PERHAPS you will say I waste space and lay too much of foolish stress
upon my quarrel with Sheeny Joe and its police-cell consequences. And
yet you should be mindful of the incident's importance to me as the
starting point of my career. For I read in what took place the power of
the machine as you will read this printed page. I went behind the bars
by the word of Big John Kennedy; and it was by his word that I emerged
and took my liberty again. And yet who was Big John Kennedy? He was the
machine; the fragment of its power which molded history in the little
region where I lived. As mere John Kennedy he would be nothing. Or at
the most no more than other men about him. But as “Big John Kennedy,”
an underchief of Tammany Hall, I myself stood witness while a captain of
police accepted his commands without a question, and a magistrate found
folk guilty or innocent at the lifting of his finger. Also, that sweat
of terror to sprinkle the forehead of Sheeny Joe, when in his moment of
rebellion he found himself beneath the wrathful shadow of the machine,
was not the least impressive element of my experience; and the tolerant
smile, that was half pity, half amusement, as Big Kennedy set forth
to the reputable old gentleman--who was only “a taxpayer”--the little
limits of his insignificance, deepened the effect upon my mind of what
had gone before.
True, I indulged in no such analysis as the above, and made no study of
the picture in its detail; but I could receive an impression just as
I might receive a blow, and in the innocence of my ignorance began
instantly to model myself upon the proven fact of a power that was above
law, above justice, and which must be consulted and agreed with, even
in its caprice, before existence could be profitable or even safe. From
that moment the machine to me was as obviously and indomitably abroad as
the pavement under foot, and must have its account in every equation
of life to the solution whereof I was set. To hold otherwise, and
particularly to act otherwise, would be to play the fool, with failure
or something worse for a reward.
Big Kennedy owned a drinking place. His barroom was his headquarters;
although he himself never served among his casks and bottles, having
barmen for that work. He poured no whisky, tapped no beer, donned no
apron, but sat at tables with his customers and laid out his campaigns
of politics or jubilated over victory, and seemed rather the visitor
than the proprietor in his own saloon. He owned shrewdness, force,
courage, enterprise, and was one of those who carry a pleasant
atmosphere that is like hypnotism, and which makes men like them. His
manner was one of rude frankness, and folk held him for a bluff, blunt,
genial soul, who made up in generosity what he lacked of truth.
And yet I have thought folk mistaken in Big Kennedy. For all his loud
openness and friendly roar, which would seem to tell his every thought,
the man could be the soul of cunning and turn secret as a mole. He was
for his own interest; he came and went a cold calculating trader of
politics; he never wasted his favors, but must get as much as he gave,
and indulged in no revenges except when revenge was needed for a lesson.
He did what men call good, too, and spent money and lost sleep in its
accomplishment. To the ill he sent doctors and drugs; he found work and
wages for idle men; he paid landlords and kept the roofs above the heads
of the penniless; where folk were hungry he sent food, and where they
were cold came fuel.
For all that, it was neither humanity nor any milk of kindness which
put him to these labors of grace; it was but his method of politics and
meant to bind men to him. They must do his word; they must carry out his
will; then it was he took them beneath the wing of his power and would
spare neither time nor money to protect and prosper them.
And on the other side, he who raised his head in opposition to Big
Kennedy was crushed; not in anger, but in caution. He weeded out
rebellion, and the very seed of it, with as little scruple and for the
same reason a farmer weeds a field.
It took me years to collect these truths of Big Kennedy. Nor was their
arrival when they did come one by one, to make a shade of change in my
regard for him. I liked him in the beginning; I liked him in the end;
he became that headland on the coasts of politics by which I steered my
course. I studied Big Kennedy as one might study a science; by the lines
of his conduct I laid down lines for my own; in all things I was his
disciple and his imitator.
Big Kennedy is dead now; and I will say no worse nor better of him than
this: He was a natural captain of men. Had he been born to a higher
station, he might have lighted a wick in history that would require
those ten thicknesses of darkness which belong with ten centuries, to
obscure. But no such thing could come in the instance of Big Kennedy;
his possibilities of eminence, like my own, were confined to Tammany and
its politics, since he had no more of education than have I. The time
has gone by in the world at large, and had in Big Kennedy's day, when
the ignorant man can be the first man.
Upon the day following my release, as he had bid me.
I sought Big Kennedy. He was in his barroom, and the hour being
mid-morning I was so far lucky as to find him quite alone. He was quick
to see me, too, and seemed as full of a pleasant interest in me as
though my simple looks were of themselves good news. He did most of the
talking, for I sat backward and bashful, the more since I could feel his
sharp eyes upon me, taking my measure. Never was I so looked over and
so questioned, and not many minutes had come and gone before Big Kennedy
knew as much of me and my belongings as did I myself. Mayhap more; for
he weighed me in the scales of his experience with all the care of gold,
considering meanwhile to what uses I should be put, and how far I might
be expected to advance his ends.
One of his words I recall, for it gave me a glow of relief at the time;
at that it was no true word. It was when he heard how slightly I had
been taught of books.
“Never mind,” said he, “books as often as not get between a party's legs
and trip him up. Better know men than books. There's my library.” Here
he pointed to a group about a beer table. “I can learn more by studyin'
them than was ever found between the covers of a book, and make more out
of it.”
Big Kennedy told me I must go to work.
“You've got to work, d'ye see,” said he, “if it's only to have an excuse
for livin'.”
Then he asked me what I could do. On making nothing clear by my
replies--for I knew of nothing--he descended to particulars.
“What do you know of horses? Can you drive one?”
My eye brightened; I might be trusted to handle a horse.
“An' I'll gamble you know your way about the East Side,” said he
confidently; “I'll answer for that.” Then getting up he started for the
door, for no grass grew between decision and action with Big Kennedy.
“Come with me,” he said.
We had made no mighty journey when we stopped before a grocery. It was
a two-store front, and of a prosperous look, with a wealth of vegetables
and fruits in crates, and baskets, and barrels, covering half the
sidewalk. The proprietor was a rubicund German, who bustled forth at
sight of my companion.
“How is Mr. Kennedy?” This with exuberance. “It makes me prout that you
pay me a wisit.”
“Yes?” said the other dryly. Then, going directly to the point: “Here's
a boy I've brought you, Nick. Let him drive one of your wagons. Give him
six dollars a week.”
“But, Mr. Kennedy,” replied the grocer dubiously, looking me over with
the tail of his eye, “I haf yet no wacancy. My wagons is all full.”
“I'm goin' to get him new duds,” said Big Kennedy, “if that's what
you're thinkin' about.”
Still, the grocer, though not without some show of respectful alarm,
insisted on a first position.
“If he was so well dressed even as you, Mr. Kennedy, yet I haf no
wacancy,” said he.
“Then make one,” responded Big Kennedy coolly. “Dismiss one of the boys
you have, d'ye see? At least two who work for you don't belong in my
ward.” As the other continued doubtful Big Kennedy became sharp. “Come,
come, come!” he cried in a manner peremptory rather than fierce; “I
can't wait all day. Don't you feed your horses in the street? Don't you
obstruct the sidewalks with your stuff? Don't you sell liquor in your
rear room without a license? Don't you violate a dozen ordinances? Don't
the police stand it an' pass you up? An' yet you hold me here fiddlin'
and foolin' away time!”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Kennedy,” cried the grocer, who from the first had sought
to stem the torrent of the other's eloquence, “I was only try in' to
think up w'ich horse I will let him drive alreatty. That's honest! sure
as my name is Nick Fogel!”
Clothed in what was to me the splendors of a king, being indeed a full
new suit bought with Big Kennedy's money, I began rattling about the
streets with a delivery wagon the very next day. As well as I could, I
tried to tell my thanks for the clothes.
“That's all right,” said Big Kennedy. “I owe you that much for havin'
you chucked into a cell.”
While Grocer Fogel might have been a trifle slow in hiring me, once I
was engaged he proved amiable enough. I did my work well too, missing
few of the customers and losing none of the baskets and sacks. Grocer
Fogel was free with his praise and conceded my value. Still, since he
instantly built a platform in the street on the strength of my being
employed, and so violated a new and further ordinance upon which he
for long had had an eye, I have sometimes thought that in forming his
opinion of my worth he included this misdemeanor in his calculations.
However, I worked with my worthy German four years; laying down the
reins of that delivery wagon of my own will at the age of nineteen.
Nor was I without a profit in this trade of delivering potatoes and
cabbages and kindred grocery forage. It broadened the frontiers of my
acquaintance, and made known to me many of a solvent middle class, and
of rather a higher respectability than I might otherwise have met. It
served to clean up my manners, if nothing more, and before I was done,
that acquaintance became with me an asset of politics.
While I drove wagon for Grocer Fogel, my work of the day was over with
six o'clock. I had nothing to do with the care of the horses; I threw
the reins to a stable hand when at evening I went to the barn, and left
for my home without pausing to see the animals out of the straps or
their noses into the corn. Now, had I been formed with a genius for it,
I might have put in a deal of time at study. But nothing could have been
more distant from my taste or habit; neither then nor later did I engage
myself in any traffic with books, and throughout my life never opened a
half-dozen.
Still, considering those plans I had laid down for myself, and that
future of politics to which my ambition began to consider, I cannot
say I threw away my leisure. If my nose were not between the pages of
a book, my hands were within a pair of boxing gloves, and I, engaged
against this or that opponent, was leading or guarding, hitting or
stopping, rushing or getting away, and fitting to an utmost hand and
foot and eye and muscle for the task of beating a foeman black and blue
should the accidents or duties of life place one before me.
And I prospered with my boxing. I think I owned much native stomach for
the business, since in my sullen fashion I was as near the touch of true
happiness when in the midst of a mill as ever I hope to stand. My heart,
and with that word I mean courage, was of fighting sort. While I was
exceedingly cautious, my caution was based on courage. Men of this stamp
stay until the last and either conquer or fall. There be ones who have
courage, but their construction is the other way about. Their courage is
based on caution; such if hard bested run away. Should you seek the man
who will stand to the work of battle to the dour end, pick him whose
caution, coming first in the procession of his nature, is followed by
his courage, rather than that one whose caution follows his courage to
tap it on the shoulder, preach to it of peril, and counsel flight.
You are not to assume that I went about these boxing gymnastics because
of any savageries or blood-hunger dominant in my breast, or was moved
solely of that instinct by which the game-cock fights. I went to my
fist-studies as the result of thought and calculation. In my slow way
I had noted how those henchmen of the inner circle who surrounded Big
Kennedy--those who were near to him, and upon whom he most relied,
were wholly valued by him for the two matters of force of fist and that
fidelity which asks no question. Even a thicker intellect than mine
would have seen that to succeed as I proposed, I must be the gladiator.
Wherefore, I boxed and wrestled and perfected my muscles; also as
corollary I avoided drink and tobacco as I would two poisons.
And Big Kennedy, who had a little of his eye on me most of the time, was
so good as to approve. He applauded my refusal of alcohol and tobacco.
And he indorsed my determination to be a boxer.
“A man who can take care of himself with his hands,” said he, “an' who
never lets whisky fool him or steal his head, can go far in this game of
politics. An' it's a pretty good game at that, is politics, and can be
brought to pay like a bank.”
It chanced that I met with an adventure which added to my celebration
in a way I could have wished. I was set upon by a drunken fellow--a
stranger. He was an invader, bent upon mischief and came from an
adjacent and a rival ward. I had offered no provocation; why he selected
me to be his victim and whether it were accident or design I cannot say.
Possibly I was pointed out to this drinking Hotspur as one from whose
conquest honor would flow; perhaps some enemy of the pattern of Sheeny
Joe had set him to it. All I know is that without challenge given, or
the least offer of warning, the creature bore down upon me, whirling his
fists like flails.
“You're the party I'm lookin' for!” was all he said.
In the mix-up to follow, and which I had neither time to consider
nor avoid, the visitor from that other ward was fully and indubitably
beaten. This was so evident that he himself admitted it when at the
finish of hostilities certain Samaritans gave him strong drink as a
restorative. It developed also that my assailant, in a shadowy subdued
way, was a kind of prizefighter, and by his own tribe deemed invincible.
My victory, therefore, made a noise in immediate circles; and I should
say it saved me from a deal of trouble and later strife, since it served
to place me in a class above the common. There came few so drunk or
so bold as to ask for trouble with me, and I found that this casual
battle--safe, too, because my prizefighter was too drunk to be
dangerous--had brought me a wealth of peace.
There dawned a day when Big Kennedy gave me a decisive mark of his
esteem. He presented me to his father. The elder Kennedy, white-haired
and furrowed of age, was known as “Old Mike.” He was a personage of
gravity and power, since his was the only voice in that region to which
Big Kennedy would yield. Wherefore to be of “Old Mike's” acquaintance
shone in one's favor like a title of knighthood.
Big Kennedy's presentation speech, when he led me before his father,
was characteristic and peculiar. Old Mike was in the shadow of his front
porch, while three or four oldsters of the neighborhood, like a council
or a little court about a monarch, and all smoking short clay pipes,
were sitting about him.
“Here's a pup,” cried Big Kennedy, with his hand on my shoulder, “I want
you to look over. He's a great pup and ought to make a great dog.”
Old Mike glanced at me out of his twinkling gray eyes. After a moment he
said, addressing me:
“Come ag'in.”
That was all I had from Old Mike that journey.
Big Kennedy it should be said was a model for all sons. He kept his
father in ease and comfort in a house of his own. He was prone to have
Old Mike's advice, particularly if what he proposed were a step novel or
one dangerous in its policy, and he never went to anything in the face
of Old Mike's word. It wasn't deference, it was faith; Big Kennedy
believed in the wisdom of Old Mike and relied upon it with a confidence
that was implicit. I shall have more to tell of Old Mike as my story
unrolls to the eye. If Big Kennedy were my example, Old Mike should be
called my mentor. Taking the cue from Big Kennedy, I came to own for Old
Mike that veneration which the youths of Ancient Greece felt for their
oracles, and as utterly accepted either his argument or conclusion. It
stood no wonder that I was impressed and played upon by this honor of an
introduction to Old Mike. To bring you before Old Mike and name you for
his consideration was the extremest proof of Big Kennedy's regard. As
I've said, it glittered on one like the chain and spurs of knighthood,
and the fact of it gave me a pedestal among my fellows.
After my bout with that erring one who came out of his own ward to sup
grief at my hands, there began to collect about me a coterie of halfway
bruisers. This circle--and our enemies were quick to bestow upon it the
epithet of “gang”--never had formal organization. And while the members
were of the rougher sort, and each a man of his hands, the argument of
its coming together was not so much aggression as protection.
The town forty years ago was not a theater of peace and lambs'-wool
safety. One's hand must keep one's head, and a stout arm, backed by
a stout heart, traveled far. To leave one's own ward, or even the
neighborhood where one lived, was to invite attack. In an alien ward,
one would be set upon and beaten to rags before one traveled a mile.
If one of the enemy were not equal to the business, others would lend a
hand. Whether it required one or two or three or twenty, the interloper
was fated to heir a drubbing. If his bones were not broken, he was
looked upon as fortunate, while those who had undertaken to correct his
wanderings went despised as bunglers who had slighted a task.
Now and then a war-party would make a sortie from their own region to
break windows and heads in the country of an enemy. Such hands often
descended upon the domain of Big Kennedy, and it was a notion of defense
against these Goths which brought the militant spirits I have mentioned
to my shoulder. It was we who must meet them, when they would make
desolate our territory. The police were of no use; they either walked
the other way in a spirit of cautious neutrality, or were driven into
hiding with a shower of stones.
By the common tongue, this coterie to collect at my back was named the
“Tin Whistle Gang.” Each member carried a whistle as part of his pocket
furniture. These were made of uniform pattern, and the same keen note,
like the screech of a hawk, was common to all.
The screaming fife-like song would bring out the Tin Whistles as hotly
bent for action as a colony of wasps. In those days, when might was
right, the sound of these whistles was a storm signal. Quiet people shut
their doors and drew their bolts, while apothecaries made ready to sell
lint and plasters.
It is required that I speak of the Tin Whistles in this place. I was now
for the first time to be called into political activity by Big Kennedy.
I was eighteen, and of a sober, steady, confident cast, and trustworthy
in a wordless way. Because I was sober of face and one not given to talk
or to laughter, men looked on me as five years better than my age; I
think these characteristics even imposed on Big Kennedy himself, for he
dealt with me as though I were a man full grown.
It was in the height of a campaign. Two days before the balloting, Big
Kennedy sent for me. There was a room to the rear of his bar. This room
was a holy of holies; no one entered there who was not established in
the confidence of Big Kennedy. It was a greater distinction even than
the acquaintance of Old Mike. Knowing these things, my brow flushed when
Big Kennedy led me into this sanctum of his policies.
“Now, if I didn't trust you,” said Big Kennedy, looking me hard in the
eye, “if I didn't trust you, you'd be t'other side of that door.” I said
nothing; I had found that silence pleased Big Kennedy, and I learned
early to keep my tongue between my teeth. Big Kennedy went on: “On
election day the polls will close at six o'clock. Half an hour before
they close, take that Bible Class of yours, the Tin Whistles, and drive
every one of the opposition workers an' ticket peddlers away from the
polling place. You'll know them by their badges. I don't want anyone
hurt mor'n you have to. The less blood, the better. Blood's news; it
gets into the papers. Now remember: half an hour before six, blow your
whistle an' sail in. When you've got the other fellows on the run,
keep'em goin'. And don't let'em come back, d'ye see.”