The Growth of Corruption in American Cities

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 21, 24 November 1909, Page 42

The Growth of Corruption in American Cities

Tammany’s Control of New York by Professional Criminals—A. Study of a New Period of Decadence in the Popular Government of Great Cities

By

GEORGE KIBBE TURNER

A recent cable announced that Tammany had icon the Neu? York municipal elections once more. No more amazing story of corruption in civilised countries can be told than the story of what exists in New York to-day. If you arc interested read the following.

FROM 1870 to 1890 the Democratic party was in absolute and natural control of New York City. By reason of great changes in the population, its natural popular majority then left it. From 1894 to the present day—fifteen years—it has been in charge of New York two-thirds of the time. In all of that period, with one doubtful exception, it has never had one majority of the popular vote at a city election that was not obtained through the votes of trained bands of “repeaters,” composed largely of professional criminals. The history of this artificial control of a population of four million people and an annual expenditure of £30.090.000, and its disastrous results, is striking and important. From the time of the immigration after the Great Famine up to 1880 the Irish ])easants had lain in a solid mass from the East River to the Five Points. By 1880 there were 150,000 of them there. Just north of them lay the German peasants—loo.ooo more; and further north and west hundreds of thousands more of these immigrants and their children—new peoples, in a strange land, groping darkly, with new and strange conditions of life. In all, the European immigrants and their sons and daughters made three quarters of the city. These people —not the little froth of life in gay hotels and theatres and on Broadway—made the real New York -—and make it still. For fifty years it has been a city of European peasants and their close descendants. In the ’Bo’s the Irish slums on Cherry Hill ami in the Five Points were as foul as any in the world. The population, after stewing in its tenements for thirty years, was down to the dregs—the weakest and the worst. Scores of tenement saloons, reeking “dead house’’ groggerries beneath the level of the sidewalks, and sailors’ dance-halls, with names unspeakble, lined the streets; in every shadow bands of soft-fleshed young thieves—good, strong Irish peasant stock, rotted by the unhealthy city life—whistled and watched and waited for the drunken labourer reeling home by night. Out of this place twenty-five years ago came the most remarkable and probably the strongest politician in New York to-day. A Charge and a Denial. In April. IRR9, Inspector Thomas Byrnes, chief of detectives, who for fifteen years herded the criminal population of New York like sheep, asked the legislature for a peremptory bill giving him power to arrest on sight all criminals whom he found in New York on the day of the Centennial celebration in May. After the bill had passed the Senate unanimously, he learned that it was being held up in the Assembly by a young slum politician and assemblyman who owned a chain of saloons through the Five Points and the Bowery. Inspector Byrnes then made this public statement: “Timothy D. Sullivan, better known as ‘Dry Dollar’ Sullivan, associates in New York with thieves and disreputable citizens. Peter Barry, one of the leaders of the famous Whyo gang, was on* of his boon companions. • Barry is no\f serving seven years in State's Prison. Tommy McAveny. general thief, is another chum of Sullivan. .Some time ago, v hen Tommy Nichols and John ( lark were arrested for burglary, Sullivan tried his hardest to get Cottrell, one of jny detectives, to make it light for them. Sullivan also associated with .Johnny Hand. Danny Lyons. .James, alias Figs, and Lyons, Dan Driscoll. hanged for murder, and dozens of other criminals.” The professional criminal of that time, as appears from the list of names in

Byrnes’ statement, was Irish; his specialty was thieving, burglary, or crimes of violence. He was the product of an unfortunate time and place, heedless, dissipated, and quite unorganized. Ou the day after Byrnes had made these remarks Sullivan arose on the floor of the Assembly and answered him, detailing his boyhood acquaintance with some of these criminals, and telling the story of his life. He said in part: “If Mr. Cottrell or any other policeman says I ever approached him to make it light for any thief, he is a liar. If Inspector Byrnes says I did, he is a liar. . . . My father died when I was four years old, leaving me the second youngest of four children. My mother struggled along as best she could, but when I was between six and seven years old, not quite seven, I had to go downtown and help to keep the rest of us together • —sell newspapers and one thing and another. ... I can prove that since I was seven years old until the day before I came to the Legislature, I never lost two days’ work in my life. Now, I do not think I have had much time to associate with thieves.” Sullivan’s speech, delivered with great earnestness in the hoarse vernacular of the Five Points, was a novelty, and made a deep impression upon the Assembly. Strong Republican members shed tears in open session. Byrnes merely reiterated his charges, and said succinctly: “He defends the only days of his life when he made an honest living.” A New Kind of Politics in New York. Sullivan's own district did not accept his statements as literally as did the members of the Legislature, partly, no doubt, because it was familiar with the ordinary daily duties of a slum politician, which ninety per cent, of the members of the Legislature did not dream of. The constituents of these men are not interested in the tax rate, for they have no property. Hundreds of them in the course of each year face the sharp necessity of evading or escaping the penalties of the law. The local politician is the one who must negotiate this. The only

question is how far he will go in doing it. In the ’Bo’s the professional thief was not generally thought of sufficient consequence to work for. Sullivan represented most directly his own election district at Five Points, at that time perhaps the* worst slum in the world. llis chief saloon was opposite the Tombs Police Court. Policemen and court officials were in and out

of it, and one of the clerks of the court was said to be a silent partner in the enterprise. The Five Points grinned at Sullivan’s speech in the Legislature, and were much pleased. It is familiar in the Bowery to-lay. An old member of the Whyo gang of criminals, with whom Sullivan associated with as a child, said less than three months ago — “There was a new kind of politics started in New York with that speech. The politicians seen right after that that the man who was ready to come out and take a chance for us fellers would get the votes.”

The Criminal Metropolis of America. The Bowery, when “Dry Dollar” Sullivan became its leader, was not a successful Democratic Assembly District. Its chief underlying business was then, as now the furnishing of liquor, prostitution clothes, and lodging to vagrants, thieves and rough transient labourers. In the early ’9o’s, it had the worn, hang-dog aspect natural to market-places of this kind. In the middle of the ’9o’s, however, all this was changed. The Bowerv had organised politically. This organisation was in two main divisions. The head gamblers and the merchants of prostitution, then, as now, were election district: captains, who brought out the vote; and the vagrants, minor gamblers, and thieves furnished the voting “repeaters.” The Bowery Assembly district was very soon the banner Democratic district of New York. Its peculiar business interests grew in direct proportion to its vote. Customers were robbed and assaulted boldly in its saloon market-places of prostitution. Western gamblers and swindlers commenced to work. Two men with thieves’ names dropped in from other cities and established national headquarters for yegg burglars —the most dangerous criminals of the present time —who were then just coming into prominence. These men, it was found, made especially good “repeaters.” The Eagles, a great national organization of sporting men, bartenders politicians, thieves, and professional beggars, made Sullivan their head. . And the Bowery became the recognised metropolis of American criminals, as it is to-day. The New Politician from the Red Light District. About the same time another population of criminals was learning the les-

son of political self-government. The stream of Jewish immigration, which started in the ’Bo’s, had concentrated! itself upon the district just east of the Bowery, driving first the German and then tire Irish inhabitants before it. In this new Oriental population were tens of thousands of adult males who were unmarried or had left their families abroad. A great opportunity offered' itself for supplying this section with fifty-cent prostitution—which was taken up first by the region about the Bowery, a-nd later by the members of the new population themselves. Once having entered into this business, Jewish commercial acumen developed it ta great proportions. Starting in a email way in the late ’Bo’s, it grew until at its height a decade later at least three or, four thousand men and women were engaged in it. By this time the place was notorious across the world as "the Red: Light district. This Red Light district brought a new f.nd very important Democratic politician into New York—the pimp, or retailer ofi women, who grew up in this district in numbeis undreamed of in the previous' history of the city. The active Tammany managers of this —the Eighth—district ■ were large operators in the sale of prostitution. An organisation of criminals, like that iri the Bowery district, conducted the “repeating” and intimidation of voters at the polls. These men were in three separate groups—the pimps, led by a saloon-keeper, now an election district captain in the Eighth Assembly District; the gamblers led by a gambler, and ex-thief named Sonny Smith; and! the thieves, led by a thief named Lollia Myers, now in Sing Sing. These gangs were used, at first, fully as much for the intimidation of the Jewish voter as for “repeating.” The Jew makes the most; alert and intelligent citizen of all the great immigrant races that have populated New York. He was a city dweUeS

(before the hairy Anglo-Saxon came up lout of the woods, and every fall ths (East Side resolves itself into one great political debating society. In spite of all the efforts of the' organised Jewish criminals in this district, it repeatedly gave a slight Republican plurality. But if the Jewish criminals were not able to carry their district politically, they were by no means refused the rejHU'd for their services through Tammanjf

influence. Their organisation for the defeat of justice, called the Essex Market Court gang, was one of the chief scandals of the Lexow investigation. Its headquarters were in a saloon—operated first Iby a Jew who called himself '‘.Silver Dollar” .Smith, and later by Martin Engel, the leader of the district —which was situated opposite this court in much tho same relative position as that of “Dry Dollar” Sullivan’s old saloon to the Tombs Court. Here Sullivan appeared again. He was one of the strong political friends of the leaders in this district and was publicly advertised, and as the vice-president of the Max Hockstim’ Association, the society of politicians, pimps, and thieves, which was the leading social and political organisation there. Out of the Bowery and Red Light districts had come the new development in New York politics—the great voting power of the organised criminals. It was a notable development, not only for New York, but for the country at large. And no part of it was more noteworthy than the appearance of the Jewish pimp, a product of New York politics, who lias vitiated more than any other single agency, the moral life of the great cities of America in the past ten years. In many ways the.se gangs stand in tho aatne relation to New York as the notfl-

Hous Apaches, composed of almost exactly the same kind of criminate, do to Paris. “ When times are right,” said a criminal a few months ago, “they go out every afternoon just like mechanics goin’ to work.” At about the opening of Mayor Van Wyck’s administration in 1898, the big body of East Side criminate began to push its operations out of the comparatively bare field of the Jewish district. This was already badly overworked by the young thieves who swarmed on Grand and Hester streets, where even streetcar conductors were trained pickpockets. So, with the return of Tammany Hall, the pickpockets one by one made their entrance into the rich general field in the Sixth Avenue shopping district. The more aggressive pimps placed their women in the rich general market-place of the West-Side, notorious across the world as the Tenderloin, and in the large markets about Fourteenth Street, operated by active Democratic political workers in the vicinity of Tammany Hall. The Forming of the Great East Side Gang. About 1898, there drifted into the district from the section of Corlear’s Hook on the East River, long famous for Irish gangs of thieves and river pirates, a young Irishman with a monkey-like face who became known as “Monk” Eastman. He was, a pimp, a thief, and a trainer and manager of young Jewish pickpockets. He has a staff of them, whom he sent out over the city to steal. In a similar way, he sent out decoy pigeons trained to lure away the flocks of the East Side to his premises. He was a'so an ugly fighter, and not afraid to use a revolver—an accomplishment less common then than at the present time. Before the election in the fall of 1901, in the Eighth District word was sent out to all the criminal population of the East Side that “Monk” Eastman was the sole leader of the election “repeaters,” tha# every- criminal was expected to be out early on election day and do his part, and that in return the politicians would stand for “anything but murder” from the criminate. At six o’clock election morning there were from ten to fifteen “repeaters” in line at every- election booth in the district. That year the Democrats lost, but they never lost again. From that time on the real history of the great East Side gang really began. It was something entirely new in the history of the city. Criminally considered, it was not a gang at all, like the old Irish gang, but a -series of gangs. Yet the members of this series were bound together as a whole, generally with one leader. The reason was entirely- political. The leader was the go-between—-who offered votes to the politician, and who offered political protection in time of trouble to the criminal. The time had come, as an old criminal expressed it, when “the gang needed the politician, and the politician must have the gang.” “ Monk ” Eastman, Political Bandit. “Monk” Eastman was the first general leader of the East Side gang. He was first the agent who in times of need’ could always be appealed to by the criminal for political influence with the police or courts. In addition, he established himself, with a few followers, as a sortof licensed bandit on the East Side. He compelled thieves, gamblers, and operators of disorderly houses to pay- him a share of their profits. He also furnished for hire small gangs of “strong-arm” men—to employers for assaulting strikers, to unions for assaulting “scabs,” and to individuals to punish private grievances. He was arrested dozens of times —once for murder, and frequently- for serious assaults; but he always eseaped. In July, 1903, when arrested on the charge—which first gave him general city-wide notoriety—of having led a band of hired thugs in brutally assaulting a coachman of David Lamar, at Long Branch, New Jersey, he exclaimed to the policeman taking him: “You’re arresting me, huh? Say, you want to look where you're goin’. I cut some ice in this town. 1 made half the big politicians of New York.” A State senator, “Tom” Grady, defended Eastman, and he was acquitted, as usual. But in April of 1904 he was arrested for robbery and shooting at officers in the great city highway of Forty-second .Street, and the evidence wa« such that he was sent to prison for ten years. He had relied once too often upon Iris political influence.

The Life and Murder of “ Kid ” Twist. Eastman was succeeded as chief of the East Side criminate by a much more acute leader —a hatchet-faced young Jew called “Kid” Twist. Eastman could be counted upon for some four or five hundred “repeaters.” Twist could easily raise double that number—each man being good for from five to ten votes at election time, and from ten to twenty at primaries. Under Twist the East Side gang assumed its present position—the strongest in New York. Twist organised the tribute from the district on a calm, cold-blooded business basis, one particular stroke of commercial genius being to compel all the small refreshment and confectionary- stores of the district to buy a so-called celery tonic, which he manufactured. These refusing his demands he punished by breaking up their establishments, and—according to well-settled general belief on the East Side—by murdering them. At least two murders on the East Side are taken for granted, by every- one familiar with conditions, to have been directed by him, though probably carried out by a lieutenant. He was arrested for both of these murders and for dozens of other offences, but like Eastman, was always discharged. After ruling for four years, without one practical interference by the law, he was finally- executed according to the unwritten law of the criminal gangs, in May of a. year ago. He and his lieutenant, “Cyclone Lewis,”' were shot and killed at Coney Island by Louis Poggi, a member of the Italian Five Points gang located south and west of the Bowery. Twist is believed, by those in a position to know, to have left a fortune of from £ 10,(HID to £20,000 accumulated during his leadership by his careful business management. Such things as this occur in a city like New York only through » jM'litical license to commit crime.

The Red Lights Come Into the Fourth Ward. The first marked triumph of the gang of Italian “repeaters” came in the fall of 1901, when Tom Foley, now sheriff of New York, decided to run against Paddy Divver, the old-time saloon-keeping Tammany leader of the Second Assembly District. Foley was vigorously backed by big Tim Sullivan. The issue made by Divver was expressed on banners hung across the streets of the district: “Don’t vote the red lights into the old Fourth Ward.” The old order was overwhelmed by the new. The new “repeaters”—largely young Italian eliminate—swarmed over the line from the Sullivan Bowery district. The polls opened in the afternoon, as early as two o’clock in the morning the lines of the invaders formed before the polling places. They were thoroughly drilled. A regular commissary- department furnished them with breakfast and luncheon, whisky, cigars, and even benches to sit on. The old-time Irish residents and “repeaters” howled with impotent rage. They were outnumbered, held back from the polls, and in many instances calmly blackjacked. The pollen

did not interfere. And the final vote was over three to one for Foley. Soon after this the prophecy of the Divver banners was fulfilled. A large business in fifty-cent prostitution for Italians was started in the Second Assembly Distr*yt (

employing 750 to 1000 women. ThertJ had been a market for Bailors in this section—rough, drunken, hardened wo* men hanging over half doors. This was?" failing away with the dying of the trader of the old elipper ships. The new instif tutions were different; nothing disorders ly; merely the slight and pathetic figure of a shawled Italian girl standing in 1 li<f doorway of rickety old-time brick denees. 1 The Rise and Abdication of Rani Kelly. | Immediately after the success of thd Foley-Divver primaries in the Seeon® Assembly District, Paid Kelly, the leadetf of the Italian gang, was arrested fog assaulting and robbing a man on thg street. The case was so flagrant his discharge could not be effected; buff it was so manipulated before it came to sentence that for an offence that shouldt have cost him from ten to twenty Kelly got nine months. i , Kelly, at the end of his brief senteneej started in earnest to build up his Pant Kelly Association. This included not only thieves and pimps, but occasional, criminals in such rough labouring classed as the teamsters. It had branches inHarlem and New Jersey, and at one timefKelly claimed to have two thousand; members. This was no doubt an e\-e aggeration, but at the height of his power Kelly could unquestionably furnish a thousand "repeaters” in cases of emergency. Kelly pointed with pride to< the fact that Timothy 1). Sullivan—“the Big Feller,” as he was now called—-was an honorary member of this association. Meanwhile Kelly received sufficient/ financial backing to obtain and operate! a vile saloon on Great Jones Street justt west of the Bowery, probably the most; notorious place in the city at that; time. He ruled the gang from here until 1905, when dissension arose in his following, and the southern end of it split off entirely and formed the FivCt Points gang, with rendezvous in Foley’s! Assembly district. Two attempts werer made to kill Kelly on two consecutive nights in the last of November, evidently by the seceders. In the first*, “Eat-’em-up” McManus, Kelly's ‘•bouncer,” was murdered, and in the second a youth named Harrington—the latter, in Kelly’s saloon. A patrolman, passing on his rounds in the early morning; when the place was usually full of light and noise, saw it dark and deserted. He entered it, and found the legs of the dead man slicking out of a closet. The only semblances of life in the big silent room were a lurking cat, a loudticking dock, and the usual portrait of “the Big Feller” —which appears like a. bland heathen divinity on the walls of all the Bowery dives—glooming out into the dark.

A New Spectacle in Popular Government. This is the history, roughly outlined, of the two great tribes of criminals who ifurnish the nucleus for the gangs of trained “repeaters,” with which the element now ruling Tammany Hall controls the city of New York. These two gangs could probably not furnish at best over 2500 “repeaters,” or 20,000 illegal votes, at the most strenuous election; while Tammany, undoubtedly gets 50,000. The old method of voting the zealous officeholder, or the venturesome vagrant, or saloon dependent, or such gamblers as are still at work or hope to get to work in the city, is naturally still in operation to a considerable extent. There are plenty of other smaller gangs of “repeaters,” too, —like the Irish gang of “Humpty” Jackson in the East Side district of Churlie Murphy, leader of Tammany Hall; and the similar gang in the Irish tenement district on the West Side; and the large gangs of inter-State “repeaters” brought in from New Jersey and Philadelphia. But all of these —local and foreign—gravitate naturally toward the rendezvous of the two great local gangs below Fourteenth Street, the recognised centres of both the criminal and the illegal voting population of New York and its vicinity. No stranger spectacle has ever appeared than the present organisation of this criminal population of New York as professional fraudulent voters. The two thirds of a million registered votes of the city are divided so closely along conventional party lines that only a. slight balance is needed to secure control of the government. This balance is furnished by these organised criminals, trained to manufacture fraudulent ivotes at elections and primaries. And by this means not only the city but the party organisation is held in absolute control. The government of the second largest eity in the world, when the system is in full working order, depends sit bottom upon the will of the criminal population — principally thieves and pimps. The eighteenth-century governments founded on mercenary troops offer mild examples of social decadence compared with this. The Mysterious “ Big Feller.” It was at this time that Big Tim Sullivan began to take his present strange position in New York politics as the mysterious “Big Feller,” looming up in the dusky background of the city’s life; not connected in any direct way as manager of a Tammany district, yet probably the strongest politician in Tammany Hall, excepting none. His Word is law to thousands ; and his mere appearance on the street in company With a man establishes that man's credit and reputation solidly with the lower political world of New York. But usually he keeps himself aloof, sees few people, does business by word of mouth only, and is represented by half a dozen lieutenants business and political. Only Occasionally does his name come to the surface in the business world—connected With a chain of salacious theatres, with penny slot-machines, with moving-pic-ture enterprises, with race-tracks. But whenever business is mentioned he quickly draws back out of public sight. He never neglects the Bowery, howlever. Once a year, at Christmas time, he feeds and shoes the professional vagrant—“the poor, unfortunet fellers”— who, with the “unfortunet woman,” forms the chief stock pathetic theme of the Bowery politician as characteristic as the patter of the professional beggar. In the State Senate, where he now is, he introduces bills for a Columbus holiday, to the great pleasure of his Italian constituents; and bills to remove clubs and blackjacks from the police, in which the vagrants and criminals are much interested. The Chief Issne in New York Elections. The dhief issue in 1903, as in every election in New York, with one exception, for the past fifteen years, was Whether there should be, a “wide-open town”—that is, whether vice and profitable crime should be allowed in the city. The only practical way of considering professional crime is to view it from the (standpoint of the criminal. At bot-

tom it is merely one method of getting a living, and the criminal always sees it as such. As a matter of fact, civilisations develop professional crime exactly as they develop all business. New conditions create new opportunities. In the past decade bank burglary has died cut, killed largely by the electrical protective devices and by private police systems. The great natural developments have come along the lines of the retail sale of prostitutes, and of small burglaries and picking pockets. The chief factor that makes criminal business profitable or unprofitable, and closes or opens fields of enterprise, is the pressure of the law. From the viewpoint of the professional criminal it is a curious fact, to Which he cannot reconcile himself, that the most serious and effective laws in the past ten years have been directed against offenecs that he cannot understand to be criminal at all, Buch as prize-fighting and gambling on the horse-races; while, with one exception, the laws against selling prostitution are a joke. It is not possible, for instance, to punish any man for the most degraded of all crimes, according to the social code of the criminal world, -—that of living on the earnings of a prostitute,—by more than six months in gaol; quite aside from the fact that it is almost impossible to punish these men at all. The same is true of all dealers in prostitution and all prostitutes. The result of this ill-balanced criminal code is that the criminal himself is forced into business that he considers beneath him. This has been specially true of gamblers. Since the enforcement of Governor Hughes’ excellent bill against race-track betting last year, many men who formerly earned their living on the race-track have become pi nips. A Purely Political Business. Prostitution, the present mainstay of the criminal class in New York, is now almost entirely a political business; that is, its affairs are conducted almost exclusively by men who are active lieutenants or “repeaters” at the polls for the Democratic organisation. This has come about by a perfectly logical development. For years this business was conducted in New York—as in most American cities—in large private 'houses. These were closed up, first by the breaking up of the Bed Light district by the Low administration, and later by the raids of the District Attorney’s office upon the Tenderloin in 1907. “The women were necessarily driven from the streets, ot into notorious saloons. Since the early ’9o’s a large part of the women in houses had practically been owned by the French maquereaux —importers of Frenchwomen from the international wholesale markets for prostitution in Paris. These men had no direct connection with New York politics; many of them could not speak English. In a business that required continual political influence they were constantly worsted by their business rivals -—-the native-born Jewish and Italian operators who had strong political influence as “repeaters.” The raids of 1907 were a last severe blow to the Frenchmen. They were unable to afford proper political protection to their women when they were exposed to the vicissitudes of work on the street, and they moved out in large numbers. An expert criminal in this line stated recently that of over four hundred Frenchmen whom he knew personally in the Tenderloin before the 1907 raids, not one hundred are active now. Their business lias been taken over by the Jewish and Italian operators, who now form respectively something like two thirds and an eighth of the men in this business here. The large dealers in prostitution—• the owners of the notorious saloon mar-ket-places—tare still more clearly political workers. Practically all of the saloons and so-ealled hotels in the large cheap market around Chatham Square and the Bowery are in the hands of men who are active political workers, or leaders of gangs of election “repeaters”; on Fourteenth-street the same condition exists; and in both of these markets, the hangers-on and waiters, who are generally pimp-, are active “repeaters.” In the large markets in the Tenderloin more of the owners contribute money than active work to the political campaigns, but the waiters are in exactly the same position ns those in the other districts, as, in fact, they are throughout thss town, as far as Coney Island. Flection and registration days see a scanty outfit of waiters in the lower places of amusement in Coney Island, or,

in fact, in any of the notorious saloons in New York City. A Court Dealing with 150,000 People. The operation of this great criminal business, in which, directly or indirectly, certainly from 10,000 to 20,000 persons are engaged in New York City, depends clearly upon the law, and upon its interpretation by the local criminal courts. The relations existing between it and these courts, as revealed by the hearings before the Page Commission, necessarily constitute a matter of great public interest. The lowest court of these—the magistrates’ court—has entire charge over the offence of prostitution, which•under the archaic law of New York, is classed as a minor misdemeanour. The magistrates’ court constitutes one of the most extraordinary and important institutions of New- York. Last year, before the magistrates of Manhattan and the Bronx alone, there were 175,009 arraignments of not less than 150,000 individuals—as many people as live in t'he large cities of Denver or Toledo. There are sixteen magistrates—eight of whom are sitting at one time in the nine courts that take care of this business. The time allowance for the hearing of each case averages a little over six minutes: court clerks quote an unofficial record of one hundred cases disposed of in one hundred minutes; and the official records show from three hundred to four hundred cases in one session of the night court. Perhaps nowhere in the ■world is there such an example of slapdash judicial action as must necessarily be given by these judges. The amount of business thrust upon them is a scandal in itself. The ease with which minor court officials, like count clerks, with political affiliations, can minimise offences, or mislead a judge dealing with this amount of business, needs no explanation. For the period of a little less than six months, extending from June 5 to November 28 of last year, the New York Police Department made a compilation of statistics from finger-print records of the prostitutes arrested and brought before the magistrates’ courts from the Tenderloin police precinct, covering the territory between Twenty-seventh and Forty-second streets north And south, and between Fourth and Seventh avenues east and west. Twelve hundred and twenty-eight individual women of the street were arrested in that comparatively small territory. The total number of arrests was 3145. These women arrested were, with negligible exceptions, perfectly well known to the police, who naturally never take the chance of arresting a woman who may be innocent. The magistrate dealing with these cases, if 'he finds the defendant guilty, has the option of imposing a small fine or a short imprisonment. Of the 3145 cases recorded, only 411, or 13 per cent, were given prison sentences. The reis't, all but a small number, were either discharged or fined from one to ten dollars, and turned loose immediately upon the streets. The Magistrate and the Streets. Practically all of these cases now come before the night court, where each magistrate has taken his turn at sitting. The number and conduct of the women in the streets of New York depends entirely upon what magistrate is sitting in the night court. There are two Tammany leaders ot Assembly districts who are police magistrates:—an ex-rough, known as “Battery Dan” Finn, and J. J Walsh, a former attorney for the strongly organised retail liquor dealers’ association. When these two men are on t'he bench of the nigh! court, the streets swarm with prostitutes. It is not difficult to trace the main political chain that extends from, the smallest political worker interested in the. sale of prostitution up to the judge’s bench. The Mayor of Now York—who is said to appoint more judges than any other man in the United States—‘has in two thirds of the last twenty years owed Ills nomination and election to the active vote-getting machinery of Tammany Hall. Three-quarters of the present board of magistrates were appointed by Mayor McClellan, most of these in the earlier days of his mayoralty, when he was closer to Tammany Hall than now. A Criminal Never Convicted. 'Now, if the interests of the prostitute arc excellently safeguarded under the administration of the law by the magis-

trates’ courts, the business of her political protector, the pimp, is doubly At most he is only subject to a six months’ penalty as a common vagrant. But, practically speaking, he can never be arrested at all, because the only valid evidence against him must come from the woman who supports him, who neither desires nor dares to testify against him. There are thousands of these men in New York, and their convictions do not reach a score a year. The matter can be summed up best in the testimony of Police-Commissioner Bingham before the Page Commission. “We cannot get these men. If they could be caught, the whole ‘white slave’ trade would drop, and the whole social evil be intensely ameliorated, because these men work in a regular trust.” Saloons Punished, One-fifth of Ono Per Cent. The disposition of all cases against liquor dealers by this court —and practically all criminal cases against New York saloons come within its province—has long been familiar as one of the moist notorious perversions of justice in the eity. The court is overcrowded with work, and by a settled policy the consideration of saloon cases is delayed until after other business. In addition, the clerk of t'he court, a Tammany Assembly district leader, C. W. Culkin, who recently resigned after having been charged by District Attorney Jerome with the improper handling of court funds, has had charge of making out the calendar. The assistant clerks under him, who do the active work, have exercised their power of postponing cases, or otherwise interfering with the court docket, to such an extent that two officials have been removed for this cause during the past year. One of the present judges on this bench is Lorenz Zeller, a former attorney of the powerful New York brewers’ association. During t'he year from May 1, 1907. to April 30, 1908, there were 2857 arrests, at 2026 saloons, which came before, the courts. Among these there were twentytwo easel- —all but four of disorderly houses —where there were forfeitures of licenses; of these, seventeen came in cases which were so delayed that the conviction took place in April, when the. licence had but a few more days to run. That is to say, out of the brave showing of 2857 arrests under the excise law, only five, or less than one fifth of one per cent, received any punishment, of the slightest consequence. Criminal Courts Useless Against Political “ Dives.” Several excellent organisations are concerned in prosecuting cases against disorderly saloons in the hope of cleaning up the city. One of the most important of these is the Committee of Fourteen, which has directed its efforts against the places known as Raines Law hotels. The secretary of this, F. H. Whitin, presented to the Page Commission a table showing dearly the method by which offenders of this class evade the law by having their eases postponed in the Special Sessions Court until the forfeiture of their licenses means practically no loss to them. Finally, as a result of the persistent failure of energetic efforts of the Police Department and other agencies to secure justice against the most notorious mar-ket-places of prostitution in New York, actions in cases of this class have been transferred bodily from the criminal to the civil courts, where conviction also carries with it the forfeiture of the saloon license and the bond. In other words, the system of criminal courts having proved itself utterly useless in dealing with this class of crime, the police and State officials have been driven to a legal subterfuge in another court in order to maintain decent conditions in New York City. The Modern Organisation of Thieves. The organisation to prevent the administration of justice In the second general class of crimes in which “repeaters” are engaged, proceeds along different lines. These crimes—of thieving and robbery—constitute felonies. They are passed from the magistrate's court to the grand jury and the court of General Sessions. In this last court they are given jury trials under single judges, who are elected by popular vote. All but. one of the present judges are Tammany Hill nominees. Their natural obligations to their party weigh little with some of them, but greatly with others.

It is not generally realised how thoreughly organised for defence certain large classes of criminal- are. The statement, for instance, of Magistrate Corrijnan Ix-fore the Page Commission, that “one attorney comes pretty near representing all the good pickpockets in .New York,” would not seem probable to the average man; yet it is certainly true. It is also a notorious fact that in bhe four busiest magistrates’ courts of the city there are professional ‘‘fixers,” well known by name or nickname to every one familiar with New fork courts, .whose business is to pervert justice by Teaching the complainant, witnesses, police or court officials, through one means or another. And in a class above these stands a notorious Ea t Side Jew, ostensibly a diamond merchant, who is a '‘fixer” on a national seale, travelling across the country to help big thieves whenever they are in trouble. Professional crime, like all other lines of enterprise, is compelled, by the great modern tendency of business, to organise. It has done so as thoroughly as it could. There arc seven distinct lines of deforce to which, in New York, a trained felon can resort to escape imprisonment. The first is the suppression of testimony of either complainant or witnesses, or the manufacture of false testimony. The others are the use of money or influence iwith the police, with the magistrates’ courts, the grand jury, the District Attorney’s office, the petit jury, or the presiding judge. Tn every Assembly district in the criminal sections of the city, there is some agent of the Democratic jrolitical machine, watc'hing continually to help the criminal escape justice at every 6ta.ge, from the magistrates’ court up. Convicted Criminals Double in Eight Years. The vicious circle of New York politics is closed by this notoi/ous laxness, of the criminal courts toward the professional offender. The safer the crime, the more criminals; the more criminals, t'he more votes for the element that now rules Tammany Hall; the more votes for these leader.-, the more certainly they influence the maladministration of justice. From the election district captain, who signals t'he criminal into the polling booth, to the district leader on the bench or at the head of the workhouse or the court machinery, the hand of not one Tammany politician touches the machinery of justice but to retard or pervert its action. And .so, although the forces of the police and the District Attorney’s -departments are bent to cheek the. recurrent ‘'waves of crime” that fill the newspapers, crime increases. Tn the past eight years the number of persons convicted for burglary, assault, and larceny on Manhattan Island has doubled, while the population has increased less thaw twenty-five per cent. In the meanwhile, all kinds of cures are cried aloud to the public for its defence, except the obvious one—the cheeking of the operations of , this ghastly merry-go-round of politics. -More police, more gaols, more private organisations to enforce t'he law are desperately called for. No one arises to draw the logical connection between the safety with which crime is committed and the increase of the criminal population; or to point out that under existing law.-’, as-administered by New York courts, the pimp is entirely safe, the prostitute has a one-in-fifty chance of punishment, the market-places of prostitution and headquarters for criminals have been practically immune; and that of all persons arrested for burglary or thieving, one in four is convicted and one in six imprisoned. The Great Larry Mulligan Ball. Yet open advertisement of the exact Condition of affairs is continually slapped in the face of the publie. The Lawrence Mulligan Association, for example, the political club of Big Tim Sullivan’s step brother, with its annual tribute from the city’s criminals and prostitutes at its “grand civic ball!” N> other single episode could dompre'hrnd the whole situation like this. That night—the eve of St. Patrick's Day—the streets of the Tenderloin lie vacant of its women; the eyes of the city detective force are focussed on the great dancing-hall—stuffed to the doors ■with painted women and loan-faced men. Tn the centre box, held in the name of n. young Jewish friend, sits the “Big teller”—clear-skinned, fair-faced, and T<appv. Around him sit the gathering of kia business and political lieutenant*, of

the heavy, moon-faced Irish type—the rulers of Now York: Larry Mulligan, his step-brother, the head of .this pleasing association; Paddy ■Sullivan, his brother, the president of the Hesper Club of gamblers; John Considine, business a-*soci-ate, owner of the Metropole Hotel, where t'he “wise ones” gather; Big Tom Foley; and—an exception to the general look of rosy prosperity—Little Tim, the lean little manager of the old Third District and leader of the New York Board of Aidermen. The council unbends; it exchanges showers of confetti; the “Big Feller” smiles gaily’ upon the frail congregation below him—the tenth short-lived generation of prostitutes he has seen at gatherings like this since, more than twenty years ago, he started his first Five Points assembly—lie himself as fresh now as then. In the rear of the box a judge of the General Sessions court sits modestly, decently, hat in hand. In the welter on the slippery’ floor, another city judge known to the upper and under world alike as “Freddy” Kernochan, leads through the happy" mazes of the grand inarch a thousand pimps and' ■thieves and prostitutes, to the blatant crying of the band: “Sullivan, Sullivan, a fine Irishman!” A Drop of 30,000 in the Vote of “ Repeaters.” Tn 1908 there was a lull in “repeating. due partly to lack of immediate interest, but largely to new election legislation, passed as a result of flagrant fraud-'. The bill, introduced by a young assemblyman and lawyer named E. R, Finch, unquestionably frightened tile “repeaters” and their managers. Their concern was principally with the new provision known as the signature law. Two necessary processes have to be gone through with in election frauds—false registration and false voting. As the are from a class of men of irregular habits, who are not always accessible, no attempt has been made in the past to have the same individual register and vote upon each false name. The signature Jaw demanded that the voter’s name be signed in a book, both at registration and election time, so that they appeared practically side by side. A comparison of these signatures was expected to prevent all voting upon another man’s registration. The estimates of those most familiar with the methods of election fraud:? in New York agree that some 30,000 fraudulent votes were cut out of the election last fall, largely through fear of this measure. It is the belief of the expert observers of tlie fraudulent vote—of Mr Finch, the author of the bill, of the State superintendent of elections, William Leary, and of Isaac Silverman of the Fidelity Secret Service Bureau, which has had charge of the Republican county committee’s work along this line—’that, in spite of tire bill, at least 20,000 fraudulent votes were cast by “repeaters” in the election of 1908. And those

most interested in this matter have not contented themselves with general figures. ' • ■ • A Quarter of the Registration False. Immediately after the last campaign, two election districts were Selected in two of the most typical “gorilla” Assembly districts in the city. A careful canvasser was sent through these districts to see what names in the registration list could be found in the residences given. In each of them—widely separated both in distance and in character of population—fully a quarter of the names were found to be entirely fictitious. Further investigation showed that four fifths of these false names were voted on. If there were only fifteen Assembly districts of the 63 in the city, voting but two thirds of the false registration indicated in these two districts, the false vote on false registration alone would have been over 20,000 last year—a year freer from election frauds than any in the last twenty. Now these votes, it must be remembered, are wholly fictitious. The additional votes by “repeaters” on names of actual persons recently dead of moved from the district, or of persons Who neglect to vote or are forestalled at the polls, would add thousands more. Tammany’s Last Stand This Fall. Meanwhile, it is commonplace talk in the underworld —the small percentage of population that gives more careful consideration to the practical politics of a large city than all the rest of ’the citizens together —that next fall’s election will see “repeating” on a greater scale than ever - before in the history of the city. Tammany’s Assembly district experts—many of whom sat back and studied last year’s operation of the new election law"—have expressed themselves as satisfied that there is “nothing to it; they won’t compare the signatures.” Beyond that, study of the two special election districts canvassed last fall shows that they will go further and will defeat the amended law by the new and •more elaborate method of having one particular man register and vote on each false name. The present situation is this: Tammany—now in a considerable and growing popular minority in New York—stands to lose control of the most tremendous political prize on the continent—the handling of a municipal expenditure of £30,000,000, and the control of tens of millions more in semi-publie expenditures. For its mercenaries, the criminals who have carried its past elections, this fight means life or death—the chance or losw of the chance to make a living. The professional criminals and politicians, whose whole careers are concerned in the control of the city, will make the most desperate fight of their lives to carry New York this fall. On the other hand, the general public is more than usually interested in the coming election. Its concern has been aroused by two notorious and closely

related facts—the iowatdl bankruptcy of the richest city in the world, under the class of rulers it ha* had; and the continued raids of thieved and burglars upon the private property of citizens. There is an excellent chance to defeat Tammany this fall. Once thoroughly defeated, that moribund and unnatural social growth—founded for years upon the thief and the prostitute—* would collapse. By natural processes it’ should have been dead twenty years ago. However, it is too early to prophesy. The leadership of the opposition forces in New York has too often been dilettante or selfish. There is already talk of the old criminal foolishness of splitting the anti-Tammany vote between two candidates.