited Tammanv. the Wigwam piled up more than 1.000.000 votes for a candidate whom every voter recognised as the organisation’s martinet, while the Republican standard bearer got but 400,000. Yet the election afforded indubitable proof that Tammany could be beaten, for the total opposition vote against the machine reached, under various headings, nearly 1,000,000. It is held that, had the Republican organisation been an aggressive force, it could have consolidated and amplified this enormous protest. Indeed, the feeling is that, had it shown normal political activity and acumen from the day the legislative investigation into city affairs began down to the election

following Mayor Walker’s resignation, it could have elected its candidate. “ PEOPLE’S PARTY.” 4 Mr Koenig’s eplanation is that “ Tammany Hall has captured the public imagination as the party of the' plain people.” ■ i The bitterness of the Mack-Koemg ■ fight has given rise to a considerable opinion that it react, on ■ fusion chances in a hopeless Republican split, Mr Macy does not hold, this view, however, but believes that only by eliminating the Koenig influence is a fusion victory possible in November and that this alone will ensure an honest mayoralty count. He bases this on the fact that the only protection an anti-Tam-many candidate can have at the polls is through trustworthy Republican election inspectors. The findings of the vote fraud inquiry this spring showed that inspectors had been appointed by Mr Koenig who did not even vote their own ticket. The situation concerns more than New York city. It menaces the balance of political power in the State, which usually is in the Republican column in national elections, and Republican strength in the Congress. The greater city is numerically stronger in voting pojver than the rest of the State. Consequently Mr Macy regards a fighting New York city political unit a chief step in the rehabilitation of the New York State. , REPUBLICAN ORGANISATION. Furthermore, the objectives and methods of Tammany are no different ; from those of the dominant political or- j ganisation in Philadelphia, Chicago, San j Francisco, or any other of the nation s , machine-ridden cities. The only differ- i once lies in the tradition which gives j continuity to Tammany and identifies . it with the names of Aaron Burr, De j Witt Clinton. Martin Van Buren—as ( well as with William Marcy Tweed, 1 •• Honest ” John Kelly, and Richard Croker. This has fostered the belief J that it is indomitable and indestructible, and, ironically enough, its periodic purgings have spread this fiction widely#; A HONEY POT. In the last analysis, however. New York is merely one of the quasi-autg-nomous cities which typify that undei the American system municipal governments have a very different form in ( their actual workings from anything that charters reveal. ' While Tammany leadership to-day is not the crudely rapacious and lawless thing it was in 1870, the years have not altered its underlying theory that the government of the city exists solely for Tammany exploitation. Lavish municipal spending is tho perennial source of its power and profit, and present-day Tammany recklessness with public money is not less dangerous because it is more politic. , . , Municipal ruin lies at the end just as surely as Tweed plunderings came near wrecking the city’s finances. With a population of 942,000 in Tweed s New York, the city bonded debt rose from 36,000,000 dollars in 1869 to 97,000,000 dollars in 1871, and the floating debt incurred was 20,000,000 dollars, bringing the total cost of thirty-two months of that rule to 81,000,000 dollars._. i ) From 1924 to 1930 New York City s funded 'debt rose from 1,955,759,010 dollars to 2,902,095,572 dollars, and its temporary (bonded) debt from 2,022,018,510 dollars to 2,933,145.5/2 dollars. The 1924 city budget was 375,468,000 dollars, and that of 19Jnearly "00,000,000 dollars. . As a result the John P. O Bnen mayoralty is in a financing bog, nitti the Tammany fathers seeking desperately for new revenue sources and dependent for operating expenses upon money borrowed at an exorbitant interest rate. It is a truism that Tammany never , originates reforms; that every bette.i • mont New York City has had was forced i on tho Tammany rulership from out- j side Not infrequently it has rescinded ■ reforms imposed by public opinion, as in the re-establishment this summer of the old-time vice-squad whose disbandment had followed upon Judge Samuel Seabury’s disclosures of framing and corruption in this branch of the city s police service. . . - With even indifferently informed voters aware of all these things and knowing, too, that the organisation is only biding its time until after election to impose new tax burdens to save itself from the necessity of cutting the salaries of its favourites in offico, the Wigwam is face to face to-day with an opposition that demands. Curryism must go.” To date there appears to be but one thing in the way of realisations.or this determination Republican division.

But a united Republican frout promises a rallying of reform forces—ana victory. ,