"TAMMANY GRAFT."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15548, 4 March 1914, Page 11

"TAMMANY GRAFT."

SEARCHING INVESTIGATION.

I from our ows correspondkxt.]

San Francisco, February 3. The District Attorney of New York City was supported by Tammany Hall as well as by .the non-partisan organisation in the election last year, but notwithstanding this fact lie is making a most searching investigation into the activities of " Boss" .Murphy and his associates. It is asserted that the Tammany " boss," through his control over the State Government in the past five years, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars by participating in the profits of highway and barge canal. contracts. In this connection Mr. William Sulzer, who was impeached and dismissed from the governorship of New York last year, testified before the grand jury in New York on the 21st of last month that Murphy threatened to wreck his administration if he did not appoint the " boss's" creature, James E. Gaffney, as Commissioner of Highways. Gaffney has been described as Murphy's chief bagman." The ex-governor at the beginning of his term of office sent a telegram to the State Canal Board asking it to defer action on a contract worth 3,000,000 dollars (£600,000). Murphy summoned him, the governor Sulzer told the grand jury— told him he was interfering where he did not belong, and that " he was not beginning right as governor." When Sulzer resented this, and said he intended to be his own governor, "Boss" Murphy replied: "I see where you'll end up very quick." Sulzer also testified under oath that after the impeachment proceedings had been begun against him Murphy sent him»a message to the effect that enough Senators would "quit" so that there would not be sufficient to carry the vote of impeachment, if Sulzer would conform to the wishes of the " boss."

In the effort to gain some idea of Murphy's profits from his connection with State contracts, the district attorney has summoned officers of a number of New York banks to appear before the grans jury and disclose the accounts of the "boss" and of Gaffney, Ins "bagman" for the last five years. Under, a ruling of the Supreme Court, the banks can be forced to reveal these matters. However, Murphy lias been clever enough to use banks in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for a large part of his accounts, and these banks are not accountable to the New York grand jury. Murphy himself will also be called as a witness, and (subjected to a grilling cross-examination by ihe district attorney.