NOW, when I went about refurnishing my steel box with new millions, I
turned cautious as a fox. I considered concealment, and would hide my
trail and walk in all the running water that I might. For one matter,
I was sick and sore with the attacks made upon me by the papers, which
grew in malignant violence as the days wore on, and as though it were
a point of rivalry between them which should have the black honor of
hating me the most. I preferred to court those type-cudgelings as little
as stood possible, and still bring me to my ends.
The better to cover myself, and because the mere work of it would be too
weary a charge for one head and that head ignorant of figures, I called
into my service a cunning trio who were, one and all, born children
of the machine. These three owned thorough training as husbandmen of
politics, and were ones to mow even the fence corners. That profit of
the game which escaped them must indeed be sly, and lie deep and close
besides. Also, they were of the invaluable brood that has no tongue, and
any one of the triangle would have been broken upon the wheel without a
syllable of confession disgracing his lips.
These inveterate ones, who would be now as my hand in gathering together
that wealth which I anticipated, were known in circles wherein they
moved and had their dingy being, as Sing Sing Jacob, Puffy the Merchant,
and Paddy the Priest. Paddy the Priest wore a look of sanctity, and it
was this impression of holiness to confer upon him his title. It might
have been more consistent with those virtues of rapine dominant of
his nature, had he been hailed Paddy the Pirate, instead. Of Sing Sing
Jacob, I should say, that he had not served in prison. His name was
given him because, while he was never granted the privilege of stripes
and irons, he often earned the same. In what manner or at what font
Puffy the Merchant received baptism, I never learned. That he came
fit for my purpose would find sufficient indication in a complaining
compliment which Paddy the Priest once paid him, and who said in
description of Puffy's devious genius, that if one were to drive a nail
through his head it would come forth a corkscrew.
These men were to be my personal lieutenants, and collect my gold for
me. And since they would pillage me with as scanty a scruple as though
I were the foe himself, I must hit upon a device for invoking them to
honesty in ny affairs. It was then I remembered the parting words of
Big Kennedy. I would set one against the others; hating each other,
they would watch; and each would be sharp with warning in my ear should
either of his fellows seek to fill a purse at my expense.
To sow discord among my three offered no difficulties; I had but to say
to one what the others told of him, and his ire was on permanent end. It
was thus I separated them; and since I gave each his special domain
of effort, while they worked near enough to one another to maintain a
watch, they were not so thrown together as to bring down among them open
war.
It will be required that I set forth in half-detail those various
municipal fields and meadows that I laid out in my time, and from which
the machine was to garner its harvest. You will note then, you who are
innocent of politics in its practical expressions and rewards, how
the town stood to me as does his plowlands to a farmer, and offered
as various a list of crops to careful tillage. Take for example the
knee-deep clover of the tax department. Each year there was made a whole
valuation of personal property of say roundly nine billions of dollars.
This estimate, within a dozen weeks of its making, would be reduced
to fewer than one billion, on the word of individuals who made the
law-required oaths. No, it need not have been so reduced; but the
reduction ever occurred since the machine instructed its tax officers to
act on the oath so furnished, and that without question.
That personage in tax peril was never put to fret in obtaining one to
make the oath. If he himself lacked hardihood and hesitated at perjury,
why then, the town abounded in folk of a daring easy veracity. Of all
that was said and written, of that time, in any New York day, full
ninety-five per cent, was falsehood or mistake. Among the members of
a community, so affluent of error and mendacity, one would not long go
seeking a witness who was ready, for shining reasons, to take whatever
oath might be demanded. And thus it befell that the affidavits were
ever made, and a reduction of eight billions and more, in the assessed
valuation of personal property, came annually to be awarded. With a
tax levy of, say, two per cent. I leave you to fix the total of those
millions saved to ones assessed, and also to consider how far their
gratitude might be expected to inure to the yellow welfare of the
machine--the machine that makes no gift of either its forbearance or its
help!
Speaking in particular of the town, and what opportunities of riches
swung open to the machine, one should know at the start how the whole
annual expense of the community was roughly one hundred and twenty-five
millions. Of these millions twenty went for salaries to officials; forty
were devoted to the purchase of supplies asked for by the public needs;
while the balance, sixty-five millions, represented contracts for paving
and building and similar construction whatnot, which the town was bound
to execute in its affairs.
Against those twenty millions of salaries, the machine levied an annual
private five per cent. Two-thirds of the million to arise therefrom,
found their direct way to district leaders; the other one-third was
paid into the general coffer. Also there were county officers, such
as judges, clerks of court, a sheriff and his deputies: and these,
likewise, were compelled from their incomes to a yearly generosity of
not fewer than five per cent.
Of those forty millions which were the measure for supplies, one-fifth
under the guise of “commissions” went to the machine; while of the
sixty-five millions, which represented the yearly contracts in payments
made thereon, the machine came better off with, at the leanest of
estimates, full forty per cent, of the whole.
Now I have set forth to you those direct returns which arose from the
sure and fixed expenses of the town. Beyond that, and pushing for
the furthest ounce of tallow, I inaugurated a novelty. I organized a
guaranty company which made what bonds the law demanded from officials;
and from men with contracts, and those others who furnished the town's
supplies. The annual charge of the company for this act of warranty
was two per cent, on the sum guaranteed; and since the aggregate
thus carried came to about one hundred millions, the intake from
such sources--being for the most part profit in the fingers of the
machine--was annually a fair two millions. There were other rills to
flow a revenue, and which were related to those money well-springs
registered above, but they count too many and too small for mention
here, albeit the round returns from them might make a poor man stare.
Of those other bottom-lands of profit which bent a nodding harvest
to the sickle of the machine, let me make a rough enumeration. The
returns--a bit sordid, these!--from poolrooms, faro banks and disorderly
resorts and whereon the monthly charge imposed for each ran all the way
from fifty to two thousand dollars, clinked into the yearly till, four
millions. The grog shops, whereof at that time there was a staggering
host of such in New York City of-the-many-sins! met each a draft of
twenty monthly dollars. Then one should count “campaign contributions.”
Of great companies who sued for favor there were, at a lowest census,
five who sent as tribute from twenty to fifty thousand dollars each.
Also there existed of smaller concerns and private persons, full one
thousand who yielded over all a no less sum than one million. Next came
the police, with appointment charges which began with a patrolman at
four hundred dollars, and soared to twenty thousand when the matter was
the making of a captain.
Here I shall close my recapitulation of former treasure for the machine;
I am driven to warn you, however, that the half has not been told.
Still, if you will but let your imagination have its head, remembering
how the machine gives nothing away, and fails not to exert its pressures
with every chance afforded it, you may supply what other chapters belong
with the great history of graft.
When one considers a Tammany profit, one will perforce be driven to the
question: What be the expenses of the machine? The common cost of an
election should pause in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand
dollars. Should peril crowd, and an imported vote be called for by the
dangers of the day, the cost might carry vastly higher. No campaign,
however, in the very nature of the enterprise and its possibilities of
expense, can consume a greater fund than eight hundred thousand. That
sum, subtracted from the income of the machine as taken from those
sundry sources I've related, will show what in my time remained for
distribution among my followers.
And now that brings one abreast the subject of riches to the Boss
himself. One of the world's humorists puts into the mouth of a character
the query: What does a king get? The answer would be no whit less
difficult had he asked: What does a Boss get? One may take it, however,
that the latter gets the lion's share. Long ago I said that the wealth
of Ophir hung on the hazard of the town's election. You have now some
slant as to how far my words should be regarded as hyperbole. Nor must I
omit how the machine's delegation in a legislature, or the little flock
it sends to nibble on the slopes of Congress, is each in the hand of
the Boss to do with as he will, and it may go without a record that the
opportunities so provided are neither neglected nor underpriced.
There you have the money story of Tammany in the bowels of the town.
Those easy-chair economists who, over their morning coffee and waffles,
engage themselves for purity, will at this point give honest rage the
rein. Had I no sense of public duty? Was the last spark of any honesty
burned out within my bosom? Was nothing left but dead embers to be a
conscience to me? The Reverend Bronson--and I had a deep respect for
that gentleman--put those questions in his time.
“Bear in mind,” said he when, after that last election, I again had
the town in my grasp, “bear in mind the welfare and the wishes of the
public, and use your power consistently therewith.”
“Now, why?” said I. “The public of which you tell me lies in two pieces,
the minority and the majority. It is to the latter's welfare--the good
of the machine--I shall address myself. Be sure, my acts will gain the
plaudits of my own people, while I have only to go the road you speak of
to be made the target of their anger. As to the minority--those who
have vilified me, and who still would crush me if they but had the
strength--why, then, as Morton says, I owe them no more than William
owed the Saxons when after Hastings he had them under his feet.”
When the new administration was in easy swing, and I had time to look
about me, I bethought me of Blackberry and those three millions taken
from the weakness and the wickedness of young Van Flange. I would have
those millions back or know the secret of it.
With a nod here and a hand-toss there--for the shrug of my shoulders or
the lift of my brows had grown to have a definition among my people--I
brewed tempests for Blackberry. The park department discovered it in a
trespass; the health board gave it notice of the nonsanitary condition
of its cars; the street commissioner badgered it with processes because
of violations of laws and ordinances; the coroner, who commonly wore
a gag, gave daily news of what folk were killed or maimed through the
wantonness of Blackberry; while my corporation counsel bestirred himself
as to whether or no, for this neglect or that invasion of public right,
the Blackberry charter might not be revoked.
In the face of these, the president of Blackberry--he of the Hebrew cast
and clutch--stood sullenly to his guns. He would not yield; he would not
pay the price of peace; he would not return those millions, although he
knew well the argument which was the ground-work of his griefs.
The storm I unchained beat sorely, but he made no white-flag signs. I
admired his fortitude, while I multiplied my war.
It was Morton who pointed to that final feather which broke the camel's
back.
“Really, old chap,” observed Morton, that immortal eyeglass on nose and
languid hands outspread, “really, you haven't played your trumps, don't
y' know.”
“What then?” cried I, for my heart was growing hot.
“You recall my saying to our friend Bronson that, when I had a chap
against me whom I couldn't buy, I felt about to discover his fad or his
fear--I was speaking about changing a beggar's name, and all that, don't
y' know?”
“Yes,” said I, “it all comes back.”
“Exactly,” continued Morton. “Now the fear that keeps a street-railway
company awake nights is its fear of a strike. There, my dear boy, you
have your weapon. Convey the information to those Blackberry employees,
that you think they get too little money and work too long a day. Let
them understand how, should they strike, your police will not repress
them in any crimes they see fit to commit. Really, I think I've hit
upon a splendid idea! Those hirelings will go upon the warpath, don't y'
know! And a strike is such a beastly thing!--such a deuced bore! It is,
really!”
Within the fortnight every Blackberry wheel was stopped, and every
employee rioting in the streets. Cars were sacked; what men offered for
work were harried, and made to fly for very skins and bones. Meanwhile,
the police stood afar off with virgin-batons, innocent of interference.
Four days of this, and those four millions were paid into my hand; the
Blackberry president had yielded, and my triumph was complete. With
that, my constabulary remembered law and order, and, descending upon the
turbulent, calmed them with their clubs. The strike ended; again were
the gongs of an unharassed Blackberry heard in the land.
And now I draw near the sorrowful, desperate end--the end at once of my
labors and my latest hope. I had held the town since the last battle
for well-nigh three and one-half years. Throughout this space affairs
political preserved themselves as rippleless as a looking-glass, and
nothing to ruffle with an adverse wind. Those henchmen--my boys of the
belt, as it were--Sing Sing Jacob, Puffy the Merchant, and Paddy the
Priest, went working like good retrievers at their task of bringing
daily money to my feet.
Nor was I compelled to appear as one interested in the profits of the
town's farming, and this of itself was comfort, since it served to keep
me aloof from any mire of those methods that were employed.
It is wonderful how a vile source for a dollar will in no wise daunt a
man, so that he be not made to pick it from the direct mud himself. If
but one hand intervene between his own and that gutter which gave it up,
both his conscience and his sensibilities are satisfied to receive it.
Of all sophists, self-interest is the sophist surest of disciples; it
will carry conviction triumphant against what fact or what deduction may
come to stand in the way, and, with the last of it, “The smell of all
money is sweet.”
But while it was isles of spice and summer seas with my politics,
matters at home went ever darker with increasing threat. Blossom
became weaker and still more weak, and wholly from a difficulty in her
breathing. If she were to have had but her breath, her health would have
been fair enough; and that I say by word of the physician who was there
to attend her, and who was a gray deacon of his guild.
“It is her breathing,” said he; “otherwise her health is good for any
call she might make upon it.”
It was the more strange to one looking on; for all this time while
Blossom was made to creep from one room to another, and, for the most
part, to lie panting upon a couch, her cheeks were round and red as
peaches, and her eyes grew in size and brightness like stars when the
night is dark.
“Would you have her sent away?” I asked of the physician. “Say but the
place; I will take her there myself.”
“She is as well here,” said he. Then, as his brows knotted with the
problem of it: “This is an unusual case; so unusual, indeed, that during
forty years of practice I have never known its fellow. However, it is no
question of climate, and she will be as well where she is. The better;
since she has no breath with which to stand a journey.”
While I said nothing to this, I made up my mind to have done with
politics and take Blossom away. It would, at the worst, mean escape from
scenes where we had met with so much misery. That my present rule of the
town owned still six months of life before another battle, did not move
me. I would give up my leadership and retire at once. It would lose me
half a year of gold-heaping, but what should that concern? What mattered
a handful of riches, more or less, as against the shoreless relief of
seclusion, and Blossom in new scenes of quiet peace? The very newness
would take up her thoughts; and with nothing about to recall what had
been, or to whisper the name of that villain who hurt her heart to the
death, she might have even the good fortune to forget. My decision was
made, and I went quietly forward to bring my politics to a close.
It became no question of weeks nor even days; I convened my district
leaders, and with the few words demanded of the time, returned them
my chiefship and stepped down and out. Politics and I had parted; the
machine and I were done.
At that, I cannot think I saw regret over my going in any of the faces
which stared up at me. There was a formal sorrow of words; but the great
expression to to seize upon each was that of selfish eagerness. I, with
my lion's share of whatever prey was taken, would be no more; it was the
thought of each that with such the free condition he would be like to
find some special fatness not before his own.
Well! what else should I have looked for?--I, who had done only justice
by them, why should I be loved? Let them exult; they have subserved
my purpose and fulfilled my turn. I was retiring with the wealth of
kings:--I, who am an ignorant man, and the son of an Irish smith! If my
money had been put into gold it would have asked the strength of eighty
teams, with a full ton of gold to a team, to have hauled it out of
town--a solid procession of riches an easy half-mile in length! No
Alexander, no Cæsar, no Napoleon in his swelling day of conquest,
could have made the boast! I was master of every saffron inch of forty
millions!
That evening I sat by Blossom's couch and told her of my plans. I made
but the poor picture of it, for I have meager power of words, and am
fettered with an imagination of no wings. Still, she smiled up at me as
though with pleasure--for her want of breath was so urgent she could
not speak aloud, but only whisper a syllable now and then--and, after a
while, I kissed her, and left her with the physician and nurse for the
night.
It was during the first hours of the morning when I awoke in a sweat
of horror, as if something of masterful menace were in the room. With a
chill in my blood like the touch of ice, I thought of Blossom; and with
that I began to huddle on my clothes to go to her.
The physician met me at Blossom's door. He held me back with a gentle
hand on my breast.
“Don't go in!” he said.
That hand, light as a woman's, withstood me like a wall. I drew back
and sought a chair in the library--a chair of Blossom's, it was--and sat
glooming into the darkness in a wonder of fear.
What wits I possess have broad feet, and are not easily to be staggered.
That night, however, they swayed and rocked like drunken men, under the
pressure of some evil apprehension of I knew not what. I suppose now I
feared death for Blossom, and that my thoughts lacked courage to look
the surmise in the face.
An hour went by, and I still in the darkened room. I wanted no lights.
It was as though I were a fugitive, and sought in the simple darkness
a refuge and a place wherein to hide myself. Death was in the house,
robbing me of all I loved; I knew that, and yet I felt no stab of agony,
but instead a fashion of dumb numbness like a paralysis.
In a vague way, this lack of sharp sensation worked upon my amazement.
I remember that, in explanation of it, I recalled one of Morton's tales
about a traveler whom a lion seized as he sat at his campfire; and how,
while the lion crunched him in his jaws and dragged him to a distance,
he still had no feel of pain, but--as I had then--only a numbness and
fog of nerves.
While this went running in my head, I heard the rattle of someone at the
street door, and was aware, I don't know how, that another physician had
come. A moment later my ear overtook whisperings in the hall just beyond
my own door.
Moved of an instinct that might have prompted some threatened animal
to spy out what danger overhung him, I went, cat-foot, to the door and
listened. It was the two physicians in talk.
“The girl is dead,” I heard one say.
“What malady?” asked the other.
“And there's the marvel of it!” cries the first. “No malady at all, as
I'm a doctor! She died of suffocation. The case is without a parallel.
Indubitably, it was that birthmark--that mark as of a rope upon her
neck. Like the grip of destiny itself, the mark has been growing and
tightening about her throat since ever she lay in her cradle, until now
she dies of it. A most remarkable case! It is precisely as though she
were hanged--the congested eye, the discolored face, the swollen tongue,
aye! and about her throat, the very mark of the rope!”
Blossom dead! my girl dead! Apple Cheek, Anne, Blossom, all gone, and
I to be left alone! Alone! The word echoed in the hollows of my empty
heart as in a cavern! There came a blur, and then a fearful whirling;
that gorilla strength was as the strength of children; my slow knees
began to cripple down! That was the last I can recall; I fell as if
struck by a giant's mallet, and all was black.