The time is comm' and though I'm no youngster, I may see it, when New
York City will break away from the State and become a state itself. It's
got to come. The feelin' between this city and the hayseeds that make
a livin' by plunderin' it is every bit as bitter as the feelin' between
the North and South before the war. And, let me tell you, if there ain't
a peaceful separation before long, we may have the horrors of civil war
right here in New York State. Why, I know a lot of men in my district
who would like nothin' better today than to go out gunnin' for hayseeds!
New York City has got a bigger population than most of the states in the
Union. It's got more wealth than any dozen of them. Yet the people here,
as I explained before, are nothin' but slaves of the Albany gang. We
have stood the slavery a long, long time, but the uprisin' is near at
hand. It will be a fight for liberty, just like the American Revolution.
We'll get liberty peacefully if we can; by cruel war if we must.
Just think how lovely things would be here if we had a Tammany Governor
and Legislature meetin', say in the neighborhood of Fifty-ninth Street,
and a Tammany Mayor and Board of Aldermen doin' business in City Hall!
How sweet and peaceful everything would go on!
The people wouldn't have to bother about nothin'. Tammany would take
care of everything for them in its nice quiet way. You wouldn't hear of
any conflicts between the state and city authorities. They would settle
everything pleasant and comfortable at Tammany Hall, and every bill
introduced in the Legislature by Tammany would be sure to go through.
The Republicans wouldn't count.
Imagine how the city would be built up in a short time! At present we
can't make a public improvement of any consequence without goin' to
Albany for permission, and most of the time we get turned down when we
go there. But, with a Tammany Governor and Legislature up at Fifty-ninth
Street, how public works would hum here! The Mayor and Aldermen could
decide on an improvement, telephone the Capitol, have a bill put through
in a jiffy and--there you are. We could have a state constitution, too,
which would extend the debt limit so that we could issue a whole lot
more bonds. As things are now, all the money spent for docks, for
instance, is charged against the city in calculatin' the debt limit,
although the Dock Department provides immense revenues. It's the same
with some other departments. This humbug would be dropped if Tammany
ruled at the Capitol and the City Hall, and the city would have money to
burn.
Another thing--the constitution of the new state wouldn't have a word
about civil service, and if any man dared to introduce any kind of a
civil service bill in the Legislature, he would be fired out the window.
Then we would have government of the people by the people who were
elected to govern them. That's the kind of government Lincoln meant. 0
what a glorious future for the city! Whenever I think of it I feel like
goin' out and celebratin', and I'm really almost sorry that I don't
drink.
You may ask what would become of the upstate people if New York City
left them in the lurch and went into the State business on its own
account. Well, we wouldn't be under no obligation to provide for them;
still I would be in favor of helpin' them along for a while until they
could learn to work and earn an honest livin', just like the United
States Government looks after the Indians. These hayseeds have been so
used to livin' off of New York City that they would be helpless after we
left them. It wouldn't do to let them starve. We might make some sort
of an appropriation for them for a few years, but it would be with the
distinct understandin' that they must get busy right away and learn
to support themselves. If, after say five years, they weren't
self-supportin', we could withdraw the appropriation and let them shift
for themselves. The plan might succeed and it might not. We'd be doin'
our duty anyhow.
Some persons might say: "But how about it if the hayseed politicians
moved down here and went in to get control of the government of the new
state?" We could provide against that easy by passin' a law that these
politicians couldn't come below the Bronx without a sort of passport
limitin' the time of their stay here, and forbiddin' them to monkey with
politics here. I don't know just what kind of a bill would be required
to fix this, but with a Tammany Constitution, Governor, Legislature and
Mayor, there would be no trouble in settlin' a little matter of that
sort.
Say, I don't wish I was a poet, for if I was, I guess I'd be livin' in
a garret on no dollars a week instead of runnin' a great contractin'
and transportation business which is doin' pretty well, thank you;
but, honest, now, the notion takes me sometimes to yell poetry of the
red-hot-hail-glorious-land kind when I think of New York City as a state
by itself.