THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHARD CROKER
1886-1897
Upon the death of Kelly, the twenty-four leaders of the Assembly
Districts, comprising the executive committee of Tammany Hall,
announced individually that there would be no further “boss,” and
that the organization would be ruled thenceforth by a committee
of twenty-four. However, cliques immediately arose, and soon four
leaders--Richard Croker, who had been a sort of deputy “boss” under
Kelly; Hugh J. Grant, Thomas F. Gilroy and W. Bourke Cockran--arranged
a junta for administering the organization’s affairs. By securing the
support of 17 of the 24 leaders, Mr. Croker began concentrating power
in his own hands, and for about fourteen years remained the absolute
‘boss’ of both society and organization.
Mr. Croker was born near Cork, Ireland, November 24, 1843. His father
was a blacksmith, who emigrated to America in 1846, and settled in a
squatter’s shanty in what is now the upper portion of Central Park.
From his thirteenth to his nineteenth year young Croker worked as
a machinist. At a very early age he distinguished himself in the
semi-social fist-fights which were a part of the life of the “gang”
to which he belonged. He became, tradition has it, the leader of
the “Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang,” and fought a number of formal
prize-fights, in which he came out victor.
At the beginning of the Tweed régime, according to his testimony
before the Fassett Committee, he was an attendant under Judge Barnard
and other Judges in the Supreme Court. Upon leaving that place, for
some reason not known, he served as an engineer on a Fire Department
steamer.[1] In 1868 and 1869 he was elected an Alderman. With a
majority of his fellow-members, he sided with the Young Democracy
against Tweed, and was accordingly, with the rest of the board,
legislated out of office (April, 1870). But he must have made his
peace with the “Boss” soon after, for Controller Connolly appointed
him Superintendent of Market Fees and Rents. In 1873 he was elected
Coroner. On election day, November 3, 1874, during a street row growing
out of a political quarrel between Mr. Croker and James O’Brien, John
McKenna was shot dead. Bystanders maintained that Mr. Croker fired the
shot, and the Grand Jury indicted him for the crime. The trial jury,
after being out for seventeen hours, failed to agree. Public opinion
at the time was divided, but it is the preponderance of opinion among
those who are in a position to know, that Mr. Croker did not fire the
fatal shot.
In 1876 he was reelected Coroner. In 1883 he ran for Alderman, with
the understanding that if elected, thus establishing the fact of
his constituents’ approval, Mayor Edson would appoint him a Fire
Commissioner. During the canvass, a Police Captain, one of Croker’s
protégés, was responsible for a brutal clubbing, the feeling over which
had the effect of reducing his plurality to about 200. Mayor Edson,
however, gave him the appointment, and he was reappointed by Mayor
Hewitt. His alleged connection with the fund of $180,000 to be used in
behalf of Hugh J. Grant, in 1884, has already been mentioned. In 1885
he caused the nomination of the latter for Sheriff. Mr. Grant, while
in that office, according to Mr. McCann’s testimony, gave $25,000, in
five presents of $5,000 each, to Mr. Croker’s two-year-old daughter
Flossie.[2]
Neither Mr. Croker nor Mr. Grant denied this transaction, though both
declared the sum was $10,000 and not $25,000.[3] Mr. Grant furthermore
declared that he gave it in consideration of Flossie being his
god-child.
Mr. Croker showed the sagacity common to a long line of Tammany chiefs
in the municipal campaign of 1886. It was a time of great excitement.
The labor unions, including the Knights of Labor, had reached the
highest point in organization and in solidarity of feeling ever
attained by them in the history of the city. Knowing their strength,
they were ripe for independent political action, and they were rendered
all the more ready for it by the earnest social propaganda carried on
at the time by Single-Taxers, Socialists and social reformers generally.
The conviction of certain members of a union for carrying on a boycott
against the Thiess establishment, on Fourteenth street, proved the
one impulse needed for the massing together of all the various clubs
and unions into one mighty movement. The convictions were believed
to be illegal, and moreover to have been fraudulently obtained--and
Tammany was held responsible. Before long the nucleus of an independent
political party was formed. Henry George, then at the height of his
popularity, was looked upon as the logical leader, and he was asked to
become the new party’s candidate for Mayor. To this request he gave an
affirmative answer, contingent upon the securing of 25,000 signatures
to his nominating petition.
Mr. Croker saw the danger, and he took immediate steps to avert it.
According to the open letter of Henry George to Abram S. Hewitt,
October 17, 1897, Mr. Croker, in behalf of Tammany Hall and the County
Democracy, tried to buy off George by offering him a nomination
regarded as equivalent to an election. George, of course, refused;
the 25,000 names, or a great part of them, were secured; a nominating
convention was held; George was formally nominated, and the United
Labor party was launched. A spirited campaign in George’s behalf was
at once begun, and was responded to by the masses with remarkable
enthusiasm.
Mr. Croker was equal to the crisis. The agitation among the masses
must be met by the nomination of a representative of the conservative
interests, and a general appeal be made for the “saving of society.”
Accordingly he chose as the Tammany candidate the County Democracy’s
choice, Abram S. Hewitt.
The Republicans nominated Theodore Roosevelt. His candidacy, however,
was not regarded so seriously as otherwise it might have been, for the
contest narrowed down at once to a class struggle between George and
Mr. Hewitt. Anarchy and every other social ill were prophesied by the
conservatives as the certain results of the former’s election, and
Republicans were openly urged to support the latter.
The result proved the keenness of Mr. Croker’s foresight. The vote
stood: Hewitt, 90,552; George, 68,110; Roosevelt, 60,435. Yet it
would be difficult to name a time in recent years, if the reiterated
statements of reputable eye-witnesses are to be believed, when frauds
so glaring and so tremendous in the aggregate have been employed in
behalf of any candidate as were committed in behalf of Mr. Hewitt in
1886. There are few living men among the earnest band who supported
George’s interests at the polls on that election day who do not believe
that their candidate was grossly “counted out.”
Mayor Hewitt revealed an independence of character that astonished
the Wigwam. Before many months he had antagonized its powerful
leaders. By 1888 the United Labor party had dwindled into a faction,
and there being no such compelling reason, as in 1886, for choosing
a candidate outside of the organization, the chiefs selected one of
their own number, Hugh J. Grant. Mr. Hewitt was nominated by the County
Democracy, Joel B. Erhardt by the Republicans, and James J. Coogan by
the remnant of the United Labor party. The vote was as follows: Grant,
114,111; Erhardt, 73,037; Hewitt, 71,979; Coogan, 9,809. For Grover
Cleveland, whom Tammany had this time supported at the nominating
convention, the city gave a plurality of 55,831, out of a total vote of
about 270,000.
One of the Tammany men elected was James A. Flack, Grand Sachem of the
society (1888-1889), who assumed the duties of Sheriff the following
January. During the same year Flack surreptitiously and fraudulently
obtained a divorce in order to remarry. His wife was the ostensible
plaintiff, but it was shown that she knew nothing of the suit. Flack
and his accomplices were indicted by the Grand Jury, whereupon he was
tried and sentenced to two months in the Tombs prison, and to pay a
fine of $500. The Supreme Court later affirmed the sentence. Some
others implicated also went to prison. The scandal was such that Flack
was removed from the Sheriff’s office, and was forced to resign as
Grand Sachem of the society.
Tammany was now in practically complete control, and carried things
with a high hand. Most of the departments had again become inefficient
and corrupt. On March 21, 1890, the Grand Jury handed down a
presentment stating that the Sheriff’s office, which for twenty years
had been a hotbed of corruption, had recently been brought into “public
scandal and infamy,” through the growth of notorious abuses; that in
1889 the Sheriff’s net profits had been at least $50,000, not including
certain “extra compensations that could not be ascertained.” Many other
abuses, the Grand Jury further recited, were found to be connected with
the management of this office, and also with the conduct of the Ludlow
Street Jail.
At about the same time the State Senate Committee on Cities, headed
by J. Sloat Fassett, a Republican, undertook an investigation. Though
subjected to the charges of lukewarmness and bargaining, this body,
popularly known as the “Fassett Committee,” brought out much valuable
information. Part of its testimony has already been referred to.
It is impossible even to summarize the vast total embodied in the
3,650 printed pages of its report, but some of the more interesting
particulars may be briefly touched upon.
Henry S. Ives and George H. Stayner testified that, while prisoners
at Ludlow Street Jail, they had paid, for various favors, $10,000 to
Warden James P. Keating, then and later a prominent Tammany leader, and
that previously they had paid other large amounts to certain Deputy
Sheriffs.[4]
John F. B. Smyth testified that when Sheriff Grant had appointed
him Sheriff’s auctioneer--the most valuable gift at the Sheriff’s
disposal--the latter suggested his having as a partner ex-Alderman Kirk
(one of the Aldermen of 1884 indicted in connection with the Broadway
Surface Railroad franchise),[5] saying that the organization insisted
on having “one-half of it [the loot] go to somebody else.” In less than
a year the gross proceeds amounted to about $20,000. Of this, $10,000
went to various Deputy Sheriffs, one of whom was Bernard F. Martin,
frequently Sachem and another noted Tammany leader.[6]
A copious amount of similar testimony was brought out implicating many
other Tammany leaders, and showing that the Sheriff’s known income
from the office ranged from $60,000 to $75,000 a year.[7] Thomas P.
Taylor, a lawyer, swore that one of his clients in 1888 had had a claim
of about $4,000 in the Sheriff’s hands, and that William H. Clark, a
Sachem and a powerful Tammany leader, the partner of W. Bourke Cockran,
and sometime Corporation Counsel, had asked him (Taylor), “what he
would give to get it.” Mr. Taylor further testified that he had given
nothing, and that he had secured only a few hundred dollars of the
amount, after much trouble.[8] Clark denied the charge.[9]
Corruption, favoritism and blackmail were charged against all the other
departments controlled by Tammany, though in the Police and Excise
departments, Republican and Tammany commissioners alike were shown to
have winked at the abuses. Gambling houses had to pay at least $25 a
week for protection,[10] and revenue was likewise derived from every
place or person capable of being blackmailed. The testimony strongly
pointed to the probability that as much as $10,000 had been paid to get
a certain saloon license, though there was no absolute verification of
the statement.
One interesting fact officially brought out--a fact long generally
known, however, and stated heretofore in this work--was that the
Wiskinskie of the Tammany Society, nominally a city employee, was
the official agent of the organization in collecting assessments,
said to vary from 5 to 10 per cent., on the salaries of every Tammany
office-holder. In fact, Mr. Croker unhesitatingly admitted before the
Fassett Committee, that at that time it cost from $50,000 to $75,000 to
run the organization successfully.[11] Considerable sums were likewise
derived from assessments on candidates. Mr. Hewitt, it was said,
contributed $12,000 in 1886, but Mr. Croker developed a very poor
memory when questioned about this and contributions from many Judges
and other office-holders.[12]
The revelations, as usual, caused the formation of a citizens’
movement, and a strong combination of Republicans, Democrats and
independents was formed, under the name of the “People’s Municipal
League,” for the purpose of ousting Tammany. Francis M. Scott, a
Democrat, was nominated for Mayor, and a vigorous campaign was waged.
Tammany minimized the disclosures, and renominated Mr. Grant. A
Democratic tidal wave swept the nation in the Fall of 1890, and on this
wave the Tammany ticket was carried to victory, the local majority
being 23,199.
The effect on the society and the organization of this victory,
following so closely upon the Fassett revelations, was to impress the
Tammany men with an added sense of security. Accordingly, by tacit
understanding, smirches made upon reputations before the Fassett
Committee were to constitute no bar to political advancement, and the
old condition of things in the departments was to continue. Many of
those who had suffered most at the hands of the Senatorial inquisitors
were elected during the next four years to places in the society and
to public offices. Irving Hall and the County Democracy passed out
of existence, and Tammany had full sway. Administrative corruption
continued, and frauds at the polls, despite certain improvements in the
ballot laws instituted in 1890, developed to a science, reaching their
climax in 1893.
In 1892 Tammany fought the nomination of Mr. Cleveland for President,
though it supported him after his election. Thomas F. Gilroy, Grand
Sachem (1892-94) was nominated for Mayor, the Republicans presenting
Edwin Einstein. A Democratic landslide marked the election, and the
Tammany candidates won by practically the same majority as that given
to Mr. Cleveland, Mr. Gilroy receiving 173,510, and Mr. Einstein,
97,923 votes. Frauds were numerous, as usual. The opposition vote in a
number of election districts was practically nothing. A certain Tammany
politician, later State Senator from the lower end of town, stood in
the envious wonder of his fellows for a whole year following, for
having secured for the ticket all the votes but four in his election
district.
The fame of this enterprising worker aroused a determination in the
breasts of others to exceed his record. During the next campaign
(1893) the general indignation against the corrupt conduct of Judge
Maynard, brought out a strong opposition to his elevation to the bench
of the Court of Appeals. Senator Hill caused his nomination, Tammany
supported him, and the word was passed around that he must be elected
at all hazards. As a consequence, frauds of the gravest character
were committed throughout the city. The Tammany leader of the Second
Assembly District, zealous to outdo the record of the previous year,
offered prizes to his election district captains for the best results.
The election overturned all known records. The successful competitor
brought in a poll of 369 to 0. In two other precincts no opposition
votes of any kind were counted, despite the presence of Republican
inspectors, and the fact that Republicans, Socialists, Populists and
Prohibitionists afterward swore under oath that they had voted for
their respective candidates. The vote in this assembly district,
nominally 8,000, rose to nearly 13,000.
A committee from the Populist County Committee, the local branch of
the National People’s party, immediately took steps to secure evidence
through which to effect the punishment of the lawbreakers.[13] The
evidence secured, with that afterwards obtained by the Republican
County Committee, the City Club, the Good Government clubs, and the Bar
Association, was submitted to the Grand Jury, upon which some sixty
indictments were handed down. A number of convictions were obtained,
and several Tammany and assistant Tammany election officers were sent
to prison. The Tammany leader of the Second Assembly District went to
California immediately after the agitation began, and remained there
until the affair blew over. In the election the following year the vote
of this district fell to the old figures of approximately 8,000.
The city had again become scandalously corrupt. The bi-partizan
boards, which originally had been established in the hope of applying
some check to the general rascality, had merely furnished greater
opportunities for deals and political bargaining. Charges of blackmail,
extortion, of immunity given to crime, and most other forms of
administrative venality, grew so common that again the State Senate
sent (April, 1894), a committee to the city to investigate. This was
the body commonly known as the “Lexow Committee,” from its chairman,
Clarence Lexow. Its counsel, John W. Goff, vigorously conducted the
investigation, and the result was a mass of information regarding
Tammany methods of government such as the public had not known since
the exposures of Tweed’s time. We can but touch upon the testimony.
It was shown that during each of the years 1891, 1892 and 1893, many
thousands of fraudulent ballots had been cast by the active cooperation
and connivance of the police; Police Captains were appointed from
those members of the force who especially connived at these frauds,
the appointments being made by the President of the Board of Police
(who was one of the most conspicuous Wigwam leaders) at the instance of
the organization. Tammany influences permeated the Police Department
to such a degree that the district leaders dictated appointments, and
from Captain down almost the entire force joined the Tammany district
associations. Forced contributions were levied upon the members for the
benefit of Wigwam district organizations.
Capt. Creedon confessed to paying $15,000 to secure a promotion to a
Captaincy, and Capt. Schmittberger, to having secured the appointment
of another man as Captain, in consideration of the payment of $12,000.
The average cost of obtaining an appointment as policeman was $300.
The police functionaries recouped themselves in various ways. Vice and
crime were protected openly. One woman who kept a number of houses of
ill-repute testified that she had paid continuously for protection an
aggregate of $30,000 or more. The system reached such a perfection
in detail that a ratable charge was placed upon each house according
to the number of inmates, the protection prices ranging from $25 to
$50 monthly. Women of the streets paid patrolmen for permission to
solicit, and divided proceeds. Visitors were robbed systematically, and
the plunder was divided with the police. More than 600 policy shops
paid at the monthly rate of $15, while pool rooms paid $300 a month.
It was noted by the committee, as a remarkable fact, that when public
agitation grew very strong, a private citizen, Richard Croker, secured
the closing of these places practically in a single day. Every form of
gambling had to pay high prices for immunity. Green goods swindlers
were required to make monthly payments, to subdivide the city into
districts, and additionally, in case the victim “squealed,” to give
one-half of the plunder to either ward or headquarters detectives.
Saloons paid $20 monthly, according “to the established custom.” The
police also acted in collusion with thieves and dishonest pawnbrokers.
Almost every branch of trade and commerce was forced to make monthly
payments, and from every possible source tribute was wrung.
The committee incorporated in its testimony the estimate of Foreman
Tabor, of the Grand Jury, in March, 1892, that the annual income
derived from blackmailing and different sources of extortion was
$7,000,000.[14] In this estimate there were probably not included the
large sums paid by corporations of every kind, and all who sought the
favor or feared the power of Tammany Hall.
The two Democratic members of the Police Board at this time were
James J. Martin, one of the powerful district leaders, and John C.
Sheehan, who became deputy “boss” during Mr. Croker’s absence. No
direct evidence was given to establish their complicity in the general
extortion, but John McClave, the Republican Commissioner, resigned
after a searching and pointed examination.
Mr. Croker did not testify before the Lexow Committee, urgent business
demanding his presence in England throughout the investigation.
The public was aroused as it had not been since 1871. An earnest
agitation for reform, largely due to the crusade of Rev. Charles H.
Parkhurst, and to the work of the City Club and the Good Government
clubs, was begun. A Committee of Seventy, composed of representatives
of all classes, was formed to carry on a political contest, and an
enthusiastic support was given to it by the great mass of the public
throughout the campaign. William L. Strong, a Republican and a
prominent dry goods merchant, was nominated by the Seventy for Mayor,
and the Republicans indorsed him. Tammany, after floundering about for
several weeks in the vain hope of securing a candidate strong enough to
stem the opposing tide, selected at first Nathan Straus, who withdrew,
and then Hugh J. Grant, making its campaign largely on the ground
that Mr. Grant was the only unsmirched Tammany member of the “Boodle”
Board of Aldermen of 1884. The contest was bitter and determined on
both sides, Tammany putting forth its utmost efforts to avert the
inevitable disaster. According to a statement of John C. Sheehan, the
organization expended more money in this election than in any election
in recent years.
The convictions of the previous year had served to cool the zeal of
the Tammany workers for records at the polls. In consequence of this,
and of further changes in the manner of balloting, New York enjoyed
probably the most fairly conducted election of any since the first
organized effort of Tammany men at the polls in 1800. Strong was
elected by a majority of 45,187. With his election went nearly the
whole of the city patronage, changes in the new constitution (1894)
having greatly centralized the city’s administrative functions in the
Mayor’s hands. Tammany was thus thrust out again.
Mayor Strong’s administration on the whole was beneficial. The city
budget went up to nearly $44,000,000, but for the first time since
Mayor Havemeyer’s time the streets were kept clean--a result due to the
systematic energy of Col. George E. Waring, Jr. Moreover, new schools
were built, new parks laid out, streets asphalted, improvements planned
and carried out, while administrative corruption was almost unheard
of. Not the least of the benefits of this administration was the
partial reform of the Police Department, through the efforts of Police
Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, and his fellow Commissioners, Avery D.
Andrews, Andrew D. Parker and Frank Moss.
In the mean time Richard Croker spent most of his time in England.
From being a comparatively poor man, as he testified in 1890, he
became suddenly rich. From April, 1889, to February, 1890, he was City
Chamberlain, at a salary of $25,000 a year, but thereafter he held no
public office. Within two years, however, he was able, according to
common report, to buy an interest in the Belle Meade stock farm for
$250,000, paying additionally $109,000 for Longstreet and other race
horses. Later, he built a new house, said to cost over $200,000, and
lavishly spent money, and displayed the evidences of wealth in other
ways.
When in the city he was, for a considerable number of years, in the
real estate business. He is popularly credited with having been
interested in the passage and development of certain extremely valuable
franchises which were obtained from the Legislature and Board of
Aldermen for almost nothing. In 1892 he was reputed to dominate the
Legislature, as he did the city, and the lobby disappeared. It was
related at the time that all applicants for favors or for relief from
hostile measures were advised “to see headquarters.”
One of the franchises granted during that year was the “Huckleberry
franchise,” for a street railway in the Annexed District--a grant which
was worth at the time fully $2,000,000, and yet was practically given
away under circumstances of great scandal.[15] When testifying before
the Mazet Committee in 1899, he was asked whether he had owned, in
1892, 800 shares of the stock of this road, but declined to state.[16]
Another illustration of Mr. Croker’s alleged diversified interests was
furnished by a statement said to have been inspired by John C. Sheehan
and published on December 23, 1900. Mr. Sheehan asserted that in 1894
he and Mr. Croker were interested in a company formed with a capital
of $5,000,000 for the construction of the rapid transit tunnel. Mr.
Sheehan, the statement read, forced through the Board of Aldermen a
resolution approving the tunnel route which he and Mr. Croker had
selected as the most feasible. The statement further set forth that
Mr. Croker had $500,000 worth of this company’s stock, which came to
him gratuitously, and that he and Mr. Sheehan had been also mutually
interested in a proposed surety company.
As chairman of the finance committee of Tammany Hall (a post Tweed
and Kelly had held, and which carried with it the titular leadership
of the organization), all the vast funds contributed for Tammany’s
many campaigns passed through his hands. As he himself testified, the
finance committee kept no books.[17]
Whether Mr. Croker was at home or far abroad, his control of the Wigwam
was absolute. Long since, he had inaugurated the system of “turning
down” any man that disobeyed orders.
At the time of Mr. Bryan’s nomination, in 1896, Mr. Croker was in
England. His three years’ racing experience there cost him, it was
reported, between $600,000 and $700,000. He remained abroad, leaving
the organization, as we have mentioned, in charge of John C. Sheehan
as a kind of vicegerent. Mr. Sheehan’s public record in Buffalo had
been severely criticized, and many organization men had protested
against his being put in charge. This protest, however, was generally
understood at the time to be founded not so much on the matter of Mr.
Sheehan’s record as on that of his being an interloper from another
section of the State. Tammany that year ignored the national Democratic
platform. Though ratifying Mr. Bryan’s nomination, a general apathy
prevailed at the Wigwam throughout the campaign, and the more radical
Democrats repeatedly charged the leaders with treachery to the ticket.
The result of this apathy and of other influences was that Mr. McKinley
carried the city by over 20,000 plurality.
Mr. Croker finally returned home in September, 1897, shortly before the
meeting of the Democratic city convention. It was commonly believed
that Mr. Sheehan, the deputy “boss,” had made preparations to assume
the “boss-ship” himself, but Mr. Sheehan emphatically denied this.
Whatever the circumstances were Mr. Croker promptly deprived the former
of power, and later succeeded in practically excluding him from the
organization.
The “Boss’s” supreme control of city politics was illustrated by the
nomination for Mayor of Greater New York of Robert C. Van Wyck, who
was in no sense the organization’s candidate, but represented merely
Mr. Croker’s choice and dictation. The Citizens’ Union nominated Seth
Low, who probably would have been elected had the Republicans indorsed
him. But the latter nominated Benjamin F. Tracy, thus dividing the
opposition, which was still further disintegrated by the action of
the Jeffersonian Democrats in nominating Henry George, and later
Henry George, Jr., upon the noted economist dying in the heat of the
campaign. The canvass was carried on with the greatest vigor, for under
the Greater New York charter all the territory now embraced in the
city limits was to vote for one Mayor, with a four-years’ term, and
almost dictatorial power in the matter of appointments and removals.
In his statement, heretofore referred to, Mr. Sheehan asserted that
during this campaign he personally collected and turned over to John
McQuade,[18] the treasurer of Tammany Hall, the sum of $260,000,
irrespective of contributions collected by others, and that at the end
of the canvass Mr. McQuade had $50,000 in the treasury.[19]
The vote stood: Van Wyck, 253,997; Low, 151,540; Tracy, 101,863;
George, 21,693; scattering, 17,464. The Wigwam was beside itself with
joy; the victory meant absolute control of the greater city’s annual
budget of over $90,000,000, not to speak of the tens of millions more
derived from rents, fees, fines, interest, assessments for street
improvements, bond sales and premiums, and from those vast and varied
sources of contract juggling, selling of legislative “goods,” and
all the other avenues, too numerous to enumerate, of which Tammany
from early times has availed itself. It also meant the control of an
army of employees, now estimated at 60,000. The disreputable classes
vociferously celebrated the occasion, assured that the town was once
more to be “wide open.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. II, pp. 1708-12.
[2] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 707-8.
[3] _Ibid._, pp. 745-50, and _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 1701.
[4] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 235-52,
and _Ibid._, p. 300.
[5] Kirk had been dropped from the Council of Sachems in 1886 owing to
the disclosures.
[6] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 282-87.
Bernard, or “Barney,” Martin and two others had been indicted on the
ground of having been bribed, but the indictments were dismissed in
March, 1890, on a technicality which allowed the defendants to fall
back upon the Statute of Limitations.
[7] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. I, p. 344.
[8] _Ibid._, pp. 502-11.
[9] _Ibid._, p. 513.
[10] _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 1244.
[11] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, Vol. II, p. 1756.
[12] _Ibid._, pp. 1757-62.
[13] The credit for instituting this prosecution has been variously,
and sometimes impudently, claimed. There is no doubt, however, that not
only the first, but the most important evidence, was furnished by this
committee, whose practical head was William A. Ellis, of the Second
Assembly District.
[14] _Investigation of the Police Department_, etc., 1894, Vol. V, p.
5734.
[15] See _A History of Public Franchises in New York City_, by the
author.
[16] _Stenographic minutes_, p. 699.
[17] _Testimony, Senate Committee on Cities_, 1890, Vol. II, p. 1755.
Mr. Sheehan in the statement cited stated that when, in 1894, Mr.
Croker sent an order to the district leaders requiring that district
assessments amounting to $35,000 should be paid before March 1, the
payments were promptly made.
[18] Mr. McQuade was associated with Tweed, as a commissioner, in the
building of the Harlem Court House. The testimony brought out in the
case of Henry A. Smalley _vs._ The Mayor, etc., before Judge Donohue,
in the Supreme Court, January 28, 1878, showed that the value of all
the material used in the building was $66,386, but that the Finance
Department had paid out for this material $268,580.
[19] Early in 1898 Tammany Hall, with considerable display, disposed
of most of this fund, by giving $20,000 for the poor of the city and a
like sum for the Cuban cause.