SINCE time began, no man, not even a king, has been better obeyed in
his mandates, than was I while Chief of Tammany Hall. From high to low,
from the leader of a district to the last mean straggler in the ranks,
one and all, they pulled and hauled or ran and climbed like sailors in a
gale, at the glance of my eye or the toss of my finger. More often than
once, I have paused in wonder over this blind submission, and asked
myself the reason. Particularly, since I laid down my chiefship, the
query has come upon my tongue while I remembered old days, to consider
how successes might have been more richly improved or defeats, in their
disasters, at least partially avoided.
Nor could I give myself the answer. I had no close friendships among my
men; none of them was my confidant beyond what came to be demanded of
the business in our hands. On the contrary, there existed a gulf between
me and those about me, and while I was civil--for I am not the man, and
never was, of wordy violences--I can call myself nothing more.
If anything, I should say my people of politics feared me, and that a
sort of sweating terror was the spur to send them flying when I gave an
order. There was respect, too; and in some cases a kind of love like a
dog's love, and which is rather the homage paid by weakness to strength,
or that sentiment offered of the vine to the oak that supports its
clamberings.
Why my men should stand in awe of me, I cannot tell. Certainly, I was
mindful of their rights; and, with the final admonitions of Big Kennedy
in my ears, I avoided favoritisms and dealt out justice from an even
hand. True, I could be stern when occasion invited, and was swift to
destroy that one whose powers did not match his duty, or who for a bribe
would betray, or for an ambition would oppose, my plan.
No; after Big Kennedy's death, I could name you none save Morton
whose advice I cared for, or towards whom I leaned in any thought
of confidence. Some have said that this distance, which I maintained
between me and my underlings, was the secret of my strength. It may have
been; and if it were I take no credit, since I expressed nothing save a
loneliness of disposition, and could not have borne myself otherwise
had I made the attempt. Not that I regretted it. That dumb concession
of themselves to me, by my folk of Tammany, would play no little part
in pulling down a victory in the great conflict wherein we were about to
engage.
Tammany Hall was never more sharply organized. I worked over the
business like an artist over an etching. Discipline was brought to
a pitch never before known. My district leaders were the pick of the
covey, and every one, for force and talents of executive kind, fit to
lead a brigade into battle. Under these were the captains of election
precincts; and a rank below the latter came the block captains--one for
each city block. Thus were made up those wheels within wheels which,
taken together, completed the machine. They fitted one with the other,
block captains with precinct captains, the latter with district leaders,
and these last with myself; and all like the wheels and springs and
ratchets and regulators of a clock; one sure, too, when wound and oiled
and started, to strike the hours and announce the time of day in local
politics with a nicety that owned no precedent.
There would be a quartette of tickets; I could see that fact of four
corners in its approach, long months before the conventions. Besides the
two regular parties, and the mugwump-independents--which tribe, like the
poor, we have always with us--the laborites would try again. These had
not come to the field in any force since that giant uprising when we
beat them down with the reputable old gentleman. Nor did I fear them
now. My trained senses told me, as with thumb on wrist I counted
the public pulse, how those clans of labor were not so formidable by
three-fourths as on that other day a decade and more before.
Of those three camps of politics set over against us, that one to be the
strongest was the party of reform. This knowledge swelled my stock of
courage, already mounting high. If it were no more than to rout the
administration now worrying the withers of the town, why, then! the
machine was safe to win.
There arose another sign. As the days ran on, rich and frequent, first
from one big corporation and then another--and these do not give until
they believe--the contributions of money came rolling along. They would
buy our favor in advance of victory. These donations followed each other
like billows upon a beach, and each larger than the one before, which
showed how the wind of general confidence was rising in our favor. It
was not, therefore, my view alone; but, by this light of money to our
cause, I could see how the common opinion had begun to gather head that
the machine was to take the town again.
This latter is often a decisive point, and one to give victory of
itself. The average of intelligence and integrity in this city of New
York is lower than any in the land. There are here, in proportion to
a vote, more people whose sole principle is the bandwagon, than in any
other town between the oceans. These “sliders,” who go hither and yon,
and attach themselves to this standard or ally themselves with that one,
as the eye of their fancy is caught and taught by some fluttering signal
of the hour to pick the winning side, are enough of themselves to decide
a contest. Wherefore, to promote this advertisement among creatures of
chameleon politics, of an approaching triumph for the machine, and it
being possible because of those contributed thousands coming so early
into my chests, I began furnishing funds to my leaders and setting them
to the work of their regions weeks before the nearest of our enemies had
begun to think on his ticket.
There was another argument for putting out this money. The noses of my
people had been withheld from the cribs of office for hungry months upon
months. The money would arouse an appetite and give their teeth an edge.
I looked for fine work, too, since the leanest wolves are ever foremost
in the hunt.
Emphatically did I lay it upon my leaders that, man for man, they must
count their districts. They must tell over each voter as a churchman
tells his beads. They must give me a true story of the situation, and I
promised grief to him who brought me mistaken word. I will say in their
compliment that, by the reports of my leaders on the day before the
poll, I counted the machine majority exact within four hundred votes;
and that, I may tell you, with four tickets in the conflict, and a whole
count which was measured by hundreds of thousands, is no light affair. I
mention it to evidence the hair-line perfection to which the methods of
the machine had been brought.
More than one leader reported within five votes of his majority, and
none went fifty votes astray.
You think we overdid ourselves to the point ridiculous, in this
breathless solicitude of preparation? Man! the wealth of twenty Ophirs
hung upon the hazard. I was in no mood to lose, if skill and sleepless
forethought, and every intrigue born of money, might serve to bring
success.
Morton--that best of prophets!--believed in the star of the machine.
“This time,” said he, “I shall miss the agony of contributing to the
other fellows, don't y' know. It will be quite a relief--really! I must
say, old chap, that I like the mugwump less and less the more I see of
him. He's so deucedly respectable, for one thing! Gad! there are
times when a mugwump carries respectability to a height absolutely
incompatible with human existence. Besides, he is forever walking a
crack and calling it a principle. I get tired of a chalkline morality.
It's all such deuced rot; it bores me to death; it does, really! One
begins to appreciate the amiable, tolerant virtues of easy, old-shoe
vice.”
Morton, worn with this long harangue, was moved to recruit his moody
energies with the inevitable cigarette. He puffed recuperative puffs for
a space, and then he began:
“What an angelic ass is this city of New York! Why! it doesn't know as
much as a horse! Any ignorant teamster of politics can harness it, and
haul with it, and head it what way he will. I say, old chap, what are
the round-number expenses of the town a year?”
“About one hundred and twenty-five millions.”
“One hundred and twenty-five millions--really! Do you happen to know the
aggregate annual profits of those divers private companies that control
and sell us our water, and lighting, and telephone, and telegraph, and
traction services?--saying nothing of ferries, and paving, and all that?
It's over one hundred and fifty millions a year, don't y' know! More
than enough to run the town without a splinter of tax--really! That's
why I exclaim in rapture over the public's accommodating imbecility.
Now, if a private individual were to manage his affairs so much like a
howling idiot, his heirs would clap him in a padded cell, and serve the
beggar right.”
“I think, however,” said I, “that you have been one to profit by those
same idiocies of the town.”
“Millions, my boy, millions! And I'm going in for more, don't y' know.
There are a half-dozen delicious things I have my eye on. Gad! I shall
have my hand on them, the moment you take control.”
“I make you welcome in advance,” said I. “Give me but the town again,
and you shall pick and choose.”
In season, I handed my slate of names to the nominating committee to be
handed by them to the convention.
At the head, for the post of mayor, was written the name of that bold
judge who, in the presence of my enemies and on a day when I was down,
had given my Sicilian countenance. Such folk are the choice material
of the machine. Their characters invite the public; while, for their
courage, and that trick to be military and go with closed eyes to the
execution of an order, the machine can rely upon them through black and
white. My judge when mayor would accept my word for the last appointment
and the last contract in his power, and think it duty.
And who shall say that he would err? It was the law of the machine; he
was the man of the machine; for the public, which accepted him, he was
the machine. It is the machine that offers for every office on the list;
the ticket is but the manner or, if you please, the mask. Nor is this
secret. Who shall complain then, or fasten him with charges, when my
judge, made mayor, infers a public's instruction to regard himself
as the vizier of the machine?--its hand and voice for the town's
government?
It stood the day before the polls, and having advantage of the usual
lull I was resting myself at home. Held fast by the hooks of politics, I
for weeks had not seen young Van Flange, and had gotten only glimpses of
Blossom. While lounging by my fire--for the day was raw, with a wind off
the Sound that smelled of winter--young Van Flange drove to the door in
a brougham.
That a brisk broker should visit his house at an hour when the floor of
the Exchange was tossing with speculation, would be the thing not looked
for; but I was too much in a fog of politics, and too ignorant of stocks
besides, to make the observation. Indeed, I was glad to see the boy,
greeting him with a trifle more warmth than common.
Now I thought he gave me his hand with a kind of shiver of reluctance.
This made me consider. Plainly, he was not at ease as we sat together.
Covering him with the tail of my eye, I could note how his face carried
a look, at once timid and malignant.
I could not read the meaning, and remained silent a while with the mere
riddle of it. Was he ill? The lean yellowness of his cheek, and the dark
about the hollow eyes, were a hint that way, to which the broken stoop
of the shoulders gave added currency.
Young Van Flange continued silent; not, however, in a way to promise
sullenness, but as though his feelings were a gag to him. At last I
thought, with a word of my own, to break the ice.
“How do you get on with your Blackberry?” said I.
It was not that I cared or had the business on the back of my mind; I
was too much buried in my campaign for that; but Blackberry, with young
Van Flange, was the one natural topic to propose.
As I gave him the name of it, he started with the sudden nervousness
of a cat. I caught the hissing intake of his breath, as though a
knife pierced him. What was wrong? I had not looked at the reported
quotations, such things being as Greek to me. Had he lost those
millions? I could have borne it if he had; the better, perhaps, since I
was sure in my soul that within two days I would have the town in hand,
and I did not think to find my old paths so overgrown but what I'd make
shift to pick my way to a second fortune.
I was on the hinge of saying so, when he got possession of himself. Even
at that he spoke lamely, and with a tongue that fumbled for words.
“Oh, Blackberry!” cried he. Then, after a gulping pause: “That twist
will work through all right. It has gone a trifle slow, because, by
incredible exertions, the road did pay its dividends. But it's no more
than a matter of weeks when it will come tumbling.”
This, in the beginning, was rambled off with stops and halts, but in the
wind-up it went glibly enough.
What next I would have said, I cannot tell; nothing of moment, one may
be sure, for my mind was running on other things than Blackberry up or
down. It was at this point, however, when we were interrupted. A message
arrived that asked my presence at headquarters.
As I was about to depart, Blossom came into the room.
I had no more than time for a hurried kiss, for the need set forth in
the note pulled at me like horses.
“Bar accidents,” said I, as I stood in the door, “tomorrow night we'll
celebrate a victory.”
Within a block of my gate, I recalled how I had left certain papers I
required lying on the table. I went back in some hustle of speed, for
time was pinching as to that question of political detail which tugged
for attention.
As I stepped into the hallway, I caught the tone of young Van Flange
and did not like the pitch of it. Blossom and he were in the room to the
left, and only a door between us.
In a strange bristle of temper, I stood still to hear. Would the
scoundrel dare harshness with my girl? The very surmise turned me savage
to the bone!
Young Van Flange was speaking of those two hundred thousand dollars in
bonds with which, by word of Big Kennedy, I had endowed Blossom in a day
of babyhood. When she could understand, I had laid it solemnly upon her
never to part with them. Under any stress, they would insure her against
want; they must never be given up. And Blossom had promised.
These bonds were in a steel casket of their own, and Blossom had the
key. As I listened, young Van Flange was demanding they be given to
him; Blossom was pleading with him, and quoting my commands. My girl was
sobbing, too, for the villain urged the business roughly. I could not
fit my ear to every word, since their tones for the most were dulled to
a murmur by the door. In the end, with a lift of the voice, I heard him
say:
“For what else should I marry you except money? Is one of my blood to
link himself with the daughter of the town's great thief, and call it
love? The daughter of a murderer, too!” he exclaimed, and ripping out
an oath. “A murderer, yes! You have the red proof about your throat!
Because your father escaped hanging by the laws of men, heaven's law is
hanging you!”
As I threw wide the door, Blossom staggered and fell to the floor. I
thought for the furious blink of the moment, that he had struck her.
How much stronger is hate than love! My dominant impulse was to avenge
Blossom rather than to save her. I stood in the door in a white flame
of wrath that was like the utter anger of a tiger. I saw him bleach and
shrink beneath his sallowness.
As I came towards him, he held up his hands after the way of a boxing
school. That ferocious strength, like a gorilla's, still abode with me.
I brushed away his guard as one might put aside a trailing vine. In a
flash I had him, hip and shoulder. My fingers sunk into the flesh like
things of steel; he squeaked and struggled as does the rabbit when
crunched up by the hound.
With a swing and a heave that would have torn out a tree by its roots,
I lifted him from his feet. The next moment I hurled him from me. He
crashed against the casing of the door; then he slipped to the floor as
though struck by death itself.
Moved of the one blunt purpose of destruction, I made forward to seize
him again. For a miracle of luck, I was withstood by one of the servants
who rushed in.
“Think, master; think what you do!” he cried.
In a sort of whirl I looked about me. I could see how the old Galway
nurse was bending over Blossom, crying on her for her “Heart's dearie!”
My poor girl was lying along the rug like some tempest-broken flower.
The stout old wife caught her up and bore her off in her arms.
The picture of my girl's white face set me ablaze again. I turned the
very torch of rage!
“Be wise, master!” cried that one who had restrained me before. “Think
of what you do!”
The man's hand on my wrist, and the earnest voice of him, brought me to
myself. A vast calm took me, as a storm in its double fury beats flat
the surface of the sea. I turned my back and walked to the window.
“Have him away, then!” cried I. “Have him out of my sight, or I'll tear
him to rags and ribbons where he lies!”