Tammany Hall, Inc

I

TAMMANY HALL has continued to operate at a profit during the depression, and thus is unique among business institutions. Its dividend payments have probably been smaller since the golden dream of a New Economic Era vanished late in 1929. Even ‘ the great City of New York, the fairest and richest of cities,’ as Tammany spellbinders describe the source of all profits, has been forced toward a degree of economy within recent months. Fewer bridges are being built; less land is being acquired by the lucrative condemnation process. But Tammany Hall, Inc., is still doing moderately well. Its financial position is sound.

As a business institution, Tammany operates with specific advantages. It is not precisely accurate to say that any municipal machine enjoys a monopoly. Tammany, for instance, must permit occasional, very much smaller, profits to reach beneficiaries closely allied to the rival Republican organization; otherwise unpleasant reprisals might result and salutary deals could not be made. On the other hand, the Wigwam is not required to make annual reports. Its earnings are secret. Its common stock (I speak in fanciful terms, obviously) is very narrowly held. Tammany’s greatest asset, held in common with all other large political machines, is an underlying system which does not change.

In one form or another, some of them legal, Tammany grows wealthy at the expense of New York’s taxpayers. The methods have been altered, to a degree, in the decades since the Tweed Ring inspired the savage artistry of Thomas Nast and lifted Samuel J. Tilden to those rarefied heights from which, in the shimmering distance, the White House may be seen. Some of the methods have changed, but the principle has not. Improved devices for extraction of profit come to light whenever a legislative investigation is directed against New York’s government. The latest is the one conducted by Samuel Seabury, former Judge of the New York Court of Appeals.

A State Senator named George Washington Plunkitt, the most famous philosopher in Tammany’s history, attempted to define ‘honest graft’ about thirty years ago. Dishonest graft, he said, consisted of tribute levied upon thieves, gamblers, and keepers of disorderly houses. Honest graft lay in the profits available to a city official as a result of special knowledge inherent in his daily labors. He could purchase land soon to be needed for a park or street. He could sell supplies to a city department and add a little to the normal price.

‘Why,’ asked the honest Senator, ‘should the Tammany leaders go into dirty business when there is so much honest graft lying around? If my worst enemy was given the job of writing my epitaph, he could do no more than write: “George W. Plunkitt. He Seen His Opportunities, and He Took ’Em."'

The distinction, alas, is specious. It also happens to be untrue, as we shall see. It may be assumed, I think, that no important Tammany leader profits directly to-day from commercialized vice. Nor does he, so far as the evidence shows, deflect into tin boxes or hidden vaults a share of the local speak-easy profits. But the underlings are permitted to participate. Police officers extort money from prostitutes. Slimy little lawyers reap rich harvests from the unfortunates seized by the law. Furtive bail-bond specialists haunt, like vermin, the corridors of city jails. An army of racketeers preys upon fish merchants, undertakers, poultry dealers, barbers, window cleaners, and shirt makers.

II

The people of New York have to-day a clearer picture of Tammany’s operations than at any time since the Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst thundered in 1892 that bawdy houses and gambling dens‘flourish . . . almost as thick as the roses of Sharon.’ The evidence against Tammany has been piling up for almost three years. It started with the judiciary scandals in October 1929. One city Magistrate was found to have accepted a loan from the notorious and recently murdered Arnold Rothstein. Another was indicted for using the mails to defraud. It soon became clear that the Magistrates’ Courts, the supposed seat of justice for the poor, were in serious need of disinfection.

In August 1930, Judge Seabury was selected by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court as a referee to pass on evidence of corruption and inefficiency in the Magistrates’ Courts. This was the first of three major inquiries which Seabury was to dominate. The next was into the competency of District Attorney Thomas C. T. Crain of New York County. The third was an examination of New York’s city government.

As a result of the first investigation several additional Magistrates fled or were removed, their judicial robes flying in undignified retreat. Incredible bank accounts amassed by supposedly impecunious police officers were brought to light. Judge Seabury’s major indictment, however, was his presentation of ‘ the hideous caricature which parades as justice in these courts.’ Tammany Hall, fortified by the complacent agreement of the New York Republican organization, had debauched the bench. Elevations were made as rewards for political service. The applicant for Magistrate, to quote Judge Seabury again, ‘stood abjectly . . . before the political District Leader, begging his recommendation to Tammany Hall.’ If the minor boss approved, the candidate was selected. So with clerks and court attendants. Civil service provisions, where they existed, were evaded. Acceptance of graft was the rule rather than the exception. The administration of the Magistrates’ Court, said Seabury, is ‘a part of the political spoils system.’

The Magistrate was in debt to his District Leader, who, in turn, was under obligation to the henchmen who aided him on election day. Political debts, like ‘debts of honor,’ are virtually always paid. When the henchmen ran afoul of the law, intercession was made for them. It did not take Seabury long to discover that a word at the political club ‘is much more potent in the disposition of cases than the merits ... or the services of the best lawyer.’ Gambling flourished. District Leaders and their lieutenants had unquestioned access to judges.

‘That,’ explained one Tammany boss, ‘is the way we make Democrats.'

The bearing of this on Tammany’s ability to pay dividends is direct. Through the courts swarmed the extraordinary disciples of Blackstone known as ‘district club lawyers.’ They belonged to the neighborhood clubs. Their retention as counsel was suggested by clerks and attendants, and the resulting fees were shared with those worthies. This graft was wrung from the poor and bewildered. A rich source of profit lay in arrangements with bondsmen. Confused and terrified, the average defendant first seeks to obtain bail. He does not know how to effect this, and the Tammany henchman thrives on his ignorance. Again, the clerk or attendant steps in. A bondsman is suggested. An exorbitant fee is charged and part of it goes to the court officer.

Greed makes men merciless. The money which came from the ordinary flow of business was not enough; greater riches could be achieved by artificially increasing the number of arraignments in the Magistrates’ Courts. The innocent as well as the guilty could be arrested — for imagined crimes. It would be unfair to accuse Tammany’s inner circle or to say that they profited personally from the loathsome practices of the police Vice Squad. It is enough to point out that Tammany has, for more than ten years, been in unquestioned command of the police department. Testimony brought out by Seabury showed that officers of the Vice Squad had conspired with stool pigeons and informers to arrest girls against whom no evidence existed. In some instances the police extorted money from these girls in return for release. More frequently the girls were thrown among the vultures of the Magistrates’ Courts — the lawyers and bail-bond men and fixers. In any event, the police shared. Five officers, according to an examination of their bank accounts, accumulated a total of $500,000 in a few years.

III

Such are some of the practices which Tammany Hall condones or encourages. The second Seabury inquiry, into the official acts of District Attorney Crain, cast additional light upon the phenomena of New York. In fairness to Mr. Crain, whose selection by Tammany as prosecutor had been preceded by a long and honorable judicial career, it should be noted that Judge Seabury did not recommend his removal. But it is axiomatic that a political machine which does not control the prosecutor’s office is impotent; I have often thought that Tammany would sacrifice the Mayoralty, if it were necessary, to secure a victory for District Attorney.

Control can be achieved through a District Attorney who lacks vigor as well as through one who is corrupt. The City Club of New York filed charges with Governor Roosevelt which set forth that Mr. Crain’s conduct had been ‘incompetent, inefficient, and futile, with the result that the machinery of prosecution has failed to function properly and the administration of the criminal law . . . has been brought into disrepute.’ Judge Seabury could not find merit in all the accusations of the City Club. He did find that Mr. Crain’s attempts to end racketeering had resulted in ‘a complete and abject surrender by the law-enforcing authorities in New York.’

The situation at the Fulton Fish Market may be cited as typical. A very high percentage of all fish sold in New York passes through this market. It is handled by union workmen who have wage agreements with the wholesale and retail distributors. According to Judge Seabury’s investigation, it has been the custom of gangsters to interfere. They have notified dealers that the wage agreements would not be renewed unless payments were forthcoming. These reached, for wholesalers, as high as several thousand dollars a year. Six hundred retailers paid from forty dollars to fifty dollars annually to ensure delivery of fish. These extortionists were not legitimate labor leaders. Their scheme was to terrorize the workers and the employers alike.

‘The extortions of the racketeer,’ Judge Seabury concluded, ‘are, like taxes or charges enhancing cost, shifted to the consumer.’

It is hard to believe that Tammany, with its influence in the courts, did not profit from these myriad forms of racketeering.

IV

Judge Seabury, having accumulated vast stores of information in the earlier studies, was logically engaged as counsel in the legislative investigation. The committee of inquiry was known as the Hofstadter Committee because State Senator Samuel H. Hofstadter was chairman. Exhaustive preliminaries were made possible by total appropriations of $750,000. Judge Seabury gathered together a staff of able and enthusiastic young lawyers, and the work was well under way by the spring of 1931. The climax came when New York’s playboy Mayor took the stand last May and denied allegations that he, too, had shared in the profits of Tammany Hall, Inc. The formal demand for his removal by Governor Roosevelt followed.

It is impossible, within the limits of this summary, to describe all of the methods by which Tammany enriches itself. It seems sensible, therefore, to focus attention first on the 1932 variants of Senator Plunkitt’s ‘honest graft.’ A modern metropolis is vastly more complicated than the New York which Bosses Tweed, Croker, and Murphy ruled. The hazards of congestion have made necessary regulations regarding the height of buildings, the location of garages and filling stations, the division of the city into districts limited to residential houses or to business structures. A city body, the Board of Standards and Appeals, has supervision of these building and zoning regulations. It can grant favors, under the guise of legal exceptions, to builders upon whom Tammany smiles. Its members, five in number, are political appointees. Let us watch the Board of Standards and Appeals in operation.

Fred F. French, a New York builder, was ready in 1926 to start his Tudor City development east of Grand Central terminal. This was a project of magnitude; its consummation required various applications to the Board of Standards and Appeals. The boss of Tammany Hall in 1926 was George W. Olvany, a former judge of the General Sessions Court. Mr. Olvany was also engaged in the practice of law; the name of his firm was Olvany, Eisner & Donnelly. At the suggestion of the Olvany firm, according to testimony before the Hofstadter Committee, Mr. French engaged Frederick J. Flynn, an attorney, to present his case to the Board of Standards and Appeals.

Three applications were made to this board and two to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, the city’s principal governing body. In all five proceedings Flynn was the attorney of record, and in each of them his petition was approved. The French interests paid $50,000, by check, to Flynn, and on two occasions Flynn handed $20,000 in cash to Olvany, Eisner & Donnelly. The next $10,000 was delivered to the Olvany firm by check, but one of the partners promptly exchanged it at the bank for a cashier’s check. The final $25,000 of an agreed $75,000 was paid after Olvany had ceased to be leader of the Wigwam. This time there was no hocus-pocus. A check was sent directly to Olvany, Eisner & Donnelly. Flynn’s share of the $75,000 was $4000.

Judge Seabury declared this ‘illustrative of the practice followed by the Olvany firm in the handling of its cases before the Board of Standards and Appeals and other city departments.’ During the period of Olvany’s leadership, according to counsel for the Hofstadter Committee, petitioners before the Board of Standards and Appeals paid fees of about $250,000 to attorneys ostensibly representing them. These same attorneys remitted some $200,000 of this amount to Olvany, Eisner & Donnelly. They made the payments in cash or in cashier’s checks, and thereby hid the trail.

This was not illegal. Olvany’s explanation, when he was summoned by the Hofstadter Committee, was suave, but not, in Seabury’s opinion, easy to believe. The ex-boss of Tammany admitted that he had called William E. Walsh, chairman of the Board of Standards and Appeals, to the Wigwam on Union Square, the home office of Tammany Hall, Inc. Yes, he said, they had discussed cases pending before the board. But never, he added, had these included applications in which Olvany, Eisner & Donnelly were interested. On the contrary, all mention of such delicate subjects was avoided. The credibility of such testimony is properly judged, of course, with the jumble of cash payments and cashier’s checks in mind. It is also significant that Olvany, although formerly a high judicial officer, declined access to the accounts of his firm.

’Your committee,’wrote Judge Seabury in his intermediate report, ‘was . . . able ... to establish numerous instances of Judge Olvany’s sale of his political influence, and to show that, between the time he became Leader of Tammany Hall and November 5, 1931, his firm banked upwards of $5,280,000 and received other fees which never were deposited in the firm accounts.’

Also busy before the Board of Standards and Appeals was Dr. William F. Doyle, a one-time veterinary surgeon. Dr. Doyle demonstrated uncanny success as a practitioner on zoning and height regulations. From 1923 to 1931 Dr. Doyle deposited more than $1,000,000 in the bank. His previous experience in city affairs had been as Chief Veterinarian of the Fire Department and as a member of the Bureau of Fire Prevention. The Hofstadter Committee was able to show that Dr. Doyle often received payments in curious ways. Part of the fee for a single petition to the Board of Standards and Appeals was received in cash and the other by check. This led, not illogically, to a suspicion that Doyle’s brilliance might be due to his willingness to split fees with city officials or Tammany leaders.

He may have done the latter. He denied under oath that he had bribed any member of the Board of Standards and Appeals; Judge Seabury was forced to admit partial defeat so far as the Great Doyle Mystery was concerned. The doctor was not, exactly, a cooperative witness. He languished in jail for eighteen days when he was declared in contempt for declining to say with whom the fees had been split. When the Court of Appeals ruled that he was compelled to reveal whether public officials had been bribed, he took the stand briefly to insist that they had not.

Dr. Doyle did not submit gracefully to incarceration, either. His martyrdom brought valiant assistance from John F. Curry, Tammany’s current boss, who telephoned to a Justice of the Appellate Division and asked for a stay of sentence. In due time Mr. Curry found himself facing Judge Seabury. He was asked to explain his rather striking devotion to the horse doctor. Expressing, incidentally, his extreme distaste for what he termed the ‘crucification ’ of Tammany Hall, the Boss testified that he would have done as much for any Democrat.

‘Simply because he is a Democrat?’ asked Judge Seabury.

‘Absolutely.’

‘If he were not a Democrat, you would have no interest in him?’

Mr. Curry’s face maintained its poker-game vacuity. ‘I won’t say that, Judge Seabury,’ he answered. ‘I have no feeling but good feeling toward all men and all women.’

V

Profit through condemnation of land is an ancient political trick. Tammany, if the evidence lately uncovered proves this a frequent practice, should have done rather well; between 1926 and 1930 the awards in condemnation proceedings totaled $200,000,000. Here is a case which illustrates the system. In May 1924, a tract of land in uptown New York was sold to Murray W. Garsson, Inc., for $210,000. This company disposed of the property to the Park River Holding Corporation, which it controlled, for $360,000. The Park River Holding Corporation retained Olvany, Eisner & Donnelly under an agreement whereby the firm received 2 per cent on a sale up to $360,000 and 20 per cent of any excess. The price paid by the city, for land which had cost $210,000 five months before, was ultimately $761,536.72. The fee received by Olvany’s firm was about $90,000.

Another source of Tammany revenue lay in the leasing of city-owned docks. In 1922 the North German Lloyd Steamship Company applied for a pier in Manhattan. The application appeared to be dragging, and a gentleman named David Maier, who accompanied Mayor Walker on one of his frequent European jaunts, became an intermediary. He informed the company that from $2500 to $10,000 would be needed to obtain the lease. He later said that the employment of William H. Hickin, a lawyer who now is President of the National Democratic Club, would also accelerate the process. At this point the cost rose to $25,000. While bewildered North German Lloyd officials in New York and Bremen exchanged puzzled cables, the price continued to rise. One of the messages expressed apprehension of ‘a further squeeze.’ Ultimately $50,000 was paid to Hickin as an ostensible legal fee.

The transaction, commented Judge Seabury, ‘shows too eloquently . . . how arrangements for the granting of pier leases . . . are made directly with Tammany Hall. It is also evidence of the subtle system by which graft is now extorted — to wit, the interposition of a lawyer to whom the money is passed under the guise of a legal fee.’

Almost without end are the devious methods by which money flows toward Tammany. ‘In whatever direction the light of the investigation has been turned,’ said Judge Seabury, ‘there have been revealed conditions suggestive of extortion and graft.’ It was sometimes easier for the Hofstadter Committee to uncover large bank deposits on the part of city and county officials than it was to ascertain their source. Among the instances were:—•

Sheriff Thomas M. Farley. In the seven years from 1925 through 1931 he deposited $360,660.34, although his salary and other legitimate income did not exceed $90,000. Farley swore that as business agent of a union he had accumulated $100,000 in cash and kept this in a tin box, ‘a wonderful tin box.’ It was from this tin box that he made deposits. Farley was removed from office by Governor Roosevelt.

Charles W. Culkin. During the same period he deposited $1,929,759.35 in personal accounts. Culkin, a former Sheriff, refused to waive immunity and did not testify regarding these sums. Judge Seabury did, however, establish the fact that he was president of the Monroe Lamp and Equipment Company. This concern sold electric light bulbs, and, according to Seabury, its business grew apace when assurances were given that Monroe customers would not be cited by the Fire Department for violations. Culkin had once been a Deputy Fire Commissioner. He is now Tammany leader in the Third Assembly District.

Harry C. Perry. He was formerly Tammany leader in the Second Assembly District and Chief Clerk of the City Court. Between 1926 and 1931 he deposited $135,061.50 on a salary which came to $50,000 for the period. He said that the rest of the money had been borrowed. The police had, on occasion, raided his political clubhouse and had arrested gamblers there.

Michael J. Cruise. Between 1925 and 1931 Cruise deposited $143,758, although his salary was $80,000. It was his custom, he said, to keep funds in cash in a box or on his person. He could not explain the difference between his salary and the bank deposits. Cruise is City Clerk of New York and Tammany leader of the Twelfth District.

James A. McQuade. Register of Kings County and Democratic Leader of the Fifteenth Assembly District. He deposited $510,597 in seven years; only $47,077.64 of it was in salary checks. The rest, he testified, was borrowed to support his enormous family, to take care of ‘the other 33 McQuades.’

Patrolman Robert E. Morris. A member of the Vice Squad, he had $50,000 in two bank accounts. Of this sum, he said, $10,000 had been won at gambling. He got $40,000 from an ‘Uncle George.’ The money had been handed to him in one-thousand-dollar bills while he and Uncle George were on their way to Coney Island. Unfortunately, Uncle George was dead and could not be called to corroborate this story.

Other fantastic examples could be culled from the thousands of pages of testimony. The above may be fairly considered as typical. One further count in the bill of particulars against Tammany Hall, Inc., is relevant to Tammany’s claim that the organization is the friend, often the only friend, of the poor. In 1931, New York appropriated $10,000,000 for relief of distress that had been brought about by the depression. This was to have been used to give employment to needy men and women. Judge Seabury proved that Democrats, many of them owning automobiles and homes and some of them employed, were often beneficiaries of the fund. No money is sacred to Tammany avarice.

VI

As this is being written Governor Roosevelt has not announced his decision on Judge Seabury’s application for Mayor Walker’s removal from office. Whether he is innocent or guilty of the accusations filed, accusations which are both numerous and impressive, has no bearing on Mayor Walker’s responsibility for the misconduct of his subordinates in New York’s city government. He had absolute power over the tenure of office of nearly all the officials who squirmed in the witness chair under Judge Seabury’s cross-examination. Almost as many were his personal appointments in the first place. As a candidate for reëlection, Walker was unquestionably consulted regarding the designation of Mr. Crain as the Tammany candidate for District Attorney. Through his right to name Magistrates the Mayor of New York can, if he chooses, dominate the lower courts. Walker cannot, then, evade the findings of the three investigations which, since the summer of 1930, have been delving into the affairs of New York.

As a political reporter in New York, I had repeated opportunities to observe Mayor Walker in action. I found him charming, quick-witted, debonair, insouciant. Walker had been bred in the Tammany tradition — ‘Take care of your friends.’ I recall an occasion soon after his first election when a group of us waited to see Jimmy. He was an hour or so late and was greeted, when he appeared, with demands as to where he had been. The Mayor-elect grinned at us amiably.

‘I’ve been at home,’ he said, ‘standing in front of the mirror. I’ve been practising.’

‘Practising what?’

‘Trying to learn to say NO.’

The predicament in which Mayor Walker found himself last summer, when he fought for his official life, was partly due to the fact that he never did learn. Part of the ancient apothegm applied to him: Jimmy saw no evil and he heard none. He preferred to dance, to travel, to be gay. But this is not the whole story, either. Those who were fond of Jimmy Walker will never forget, I suspect, a feeling of dismay which came over them when they first read the Mayor’s testimony at the tumultuous, crowded, rowdy hearings before the Hofstadter Committee on May 25 and 26 last. It was impossible to escape the conclusion that Walker had been guilty, at the least, of gross carelessness. It was impossible not to believe that Russell T. Sherwood, who had vanished into Mexico when the situation grew warm, had been the Mayor’s financial agent over a long period of years. Vague as they are, due to Sherwood’s pell-mell flight from the jurisdiction of the committee, the facts regarding this financial agent and his deposits of close to $1,000,000 are hard to explain. Certainly Walker’s own testimony did not explain them.

‘Not proved; my connection with Sherwood and his bank accounts was not proved ’ — such, in effect, was the best answer Mayor Walker could give. Sherwood had been a clerk in Walker’s law offices prior to his election, and had been paid $3000 a year. In 1930 he was engaged by the Bank of Manhattan Trust Company at $10,000. From January 1, 1926, to the date of his disappearance in August 1931, Sherwood deposited $960,000 in several banks and brokerage accounts, and of this total $730,000 was in cash. When process servers sought this $3000 to $10,000 a year millionaire, he went to Mexico City. He stayed there, despite a fine of $50,000 for contempt.

Mayor Walker, although professing his desire to have Sherwood testify, made no known effort to bring about his return to New York. He resorted to a characteristically glib retort when Judge Seabury questioned him about the Sherwood bank account. ‘ I hope he proves it is mine and I will try to collect it,’ the Mayor said.

The Sherwood matter may have no legal bearing on Mayor Walker’s conduct in office. Unethical rather than illegal, also, was Walker’s willingness to accept favors from Paul Block, the newspaper publisher. Block opened a joint brokerage account with Walker in 1927, and this, prior to August 1929, yielded $250,000 in profits for the Mayor. Walker insisted that he had agreed to make losses good, if there were any. Needless to say, none resulted. Mr. Block testified that he had opened the account at the suggestion of his young son. The boy had expressed apprehension that Mayor Jimmy might have trouble in living on his niggardly salary of $25,000 a year.¹ He begged his father to do something, and the joint account resulted. Mayor Walker did not put up a dollar.

VII

Much closer to possible malfeasance were accusations that Mayor Walker had improperly favored the Equitable Coach Company, which sought a bus franchise, and also had owned bonds in a company which subsequently received a city contract.

The Equitable Coach Company had employed State Senator John A. Hastings, long a friend of the Mayor, to use his influence. Seabury insisted that the concern had no real financial backing, that it was started by a group of promoters, that its only asset was the franchise or, more accurately, its hope of receiving a franchise. Walker flatly denied these allegations. He said that the Equitable had offered the best terms. In the end the franchise was canceled; the Equitable, with the contract in hand, failed to obtain financing. The weak part of the case against Walker is that his own gain, if any, was slight. The best that Seabury could do was to show that one of the Equitable promoters purchased a $10,000 letter of credit on his behalf. Walker said that his share of the letter had been $3000, and that this was for expenses on a European trip; he had paid this in cash and he had never been aware that the Equitable negotiator had made the arrangements for the letter.

The contracting concern whose bonds Walker owned bore the corporate name of the Reliance Bronze and Steel Corporation. They were convertible at will into stock. In 1931 the concern received $43,000 for traffic-light standards on Fifth Avenue. The New York City Charter specifies that a city official can be removed if found guilty of owning stock in a corporation engaged in work for the city. The Reliance bonds, as we have seen, were convertible into stock. Walker’s explanation was not conclusive. He said that the $10,000 in bonds belonged to his wife. He had not known, he swore, about the contract for the traffic standards.

It may be that the case against the Mayor of New York is not legally overwhelming. No such question can cloud the moral significance of his conduct. He granted favors to his friends. He piled up huge sums and kept them, in cash, in a safe at his home. He permitted his brother, Dr. William H. Walker, to share with three other physicians over $200,000 in city compensation case fees. The effect of such actions on subordinate city officials is obvious. They saw Mayor Walker enjoying affluence, and they did not know the source of his wealth. They can reasonably be supposed to have concluded that his funds came, if only indirectly, from the taxpayers. They were stimulated, no doubt, toward emulation of their Chief Executive. Assume, for a moment, that Mayor Walker told the whole truth when he testified in May. Even if this was so, which I do not believe, he has only himself to blame for the disrepute which has come to him and the dark shadow his administration has cast on the reputation of New York.

VIII

Some years ago Alfred E. Smith, attempting to raise Tammany Hall to his own high level of integrity, opposed the selection of John F. Curry as leader. But Walker, annoyed because Smith presumed to interfere, cast his lot with the old régime. He insisted that only a District Leader was fit to command Tammany. ‘The political history of the organization,’ he said, ‘shows that the successful leaders of Tammany Hall, such as Murphy, Kelly, and Croker, were District Leaders. There is nothing too big for a Tammany leader that Democracy can give. They are the outstanding benefactors in this town.’

This assertion by the Mayor of New York is pertinent to an analysis of Tammany Hall, Inc. When Walker spoke of ‘successful leaders’ he was not referring to experts in government who had advanced the progress of New York or reduced its taxes. What he meant, of course, was that District Leaders, when elevated to the command of the Wigwam, were able to win elections. There can be no doubt that Murphy, Kelly, and Croker were signally able in that respect. So was the corpulent Tweed. From Tammany’s point of view, Murphy, Kelly, and Croker were successful. Tweed was not. Tweed got caught in irregularities.

Only one real disaster can overwhelm Tammany, Inc., and cause a bear raid on its common stock. This is to lose control of New York through defeat at the polls. When Tammany Hall goes out of power, its stream of revenue — whether it consists of honest or dishonest graft — becomes a sickly trickle. No longer can the district club lawyers enjoy lucrative fees from cases turned over to them by clerks and attendants in the lower courts. No longer can these clerks receive their share of the fees. The bail-bond extortioners grow lean and hungry. Favored contractors close their office doors and await the return of prosperity. I do not mean that the ejection of Tammany means an end of graft. It continues, although probably in reduced volume. The point is that very little of it flows into Tammany’s hands.

Prosperity always returns, or has, at least, thus far in the history of Tammany Hall, Inc. Occasionally the citizenry rises in wrath, and a FusionRepublican ticket is elected. But the financial position of Tammany is fundamentally sound. Like any good business institution it has a war chest. Even when in eclipse it continues to give baskets and coal to the poor. During the lean years the organization functions as steadily as during the fat ones; the emphasis is placed, however, upon winning votes. In due time Tammany comes back into power. Its system for making money is ready. Soon dividends are being paid again.