 Preface of Plucket of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Mike Binditti. Plucket of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plucket. This volume discloses the mental operations of perhaps the most thoroughly practical politician of the day. George Washington Plucket, Tammany leader of the 15th Assembly District, Sachem of the Tammany Society and Chairman of the Elections Committee of Tammany Hall, who has held the offices of State Senator, Assemblyman, Police Magistrate, County Supervisor, and Alderman, and who boasts of his record in filling four public offices in one year and drawing salaries from three of them at the same time. The disclosures at Faller were delivered by him from his rostrum, the boot-black stand in the County Courthouse, at various times in the last half dozen years. Their absolute frankness and vigorous unconventionality of thought and expression charmed me. Plucket said right out what all practical politicians think but aren't afraid to say. Some of the discourses I published as interviews in the New York Evening Post, the New York Sun, the New York World, and the Boston Transcript, they were reproduced in newspapers throughout the country and several of them, notably the talks on the Curse of Civil Service Reform and Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft, became subjects of discussions in the United States Senate and in college lectures. There seemed to be a general recognition of Plucket as a striking type of the practical politician. A politician, moreover who dared to say publicly what others in his class whisper among themselves in the City Hall corridors and the hotel lobbies. I thought it a pity to let Plucket's revelations of himself as frank in their way as Rousseau's Confessions Parish in the files of the newspapers, so I collected the talks I had published, added several new ones, and now give to the world in this volume a system of political philosophy which is as unique as it is refreshing. No New Yorker needs to be informed who George Washington Plucket is. For the information of others, the following sketch of his career is given. He was born, as he proudly tells, in Central Park, that is in the territory now included in the park. He began life as a driver of a cart, then became a butcher's boy, and later went into the butcher business for himself. Now he entered politics, he explains in one of his discourses. His advancement was rapid. He was in the Assembly soon after he cast his first vote and has held office most of the time for forty years. In 1870, through a strange combination of circumstances, he held the places of Assemblyman, Alterman, Police Magistrate, and County Supervisor and drew three salaries at once, a record, unexampled in New York politics. Plucket is now a millionaire. He owes his fortune mainly to his political pull, as he confesses, in honest graft and dishonest graft. He is in the contracting, transportation, real estate, and every other business out of which he can make money. He has no office, his headquarters is the County Courthouse Boot Black Stand. There he receives his constituents, transacts his general business, and pours forth his philosophy. Plucket has been one of the great powers in Tammany Hall for a quarter of a century. While he was in the Assembly and the State Senate, he was one of the most influential members and introduced the bills that provided for the outlying parks of New York City, the Harlem River Speedway, the Washington Bridge, the 155th Street Validuct, the grading of 8th Avenue North of 57th Street additions to the Museum of Natural History, the West Side Court, and many other important public improvements. He is one of the closest friends and most valued advisers of Charles F. Murphy, leader of Tammany Hall, William L. Rourden, a tribute to Plucket by the leader of Tammany Hall. Senator Plucket is a straight organization man. He believes in party government. He does not indulge in Kant and hypocrisy, and he is never afraid to say exactly what he thinks. He is a believer in thorough political organization and all-the-year-round work, and he holds to the doctrine that, in making appointments to office, party workers should be preferred if they are fitted to perform the duties of the office. Plucket is one of the veteran leaders of the organization. He has always been faithful and reliable, and he has performed valuable services for Tammany Hall. End of Preface Chapter 1 of Plucket of Tammany Hall A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics Plucket of Tammany Hall A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics by George Washington Plucket Chapter 1 Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft Everybody is talking these days about Tammany men grown rich on graft, but nobody thinks that drawn the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I have made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm getting richer every day. But I've not gone in for the dishonest graft, blackmail and gamblers, saloon keepers, disorderly people, etc., and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics. There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by saying, I've seen my opportunities, and I took them. Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's going to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place. I see my opportunity, and I take it. I go to that place, and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for or before. Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that's honest graft. Or supposing it's a new bridge they're going to build. I get tipped off, and I buy as much property as I can that has to be taken for approaches. I sell at my own price later on and drop some more money in the bank. When you? It's just like looking ahead in Wall Street or in the coffee or cotton market. It's honest graft, and I'm looking for it every day in the year. I will tell you frankly that I've got a good lot of it, too. I'll tell you of one case. They were going to fix up a big park, no matter where. I got on to it and went looking about for land in that neighborhood. I could get nothing at a bargain but a big piece of swamp, but I took it fast enough and held on to it. That turned out was just what I counted on. They couldn't make the park complete without Plunkett's swamp, and they had to be a good price for it. Anything dishonest in that? Up in the watershed, I made some money, too. Bought up several bits of land there some years ago and made a pretty good guess that they would be bought up for water purposes later by the city. Somehow I always guessed about right. And shouldn't I enjoy the profit of my foresight? It was rather amusing when the Condonation Commissioners came along and found piece after piece of the land in the name of George Plunkett, of the 15th Assembly District, New York City. They wondered how I knew just what to buy. The answer is I seen my opportunity and I took it. I haven't confined myself to land anything that paces in my line. For instance, the city is repaving a street and has several hundred thousand old granite blocks to sell. I am on hand to buy and I know just what they are worth. Well, never mind that. I had a sort of monopoly of this business for a while. But once a newspaper tried to do me. They got some outside men to come over from Brooklyn to New Jersey to bid against me. Was I done? Not much. I went to each of the men and said, How many of these 250,000 stories do you want? One said 20,000. And another wanted 15,000. Other wanted 10,000, I said. All right. Let me bid for the lot. And I'll give each of you all you want for nothing. They agreed, of course. Then the auctioneer yelled, How much of my bid for these 250,000 fine paven stones? $2.50 says I. $2.50? Screamed the auctioneer. Oh, that's a joke. Give me a real bid. Found the bid was real enough my rival stood silent. I got the lot for $2.50 and gave them their share. That's how the attempt to do Plunk had ended. And that's how all such attempts end. I've told you how I got rich and by honest grant. Now, let me tell you that most politicians who are accused of robbing the city get rich the same way. They don't steal a dollar from the city treasury. They just seen their opportunities and took them. That is why when reform administration comes in and spends half a million dollars trying to find the public robberies, they talked about it in the campaign, they don't find them. The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show you is that the Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends within the law and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest grant. Now, let me tell you, that's never going to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends and any man who doesn't isn't likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend. Why shouldn't I do the same in public life? Another kind of honest grant. Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There was an awful howl by the reformers. Didn't you know that Tammany gains ten votes for every one it lost by salary raising? The Wall Street banker thinks it's shameful to raise a department clerk's salary from 1500 to 1800 a year. But every man who draws a salary himself says, that's all right, I wish it was me. And he feels very much like voting the Tammany ticket on election day, just out of sympathy. Tammany was beat in 1901 when people were deceived into believing that it worked dishonest graft. They didn't draw a distinction between dishonest and honest graft. But they saw that some Tammany men grew rich and, suppose, they had been robbing the city treasury or levying blackmail on disorderly houses or working in with the gamblers and lawbreakers. As some matter of policy, if nothing else, why should Tammany leaders go into such dirty business? When there is so much honest graft laying around, when they are in power, did you ever consider that? Now in conclusion, I want to say that I don't own a dishonest dollar. If my worst enemy was given the job of writing my epitaph when I'm gone, he couldn't do more than write. George W. Plunkett. He's seen his opportunities and he took them. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall A series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall. A series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 2 How to Become a Statesman There's thousands of young men in this city who will go to the polls for the first time next November. Among them will be many who have watched the careers of successful men in politics and who are longing to make names and fortunes for themselves at the same game. It is to these youths that I want to give advice. First let me say that I am in a position to give what the courts call expert testimony on the subject. I don't think you can easily find a better example than I am of a success in politics. After forty years' experience at the game, I am, well, I'm George Washington Plunkett. Everybody knows what figure I cut in the greatest organization on earth. And if you hear people say that I've laid away a million or so since I was a butcher's boy in Washington Market, don't come to me for an indignant denial. I'm pretty comfortable. Thank you. Now, having qualified as an expert, as lawyers say, I am going to give advice free to the young men who are going to cast their first votes and who are looking forward to political glory and lots of cash. Some young men think they can learn how to be successful in politics from books. And they cram their heads with all sorts of college rot. They couldn't make a bigger mistake. Now understand me, I ain't saying nothing is colleges. I guess they'll have to exist as long as there's bookworms. And I suppose they do some good in a certain way. But they don't count in politics. In fact, a young man who has gone through the college course is handicapped at the outset. He may succeed in politics, but the chances are 100 to 1 against him. Another mistake. Some young men think that the best way to prepare for the political game is to practice speaking and becoming orators. That's all wrong. We've got some orators in Tammany Hall, but they're chiefly ornamental. You never heard of Charlie Murphy delivering a speech, did you? Or Richard Crocker or John Kelly? Any other man who has been a real power in the organization? Look at the 36 district leaders of Tammany Hall today. How many of them travel on their tongues? Maybe one or two. And they don't count when business is doing at Tammany Hall. The men who rule have practice keeping their tongues still, not exercising them. So you want to drop the orator idea unless you mean to go into politics just to perform the Skyrocket Act? Now I've told you what not to do, I guess I can explain best what to do to succeed in politics by telling you what I did. After going through the apprenticeship of the business while I was a boy by working around the district headquarters in Hustlin about the polls on election day, I set out when I cast my first vote to win fame and money in New York City politics. Did I offer my services to the district leader as a stump speaker? Not much. The woods are always full of speakers. Did I get up a hook on municipal government and showed it to the leader? I wasn't such a fool. What I did was get some marketable goods before going to the leaders. What do I mean by marketable goods? Let me tell you, I had a cousin, a young man who didn't take any particular interest in politics. I went to him and said, Tommy, I'm going to be a politician and I want to get a following. Can I count on you? He said, sure, George. That's how I started in business. I got a market roll commodity, one vote. Then I went to the district leader and told him I could command two votes on election day. Tommy's in my own. He smiled on me and told me to go ahead. If I had offered him a speech or a book full of learning, he would have said, ah, forget it. That was beginning business in a small way, wasn't it? But that is the only way to become a real lasting statesman. I soon branched out. Two young men in the flat next to mine were school friends. I went to them, just as I went to Tommy. And they agreed to stand by me. Then I had a following of three voters and I began to get a bit chesty. Whenever I dropped into district headquarters, everybody shook hands with me. And leader one day honored me by lighting a match for my cigar. And so went on like a snowball rolling downhill. I worked the flat house that I lived in from the basement to the top floor. And I got about a dozen young men to follow me. Then I tackled the next house and so on down the block and around the corner. Before long I had 60 men back of me and formed the George Washington Plunkett Association. What did the district leader say when I called at headquarters? I didn't have to call at headquarters. He came after me and said, George, what do you want? If you don't see what you want, ask for it. Wouldn't you like to have a job or two in the department for your friends? I said, I'll think it over. I haven't yet decided what the George Washington Plunkett Association will do in the next campaign. You ought to have seen how I was courted and petted then by the leaders of the rival organizations. I had marketable goods and there was bids for them from all sides and I was a rising man in politics. As time went on and my association grew I thought I would like to go to the assembly. I just had to hint at what I wanted and three different organizations offered me the nomination. Afterwards I went to the board of alderman, then to the state senate, then became leader of the district and so on up until I became a statesman. That is the way and the only way to make a lasting success in politics. If you are going to cast your first vote next November and want to go into politics, do as I did. Get a following. If it's only one man and then go to the district leader and say, I want to join the organization. I've got one man who will follow me through thick and thin. The leader won't laugh at your one man following. He'll shake your hand warmly, offer to propose you for membership in his club. Take you down to the corner for a drink and ask you to call again. But go to him and say, I took first prize in college at Aristotle. I can recite all Shakespeare forwards and backwards. There ain't nothing in science that ain't as familiar to me as blocked signs on the elevated roads and I'm the real thing in the way of silver-tongued orators. What will he answer? He'll probably say, I guess you were not to blame for your misfortune. But we have no use for you here. Chapter 3 The Curse of Civil Service Reform This civil service law is the biggest fraud of the age. It is the curse of the nation. There can't be no real patriotism while it lasts. How are you going to interest our young men in their country? If you have no offices to give them when they work for their party, just look at things in this city today. There are ten thousand good offices. But we can't get at more than a few hundred of them. How are we going to provide for the thousands of men who worked for the Tammany ticket? It can't be done. These men were full of patriotism a short time ago. They expected to be serving their city. But when we tell them that we can't place them, do you think their patriotism is going to last? Not much. They say, what's the use of working for your country anyhow? There's nothing in the game. And what can they do? I don't know. But I'll tell you what I do know. I know more than one young man in past years who worked for the ticket and was just overflowing with patriotism. But when he was knocked out by the civil service humbug he got to hate his country and became an anarchist. This ain't no exaggeration. I have good reason for saying that most of the anarchists in this city are men who ran up against civil service examinations. Isn't it enough to make a man sour on his country when he wants to serve it and won't be allowed unless he answers a lot of full questions about the number of cubic inches of water in the Atlantic and the quality of sand in the Sahara Desert? I was once a bright young man in my district who tackled one of these examinations. The next I heard of him he had settled down in her most saloon smoking and drinking beer and talking socialism all day. Before that time he had never drank anything but whiskey. I know what was coming. When a young Irishman drops whiskey and takes to beer and long pipes in a German saloon that young man is today one of the wildest anarchists in town. And just to think he might be a patriot but for that cussed civil service. Say, did you hear about that Civil Service Reform Association kicking because the tax commissioners want to put their 55 deputies on the exempt list and fire the outfit left to them by law? That civil service for you, just think. 55 Republicans and mugwamps hold an $8,000 and $4,000 and $5,000 jobs in the tax department when 1,555 good Tammany men are ready and willing to take their places. It's an outrage. What did the people mean when they voted for Tammany? What is representative government anyhow? Is it not fake that this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people? If it isn't a fake then why isn't a people's voice obeyed and Tammany men put in all the offices? When the people elected Tammany they knew just what they were doing. We didn't put up any false pretenses we didn't go in for humbug civil service and all that rot we stood where we have always stood to warden the men that won the victory. They call that the spoil system. All right, Tammany is for the spoil system and when we go in we fire every anti-Tammany man from office that can be fired under the law. It's an elastic sort of law and you can bet it will be stretched to the limit. Of course a Republican state civil service board will stand in the way of our local civil service commission all it can but say suppose we carry the state some time won't we fire the upstate board all right? Or we'll make it work in harmony with the local board and that means that Tammany will get everything in sight. I know that the civil service humbug is stuck into the Constitution too but as Tim Campbell said what's the Constitution among France? Say, the people's voice is smothered by the cursed civil service law. It is the root of all evil in our government. You hear of this thing and that thing going wrong in the nation? The state or the city? Look down beneath the surface and you can trace everything wrong to civil service. I have started the subject and I know the civil service humbug is undermining our institutions and if a halt ain't called soon this great republic will tumble down like a Park Avenue house when they were building the subway and on its ruins will rise another Russian government. This is an awful, severious proposition. Free silver, the tariff and imperialism and the Panama Canal are trifling issues when compared with it. We could worry along without any of these things but civil service has sappened the foundation of the whole shooting match. Let me argue it out for you. I ain't up to syllogisms but I can give you some arguments that nobody can answer. First, this great and glorious country was built up by political parties. Second, parties can't hold together if their workers don't get the offices when they win. Third, if the parties go to pieces the government they built up must go to pieces too. Fourth, then there'll be H to pay. Could anything be clearer than that? Say honest now. Can you answer that argument? Of course you won't deny that the government was built up by the great parties. That's history. And you can't go back of the returns. As to my second proposition you can't deny that either. When parties can't get offices they'll bust. They ain't far from the bustin' point now with all this civil service business keeping most of the good things from them. How are you going to keep up patriotism if this thing goes on? You can't do it. Let me tell you that patriotism has been dying out fast for the last 20 years. Before then when a party won the workers got everything in sight. That was something to make a man patriotic. Now when a party wins and its men come forward and ask for their rewards the reply is, nothing doing. Unless you can answer a list of questions about Egyptian mummies and how many years it will take for a bird to wear out a massive iron as big as the earth by stepping on it once in a century. I've studied politics and men for 45 years and I see how things are drifting. Sad indeed is the change that has come over the young men even in my district where I try to keep up the fire of patriotism by getting a lot of jobs from my constituents whether Tammany is in or out. The boys and men don't get excited anymore when they see a United States flag or hear the Star-Spangled Banner. They don't care no more for firecrackers on the 4th of July and why should they? What is there in it for them? They know that no matter whether they work for the country in a campaign the jobs will go to fellows who can tell about the mummies and the bird stepping on the iron. Are you surprised then that the young men of the country are beginning to look coldly at the flag and don't care to put up a nickel for firecrackers? Say let me tell you of one case after the Battle of San Juan Hill. Americans found a dead man with light complexion, red hair and blue eyes. They could see when the Spaniard although he had on a Spanish uniform. Several officers looked him over him and then a private of the 71st Regiment saw him and yelled, Good Lord, that's Flaherty! The man grew up in my district and he was once the most patriotic American boy on the west side. He couldn't see a flag without yelling himself hoarse. Now how did he come to be lying dead with a Spanish uniform on? I found out all about it and I'll vouch for the story. Well in the municipal campaign of 1897 that young man chocked full of patriotism worked day and night for the Tammany ticket. Tammany won and the young man determined to devote his life to the service of the city. He picked out a place that would suit him in his application to the head of department. He got a reply that he must take a civil service examination to get the place. He didn't know what these examinations were so he went all lighthearted to the civil service board. He read the questions about the mummies, the bird on the iron and all the other full questions and he left that office an enemy of the country that he had loved so well. The mummies and the bird had his patriotism. He went to Cuba enlisted in the Spanish army at the breaking out of the war and died fighting his country. That is but one victim of the infamous civil service. If that young man had not run up against the civil examination but had been allowed to serve his country as he wished he would be in good office today drawing a good salary. Ah, how many young men had their patriotism blasted in the same way? Now what is going to happen when civil service crushes out patriotism? Only one thing can happen. The Republic will go to pieces. Then Azar Sultan will turn up which brings me to the fourthly of my argument that is there will be the age to play and that ain't no lie. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Plunket of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Mike Vendetti Plunket of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunket Chapter 4 Reformers, Only Morning Glories College professors and philosophers and a balloon to think are always discussing the question why reform administrations never succeed themselves. The reason is plain to anybody who has learned the ABCs of politics. I can't tell you how many of these movements I've seen started in New York during my 40 years in politics. But I can tell you how many have lasted more than a few years. None. There have been reform committees of 70 of 100 and all sorts of numbers that started out to do up the regular political organizations. They were morning glories looking lovely in the morning and withered up in a short time. While the regular machines went on flourishing forever like fine old oaks. Say, that's the first poetry I ever worked off. Ain't it great? Just look back a few years. You remember the People's Municipal League that nominated Frank Scott for mayor in 1890? Do you remember the Reformers that got up that leg? Have you ever heard of them since? I haven't. Scott himself survived because he had always been a first-rate politician but you'd have to look in the newspaper Almanacs of 1891 to find out who made up the People's Municipal League. Oh yes, I remember one name Oli Teal, dear pretty Oli and his big dog. There about all that's left of the League. Now take the Reform Movement of 1894. A lot of good politicians joined in that, the Republicans, the state Democrats, the Stecolites, and the O'Brienites and they give us a licking. But the real reform part of the affair, the committee of 70 that started the thing in 1891. What's become of those Reformers? What's become of Charles Stuart Smith? Where's Banks? Do you ever hear of Cornell the Iron Man in politics now? Could a search party find R.W.G. Welling? Have you seen the name of Fulton, McMahon or McMahon Fulton? I ain't sure which in the papers lately. Or Preeble Tucker but it's no use to go through the list of the Reformers who said they sounded in the death knell of Tammany in 1894. They're gone for good. And Tammany's pretty well, thank you. They did the talking and posing. And the politicians in the movement got all the plums. It's always the case. The citizens union has lasted a little bit longer than the reform crowd that went before them but that's because they learned what they must. They learned how to put up a pretty good bluff and bluff. Counts a lot in politics. With only a few thousand members they had the nerve to run the whole fusion movement. Make the Republicans and other organizations come to their headquarters to select a ticket and dictate what every candidate must do or not do. I love nerve. And I've had a lot of respect for the citizens union but the union can't last. Its people haven't been trained to politics and whenever Tammany calls their bluff they lay right down. You'll never hear of the union again after a year or two. By the way, what's become of the good government clubs? The political nurseries of a few years ago. Do you ever hear of good government club D and P and Q and Z anymore? What's become of the infants who were to grow up and show us how to govern the city? I know what's become of the nursery that was started out in my district. You can find pretty much the whole outfit over at my headquarters Washington Hall. The fact is that a reformer can't last in politics. He can make a show for a while but he always comes down like a rocket. Politics is as much a regular business as the grocery or the dry goods or the drug business. You've got to do it or you're sure to fail. Suppose a man who knew nothing about the grocery trade suddenly went into the business and tried to conduct it according to his own ideas. Wouldn't he make a mess of it? He might make a spurge for a while as long as money lasted but his store would soon be empty. It's just the same with reformer. He hasn't been brought up in the difficult business of politics and he makes a mess of it every time. I've been studying the political game for 45 years and I don't know it all yet. I'm learning something all the time. How then can you expect what they call businessmen to turn into politics all at once and make a success of it? It is just as if I went up to Columbia University and started to teach Greek. They usually last about as long in politics as I would last at Columbia. You can't begin too early in politics if you want to succeed at the game. I began several years before I could vote and so did every successful leader in Tammany Hall. When I was 12 years old I made myself useful around the district headquarters and did work at all the polls on election day. Later on I hustled about getting out voters who had Jags on or who were too lazy to come to the polls. There's a hundred ways that boys can help and they get an experience that's the first real step of citizenship. Show me a boy that hustles for the organization on election day and I'll show you a common statesman. That's the ABC of politics. It ain't easy work to get up to Q and Z. You have to give nearly all your time and attention to it. Of course you may have some business or occupation on the side but the great business of your life must be politics if you want to succeed at it. Tammany tried to mix politics and business in equal quantities by having two leaders for each district a politician and a businessman. They wouldn't mix. They were like oil and water. The politician looked after the politics of his district. The businessman looked after his grocery store or his milk route and whenever he appeared at an executive meeting it was only to make trouble. The whole scheme turned out to be a farce and mighty quick. Do you understand now why it is that a reformer goes down and out in the first or second round? While a politician answers to the gong every time it is because the one has gone into the fight without training while the other trains all the time and knows every fine point of the game. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of Plunket of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Mike Vendetti. Plunket of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunket. Chapter 5 New York City is pie for the hayseeds. This city is ruled entirely by the hayseed legislators at Albany. I've never known an upstate Republican who didn't want to run things here. And I've met many thousands of them in my long service in the legislature. The hayseeds think we are like the Indians to the National Government that is sort of warrants of the state who don't know how to look after ourselves and have to be taken care of by the Republicans of St. Lawrence, Ontario and other Backwoods companies. Why should anybody be surprised because ex-Governor Odell comes down here to direct the Republican machine? Newberg ain't big enough for him. He, like all the other upstate Republicans wants to get hold of New York City. New York is their pie. Say you hear a lot about the downtrodden people of Ireland and the Russian peasants and the suffering boars. Now, I tell you that they have more real freedom and home rule than the people of this grand and imperial city. In England, for example, they make a pretense of giving the Irish some self-government. In this state, the Republican government makes no pretense at all. It's right out in the open. New York City is a nice big fat goose. Come along with your carbon knives and have a slice. They don't pretend to ask the goose's consent. We don't own our streets or our docks or our waterfront or anything else. The Republican legislature and Governor run the whole shoot match. We've got to eat and drink what they tell us to eat and drink and have got to choose our time for eating and drinking to suit them. If they don't feel like taking we must abstain. If they have not got any amusements up in their backwoods, we mustn't have none. We've got to regulate our whole lives to suit them and then we have to pay their taxes to boot. Did you ever go up to Albany from this city with a delegation that wanted anything from the legislature? No? Well, don't. The hayseeds who run the committees will look at you as if you were a child that didn't know what it wanted and will tell you in so many words to go home and be good and the legislature will give you whatever it thinks is good for you. They put on a sort of patronizing air as much as to say these children are an awful lot of trouble. They're wanting candy all the time and they know that it will make them sick. They ought to thank goodness that they have us to take care of them and if you try to argue with them they'll smile an opinion sort of way as if they were a humor and a spoiled child. But just let a Republican farmer from Chimburg or Wayne or Tioga turn up at the Capitol. The Republican legislature will make a rush for him and ask him what he wants and tell him if he doesn't see what he wants to ask for it. If he says his taxes are too high they reply to him, all right old man don't let that worry you. We want us to take off. I guess about 50% will about do for the present says the man, can you fix me up? Sure, the legislature agrees. Give us something. Harder, don't be bashful. We'll take off 60% if you wish. That's what we're here for. Then the legislature goes and passes a law increasing the liquor tax or some other tax in New York City. Takes a half of the proceeds for the state treasury and cuts down the farmer's taxes to suit. It's as easy as rolling off a log when you've got a good working majority and no conscience to speak of. Let me give you another example. It makes me hot under the color to tell you about this. Last year some hay seeds along the Hudson River mostly in Odell's neighborhood got dissatisfied with the docks where they landed their vegetables. Brick bats and other things they produce they got together and said let's take a trip down to New York and pick out the finest dock we can find. Odell and the legislature will do the rest. They did come down here and what do you think they hit on? The finest dock in my district invaded George W. Plunkett's district without saying as much as buy or leave. Then they called on Odell to put through a bill giving them this dock and he did. When the bill came before Mayor Lowe I made the greatest speech of my life. I pointed out how the legislature could give the whole waterfront to the hay seeds over the head of the dock commissioner in the same way and warned the mayor that nations had rebelled against their governments for less. But it was no go. Odell and Lowe were pards and well, my dock was stolen. You heard a lot in the Senate campaign about Odell's great work reducing the state tax to almost nothing. And you'll hear a lot more about it in the campaign next year. How did he do it? By cutting down the expenses of the state government? Oh, no. The expenses went up. He simply performed the old Republican act of milk in New York City. The only difference was that he nearly milked the city dry. He not only ran up the liquor tax but put all sorts of taxes on corporations, banks, insurance companies and everything in sight that could be made to give up. Of course, nearly the whole tax fell on the city. Then Odell went through the country districts and said, see what I have done for you. You ain't got any more taxes to pay the state, ain't I a fine fella? Once a farmer in Orange County asked him how did you do it, Ben? Did easy answered whenever I want any money for the state treasury? I know where to get it and he pointed towards New York City. And then, all the Republican tinkering with New York City's charter? Nobody can keep up with it. When a Republican mayor is in, they give him all sorts of power. If a Tammany mayor is elected next fall, I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the whole business and arranged it so that every city department should have four heads, two of them Republicans. If we make a kick, they would say, you don't know what's good for you. Leave it to us. It's our business. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Plunket of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Mike Vendetti. Plunket of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics of Dong paralyhington plunket CHAPTER SIX To Hold Your District Study Human Nature & Act Accordion There's only one way to hold a district you must study human nature and act according. You can't study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else. If you've been to college, so much the worse for you! You'll have to unlearn all you learn before you can get right down to human nature, and unlearning takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they learned at college. Such men may get to be district leaders by a fluke, but they never last. The Learn Real Human Nature You have to go among the people, see them, and be seen. One, know every man, woman, and child in the 15th district. Except them that's been born this summer and I know some of them too. I know what they like and what they don't like. What they are strong at and what they are weak in. And I reach them by approaching at the right side. For instance, here's how I gather in the young man. I hear of a young fellow that's proud of his voice. Thanks to he can sing fine. I ask him to come round to Washington Hall and join our Glee Club. He comes and sings and he's a follower plunket for life. Another young fellow gains a reputation as a baseball player in a vacant lot. I bring him into our baseball club. That fixes him. You'll find him working for my ticket at the polls next election day. Then there's the fellow that likes rowing on the river. The young fellow that makes a name as Walter Onney's Block. The young fellow that's handy with these dukes. I rope them all in by giving them opportunities to show themselves off. I don't trouble them with political arguments. I just study human nature and act according. But you may say this game won't work with high-toned fellers. The fellers that go through college and then join the Citizen Union? Of course it wouldn't work. I have a special treatment for them. I like the patent medicine man that gives the same medicine for all diseases. The Citizen Union kind of a young man. I love him. He's a datius morsel of a lot. And he don't often escape me. Before telling you how I catch him, let me mention that before the election last year the Citizen Union said they had 400 or 500 enrolled voters in my district. They had a lovely headquarters, too. Beautiful roll-top desks and acutest rugs in the world. If I was accused of having contributed to fix up the nest for them, I wouldn't deny it under oath. What do I mean by that? Never mind. You can guess from the sequel, if you're sharp. Well, election day came. The Citizen Union's candidate for senator, who ran against me, just pulled five votes in the district while I pulled something more than 14,000 votes. What became of the 400 or 500 Citizen Union enrolled voters in my district? Some people guessed that many of them were good plunket men all along and worked with the sits just to bring them into the plunket camp by election day. You can guess that way, too, if you want to. I never contradict stories about me, especially in hot weather. I just call your attention to the fact that on last election day 395 Citizen Union enrolled voters in my district were missing and unaccounted for. I tell you frankly, though, how I have captured some of the Citizen Union young men? I have a plan that never fails. I watch the city record to see when there are civil service examinations for good things. Then I take my young sit in hand, tell them all about the good thing and get him worked up till he goes and takes an examination. I don't bother about him any more. It's a cinch that he comes back to me in a few days and asks to join Tammany Hall. Come over to Washington Hall some night and I'll show you a list of names on our roll marked C-S, which means Bucked Up Against Civil Service. As to the older voters? I reach them, too. No, I don't send them campaign literature. That's rot. People can get all the political stuff they want to read and a good deal more to in the papers. Who read speeches nowadays? Anyhow. It's bad enough to listen to them. You ain't going to gain any votes by stuffing the letter boxes with campaign documents. Like as not, you lose votes for there's nothing a man hates more than to hear the letter carrier ring his bell and go to the letter box expecting to find a letter he was looking for and find only a lot of printed politics. I met a man this very morning who told me he voted the Democratic State Ticket last year just because the Republicans kept cramming the letter box with campaign documents. What tells in holding your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them in the different ways they need help. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in 9th, 10th, or 11th Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fire engines. If a family is burned out, I don't ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats. And I don't refer them to the charity organization society, which would investigate their case in a month or two and decide they were worthy of help about this time. They are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them buy clothes for them if their clothes were burned up and fix them up till they get things running again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics to mighty good politics. Who can tell how many boats? One of these fires bring me. The poor are the most grateful people in the world. And let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs. If there's a family in my district and want, I know it before the charitable societies do and me and my men are first on the ground. I have a special court to look up such cases. The consequence is that the poor look up to George W. Plunkett as the father. Come to him in trouble and don't forget him on election day. Another thing. I can always get a job for a deserving man. I make it a point to keep on the track of jobs, and it seldom happens that I don't have a few up my sleeve ready for use. I know every big employer in the district and in the whole city, for that matter, and they ain't in the habit of saying no to me when I ask them for a job. And the children, the little moroses of the district, do I forget them? Oh, no. They know me every one of them and they know that a sight of Uncle George and Candy means the same thing. Some of them are the best kind of boat-getters. I'll tell you a case. Last year, a little 11th Avenue Rosebud, whose father is a Republican, caught hold of his whiskers on election day and said she wouldn't let go till he'd promised a vote for me. And she didn't. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Plunket of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Bindetti. Plunket of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunket. Chapter 7 On The Shame of the Cities I've been reading a book by Lincoln Steffens on The Shame of the Cities. Steffens means well, but, like all reformers, he don't know how to make distinctions. He can't see no difference between honest graft and dishonest graft, and, consequent, he gets things all mixed up. There's the biggest kind of difference between political looters and politicians who make a fortune out of politics by keeping their eyes wide open. The looter goes in for himself alone without considering his organization or his city. The politician looks after his own interests, the organization's interests, and the city's interests all at the same time. See the distinction? For instance, I ain't no looter. Looter hogs it. I never hogged. I made my pile in politics, but at the same time, I served the organization and got more big improvements for New York City than any other living man, and I never monkeyed with the penal code. The difference between a looter and a practical politician is the difference between the Philadelphia Republican gang and Tammany Hall. Steffens seems to think they're both about the same, but he's all wrong. The Philadelphia crowd runs up against the penal code. Tammany don't. The Philadelphians aren't satisfied with robbing the bank of all its gold and paper money. They stay to pick up the nickels and pennies, and the cop comes around and nabs them. Tammany ain't no such fool. I remember about 15 or 20 years ago, a Republican superintendent of the Philadelphia Alms House stole the zinc roof off the building and sold it for junk. That was carrying things to excess. There's a limit to everything, and the Philadelphia Republicans go beyond the limit. It seems like they can't be cool and moderate, like real politicians. It ain't fair, therefore, to class Tammany men with the Philadelphia gang. Any man who undertakes to write political books should never, for a moment, lose sight of the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. Which I explained in full in another talk. If he puts all kinds of graft on the same level, he'll make the fatal mistake that Stefan's made and spoil his book. A big city like New York or Philadelphia or Chicago might be compared to a sort of garden of Eden from a political point of view. It's an orchard full of beautiful apple trees. One of them has got a big sign on it marked Penal Code Tree Poison. The other trees have lots of apples on them for all. Yet the fools go to the Penal Code Tree. Why? For the reason I guess that a cranky child refuses to eat good food and chews up a box of matches with relish. I never had any temptation to touch the Penal Code Tree. The other apples are good enough for me. And, oh, Lord, how many of them there are in a big city. Stefan's made one good point in his book. He said he found that Philadelphia, ruled almost entirely by Americans, was more corrupt than New York, where the Irish do almost all the government. I could have told him that before he did any investigating. If he had come to me, the Irish was born to rule, and they're the honestest people in the world. Show me the Irishman who would steal a roof off an all-house. He don't exist, of course. If an Irishman had the political pull and the roof was much worn, he might get the city authorities to put on a new one, and get the contract for it himself, and buy the old roof at a bargain, but that's honest, Grant. It's going about the thing like a gentleman, and there's more money in it than a tearing down an old roof and cartin' it to the junk man's more money and no penal code. One reason why the Irishman is more honest in politics than many sons of the Revolution is that he is grateful to the country and the city that gave him protection and prosperity, when he was driven by oppression from the Emerald Isle. Say, that sentence is fine, ain't it? I'm going to get some literary fellow to work it over into poetry for next St. Patrick's Day dinner. Yes, the Irishman is grateful. His one thought is to serve the city which gave him a home. He has this thought even before he lands in New York, for his friends here often have a good place in one of the city departments picked out for him while he is still in the old country. Is it any wonder that he has a tender spot in his heart for old New York, when he is on its salary list the morning after he lands? Now a few words on the general subject of the so-called shame of cities. I don't believe that the government of our cities is any worse in proportion to opportunities than it was fifty years ago. I'll explain what I mean by in proportion to opportunities. A half a century ago our cities were small and poor. There wasn't many temptations laying around for politicians. There was hardly anything to steal, and hardly any opportunities for even honest graft. A city could count its money every night before going to bed, and if three cents was missing all the fire bells would be rung. What credit was there in being honest under them circumstances? Makes me tired to hear of old codgers back in the thirties or forties boasting that they retired from politics without a dollar except what they earned in their profession or businesses. If they lived today with all the existing opportunities they would be just the same as twentieth century politicians. There ain't any more honest people in the world just now than the convicts in sing-sing. Not one of them steals anything. Why? Because it can't. See the implication? Understand, I ain't defended in politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a political pull, there's no excuse for stealing a cent. The point I want to make is that if there is some stealing in politics, it don't mean that the politicians of 1905 are as a class worse than them of 1835. It just means that the old timers had nothing to steal, while the politicians now are surrounded by all kinds of temptations and some of them naturally the full ones buck up against the penal code. CHAPTER VIII. INGRATITUDE IN POLITICS. There is no crime so mean as ingratitude in politics, but every great statesman from the beginning of the world has been up against it. Caesar had his Brutus, that king of Shakespeare's Lurie, I think you call him, had his own daughters go back on him, Platt had his Odell, and I've got my the MacManus. It's a real proof that a man is great when he meets with political ingratitude. Great men have a tender, trusted nature. So have I. Outside of the contracting and real estate business. In politics I have trusted men who have told me they were my friends. And if traders have turned up in my camp, well, I only had the same experiences, Caesar, Lurie, and the others, about my Brutus, MacManus, you know, has seven brothers and they call him the, because he is the boss of the lot. And to distinguish him from all the other MacManuses, for several years he was a political bushwhacker. In campaigns he was sometimes on the fence, sometimes on both sides of the fence, and sometimes under the fence. Nobody knew where to find him at any particular time and nobody trusted him, that is, nobody but me. I thought there was some good in him after all and that if I took him in hand I could make a man of him yet. I did take him in hand a few years ago. My friends told me it would be the Brutus Lurie business all over again. But I didn't believe them. I put my trust in the. I nominated him for the assembly and he was elected. A year afterwards when I was running for re-election as senator, I nominated him for the assembly, again on a ticket with me. What do you think happened? We both carried the fifteenth assembly district, but he ran away ahead of me. Just think ahead of me, in my own district? I was just dazed. When I began to recover my election district captains came to me and said, that MacManus had sold me out with the idea of knocking me out of the senator's ship and then trying to capture the leadership of the district. I couldn't believe it. My trust in nature couldn't imagine such treachery. I sent for MacManus and said, with my voice trembling, with emotions, they say you've done me dirt. The? It can't be true. Tell me it ain't true. The almost wept as he said he was innocent. Never have I done you dirt, George, he declared. Wicked traitors have tried to do you. I don't know just who they are yet, but I'm on their trail. And I'll find them, or abiture the name of the MacManus. I'm going out right now to find them. Well, the kept his word as far as going out and finding the traitors was concerned. He found them all right and put himself at their head. Oh, no. He didn't have to go far to look for them. He's got them gathered in his club rooms now. And he's doing his best to take the leadership from the man that made him. So you see, that Caesar and Larry's and me in the same boat. Only I'll come out on top while Caesar and Larry went under. Now, let me tell you that the ingrate in politics never flourishes long. I can give you lots of examples. Look at the man who done up Roscoe Conkling when he resigned from the United States Senate and went to Albany to ask for reelection. What's become of them? Past from view like a moving picture. Who took Conkling's place in the Senate? $20 even that you can't remember his name without looking in the Almanac. And poor old Platt. He's down and out now and Odell is in the saddle. But that don't mean that he'll always be in the saddle. His enemies are working hard all the time to do him. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he went out before the next state campaign. The politicians who make a lasting success in politics are the men who are always loyal to their friends, even up to the gate of state prison if necessary. Men who keep their promises and never lie. Richard Crocker used to say that telling the truth and sticking to his friends was the political leader's stock in trade. Nobody ever said anything truer. And nobody lived up to it better than Crocker. That is why he remained leader of Tammany Hall as long as he wanted to. Every man in the organization trusted him. Sometimes he made mistakes that hurt him in campaigns, but they were always on the side of serving his friends. It's the same with Charles F. Murphy. He has always stood by his friends even when it looked like he would be down for doing so. Remember how he stuck to McClellan in 1903 when all the Brooklyn leaders were against him, and it seemed as if Tammany was in for a grand smash-up? It's men like Crocker and Murphy that stay leaders as long as they live. Not men like Brutus and McManus. Now I want to tell you why political traders in New York City especially are punished quick. It's because the Irish are in a majority. The Irish, above all people in the world, hates a trader. You can't hold them back when a trader of any kind is in sight and remember an old Ireland. They take particular delight in doing up a political trader. Most of the voters in my district are Irish or of Irish descent. They've spotted the McManus, and when they get a chance at him at the polls next time, they won't do a thing to him. The question has been asked. Is a politician ever justified in going back on his district leader, I answer? No. As long as the leader hustled around and gets all the jobs possible for his constituents, when the voters elect a man leader, they make a sort of a contract with him. They say, although it ain't written out, we've put you here to look out for our interests. You want to see that this district gets all the jobs that's coming to it. Be faithful to us, and we'll be faithful to you. The district leader promises, and that makes a solemn contract. If he lives up to it, spends most of his time chasing him after places in the departments, picks up jobs from railroads and contractors for his followers, and shows himself in all ways a true statesman, then his followers are bound in honor to uphold him, just as they're bound to uphold the Constitution of the United States. But if he only looks after his own interests or shows no talent for sending out jobs or ain't got the nerve to demand and get his share of the good things that are going, his followers may be absolved from their legions, and they may up and swat him without being put down as political ingrates. The people set to predict in that the organization is going to smash. They say we can't get along without the officers and that the district leaders are going to desert wholesale. That was what was said after the throwdowns in 1894 and 1901, but it didn't happen, did it? Not one big Tammany man deserted, and today the organization is stronger than ever. How was that? It was because Tammany has more than one string to its bow. I acknowledge that you can't keep an organization together without patronage. Men ain't in politics for nothing. They want to get something out of it. But there is more than one kind of patronage. We lost the public kind or a greater part of it in 1901, but Tammany has an immense private patronage that keeps things going when it gets a setback at the polls. Take me, for instance. When Lowe came in, some of my men lost public jobs. But it fixed them all right. I didn't know how many jobs I got for them on the surface and elevated railroad several hundred. I placed a lot more on public works done by contractors, and no Tammany man goes hungry in my district. Plunkett's OK. On an application for a job is never turned down, for they all know that Plunkett and Tammany don't stay out long. See? Let me tell you, too, that I got jobs from Republicans in office, federal, and otherwise. When Tammany's on top, I do good turns for the Republicans. When they're on top, they don't forget me. Me and Republicans are enemies just one day in the year, Election Day. Then we fight tooth and nail. The rest of the time, it's live and let live with us. On Election Day, I try to pile up as big a majority as I can against George Wanamaker, the Republican leader of the 15th. Any other day, George and I are the best friends. I can go to him and say, George, I want you to place this friend of mine, he says. Am I right, Senator? Or vice versa? You see, we differ on tariffs and currencies and all them things, but we agree on the main proposition that when a man works in politics, he should get something out of it. The politicians have got to stand together this way, or there wouldn't be any political parties in a short time. Civil service would gobble up everything. Politicians would be on the bum. The Republic would fall and soon there would be the cry of Veeberly Royal. The very thought of this civil service, Monitor, makes my blood boil. I have said it a lot of times already. But another instance of its awful work just occurs to me. Let me tell you a sad but true story. Last Wednesday, a line of carriages wound into Cavalry Cemetery. I was in one of them. It was the funeral of a young man from my district, a bright boy, that I had great hopes of. When he went to school, he was the most patriotic boy in the district. Nobody could sing the Star Spangled Banner like him. Nobody was fond of waving the flag, and nobody shot off as many fire-graggers on the Fourth of July. And when he grew up, he made up his mind to serve his country, in one of the city's departments. There was no way of getting there without passing a civil service examination. Well, he went down to the civil service office and tackled the full questions. I saw him the next day was Memorial Day, and soldiers were marching and flags flying and people cheering. Where was my young man? Standing on the corner, scowling at the whole show. Want to ask him why he was so quiet? He laughed in a wild sort of way and said, What rot all this is? Just in a band came along playing Liberty. He laughed wild again and said, Liberty, rats! I don't guess I need to make a long story of it. From the time that young man left the civil service office, he lost all patriotism. He didn't care no more for his country. He went to the dogs. He ain't the only one. There's a gravestone over some bright young man's head for every one of them infernal civil service examinations. They are undermining the manhood of the nation and making the Declaration of Independence a farce. We need a new Declaration of Independence. Independence of the whole full civil service business. I mention all this now to show why it is that the politicians of two big parties help each other along and why Tammany men are tolerably happy when not in power in the city. When we win, I won't let any deserving Republican in my neighborhood suffer from hunger or thirst, although of course I look out for my own people first. Now I've never gone in for nonpartisan business, but I do think that all the leaders of the two parties should get together and make an open and nonpartisan fight against civil service, their common enemy. They could keep up their quarrels about imperialism and free silver and high tariff. They don't count for much alongside of civil service, which strikes right at the root of the government. The time is fast coming when civil service or the politicians will have to go. And it will be here sooner than they expect if the politicians don't unite. Drop all them minor issues for a while and make a stand against the civil service flood that's sweeping over the country. Like them floods out west. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Vendetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 10 Brooklynites Natural Born Hayseeds Some people are wondering why it is that the Brooklyn Democrats have been siding with David B. Hill and the Upstate crowd. There's no cause for wonder. I have made a careful study of the Brooklynite, and I can tell you why, because Brooklynite is a natural born hayseed, and can never become a real New Yorker. He can't be trained into it. Consolidation didn't make him a New Yorker, and nothing on earth can. A man born in Germany can settle down and become a good New Yorker. So can an Irishman. In fact, the first word an Irish boy learns in the old country is New York. And when he grows up and comes here, he is at home right away. Even a Jap or a Chinaman can become a New Yorker. But a Brooklynite never can. And why? Because Brooklyn don't seem to be like any other place on earth. Once, let a man grow up amidst Brooklyn's cobblestones and the odor of Newton Creek and Guamana's canal ever in his nostrils, and there's no place in the world for him except Brooklyn. And even if he don't grow up there, if he is born there and lives there only in his boyhood, and then moves away, he is still beyond redemption. In one of my speeches in the legislature, I gave an example of this, and it's worth repeating now. Soon after I became a leader on the west side a quarter of a century ago, I came across a bright boy about seven years old who had just been brought over from Brooklyn by his parents. I took an interest in the boy, and when he grew up brought him into politics. Finally I sent him to the assembly from my district. Now remember that the boy was only seven years old when he left Brooklyn and was twenty-three when he went to the assembly. You'd think he had forgotten all about Brooklyn, wouldn't you? I did, but I was dead wrong. When that young fellow got into the assembly, he paid no attention to bills or debates about New York City. He didn't even show any interest in his own district. But just let Brooklyn be mentioned or a bill be introduced about Guamana's canal or the Long Island Railroad, and he was all attention. Nothing else on earth interested him. The end came when I caught him what you think I caught him at. One morning I went over from the Senate to the assembly chamber, and there I found my young man reading, actually reading, a Brooklyn newspaper. When he saw me coming he tried to hide the paper, but it was too late. I caught him dead to rights, and I said to him, Jimmy, I'm afraid New York ain't fascinating enough for you. You had better move back to Brooklyn after your present term. And he did. I met him the other day crossing the Brooklyn bridge, carrying a hobby horse under one arm and a doll's carriage under the other, and looking perfectly happy. McFerrin and his men are the same way. They can't get it into their heads that they are New Yorkers and just tend naturally towards Supporton Hill and his hayseeds against Murphy. I had some hopes of McFerrin till lately. He spends too much of his time over there and has seen so much of the world that I thought he might be an exception and grow out of his Brooklyn surroundings, but his course at Albany shows that there is no exception to the rule. Say I'd rather take a hot and taught in hand to bring up as a good New Yorker than undertake the job with a Brooklynite. Honest, I would. And, by the way, come to think of it, is there really any upstate Democrats left? It has never been proved to my satisfaction there it there is any. I know that some upstate members of the State Committee call themselves Democrats. Besides these, I know at least six more men above the Bronx who make a living out of professing to be Democrats, and I have just heard of some few more. But if there is any real Democrats up the state, what becomes of them on election day? They certainly don't go near the polls or they vote the Republican ticket. Look at the last three state elections. Roosevelt piled up more than 100,000 majority above the Bronx. O'Dell piled up about 160,000 majority the first time he ran, and 131,000 the second time. About all the Democratic votes cast were polled in New York City. The Republicans can get all the votes they want up the state, even when we piled up 123,000 majority for Kohler in the city in 1902. The Republicans win at 8,000 better above the Bronx. That's why it makes me so mad to hear about upstate Democrats controlling our state convention and saying, who we shall choose for president. It's just like Staten Island undertaken to dictate to a New York City convention. I remember once a Syracuse man came to Richard Crocker at the Democratic Club, handed him a letter of introduction, and said, I'm looking for a job in the street cleaning department. I'm backed by a hundred upstate Democrats. Crocker looked hard at the man a minute and then said, upstate Democrats? Upstate Democrats? I didn't know there was any upstate Democrats. Just walk up and down a while till I see what an upstate Democrat looks like. Another thing, when a campaign is on, did you ever hear of an upstate Democrat making a contribution? Not much. Tammany has had to foot the whole bill. And when any of Hill's men come down to New York to help him in the campaign, we have to pay their board. Whenever money is to be raised, there's nothing doing up the state. The Democrats there always providing that there is any Democrats there, take to the woods. Suppose and Tammany turned over the campaigns to the Hill men and then held off. What would happen? Why they would have to hire a shutout in the suburbs of Albany for a headquarters. Unless the Democratic National Committee put up for the campaign expenses. Tammany's got the votes and the cash. The Hill crowds only got hot air. There is a very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett. You hear a lot of talk about the Tammany district leaders being illiterate men. If illiterate means having common sense, we plead guilty. But if they mean that Tammany leaders ain't got no education and ain't gents, they don't know what they're talking about. Of course, we ain't all bookworms and college professors. If we were, Tammany might win an election once in four thousand years. Most of the leaders are plain American citizens. Of the people and near to the people. And they have all the education they need to whip the dudes who part their name in the middle and to run the city government. We've got bookworms too in the organization. But we don't make them district leaders. We keep them for ornaments on parade days. Tammany Hall is a great big machine with every part adjusted delicate. To do its own particular work. It runs so smooth that you wouldn't think it was a complicated affair. But it is. Every district leader is fitted to the district he runs. And he wouldn't exactly fit any other district. That's the reason Tammany never makes the mistake the fusion outfit always makes of sending men into the districts who don't know the people and have no sympathy with their peculiarities. We don't put a silk stocking on the bowery. Nor do we make a man who is handy with his fists leader of the 29th. The fusionists make about the same sort of a mistake that repeater made at an election in Albany several years ago. He was hired to go to the polls early in a half dozen election districts and vote on other men's names before these men reached the polls. At one place when he was asked his name by the poll clerk he had a nerve to answer. William Crosswell Done. Come off you ain't Bishop Done said to poll clerk. The hell I ain't. You I'm yelled to repeater. Now that is a sort of bad judgment. The fusionists are guilty of. They don't pick men to suit the work they have to do. Take me for instance. My district, the 15th, is made up of all sorts of people and a cosmopolitan is needed to run it successful. I'm a cosmopolitan. When I get into the silk stocking part of the district I can talk grammar and all that with the best of them. I went to school three winters when I was a boy and I learned a lot of fancy stuff that I keep for occasions. There ain't a silk stocking in the district who ain't proud to be seen talking with George Washington Plunkett. And maybe they learn a thing or two from their talks with me. There's one man in the district, a big banker, who said to me one day, George, you can sling the most vigorous English I ever heard. You remind me of Senator Horror of Massachusetts. Of course, that was putting it on too thick. But say honest, I like Senator Horror's speeches. He once quoted in the United States Senate some of my remarks on the curse of civil service. And though he didn't agree with me altogether, I noticed that our ideas are alike in some things. And we both have the knack of putting things strong. Only he put on more frills to suit his audience. As for the common people of the district, I am at home with them at all times. When I go among them, I don't try to show off my grammar or talk about the Constitution or how many volts there is in electricity or make it appear in any way that I am better educated than they are. They wouldn't stand for that sort of thing. No, I drop all monkey shines. So you see, I've got to be several sorts of a man in a single day, a lightning change artist, so to speak. But I am one sort of man always in one respect. I stick to my friends high and low, do them a good turn whenever I get a chance, and hunt up all the jobs going for my constituents. There ain't a man in New York who's got such a scent for political jobs as I have. When I get up in the morning, I can almost tell every time rather a job has become vacant overnight, and what department it is in, and I'm the first man on the ground to get it. Only last week, I turned up at the office of Water Register Savage at 9 a.m., and told him I wanted a vacant place in his office for one of my constituents. How did you know that O'Brien had got out, he asked me. I smelled it in the air when I got up this morning, I answered. Now that was the fact. I didn't know there was a man in the department named O'Brien, much less that he had got out. But my scent led me to the Water Register's office, and it don't often lead me wrong. A cosmopolitan ain't needed in all the other districts, but our men are just the kind to rule. There's Dan Finn in the Battery District, bluff Jolly Dan. Who is now on the bench? Maybe you'd think that a court justice is not the man to hold a district like that. But you're mistaken. Most of the voters of the district are the janitors of the big office buildings on Lower Broadway and their helpers. These janitors are the most dignified and haughtiest of men. Even I would have trouble in holding them. Nothing less than a judge on the bench is good enough for them. Dan does the dignity act with the janitors, and when he is with the boys he hangs up the ermine in the closet and becomes a jolly good fellow. Big Tom Foley, leader of the Second District, fits in exactly too. Tom sells whiskey and good whiskey, and he is able to take care of himself against a half dozen thugs if he runs up against them on Cherry Hill or in Charlemagne Square. Pat Ryder and Johnny Ehren of the Third and Fourth Districts are just the men for the places. Ehren's constituents are about half Irishmen and half Jews. He is as popular with one race as with the other. He eats corn, beef, and kosher meat with equal nonchalance, and it's all the same to him. Whether he takes off his hat in the church or pulls it down over his ears in the synagogue. The other downtown leaders, Barney Martin of the Fifth, Tim Sullivan of the Sixth, Pat Keenan of the Seventh, Gloria Sullivan of the Eighth, Frank Goodwin of the Ninth, Julius Harberger of the Tenth, Pete Dueling of the Eleventh, Joe Scully of the Twelfth, Johnny Oakley of the Fourteenth, and Pat Keenan of the Sixteenth are just built to suit the people they have to deal with. They don't go in for the literary business much downtown, but these men are all real gents, and that's what the people want, even the poorest tenement dwellers. As you go further uptown, you find a rather different kind of district leader. There's Victor Dowling, who was, until lately, the leader of the Twenty-Fourth. He's a lulu. He knows the Latin grammar backward. What's strange, he's a sensible young fellow too. And once in a century, we come across a fellow like that in Tammany politics. James J. Martin, leader of the Twenty-Seventh, is also something of a high toner, and publishes a law paper. While Thomas C. Rush of the Twenty-Ninth is a lawyer, and Isaac Hopper of the Thirty-First is a big contractor, the downtown leaders wouldn't do uptown, and vice versa. So you see, these full critics don't know what they're talking about when they criticize Tammany Hall, the most perfect political machine on earth. Puttin' on this style, don't pay in politics. The people won't stand for it. If you've got an achin' for style, sit down on it till you have made your pile and landed at a Supreme Court Justiceship, with a fourteen-year term at seventeen thousand a year, or some job of that kind, then you've got about all you can get out of politics, and you can afford to wear a dress suit all day and sleep in it all night if you have a mind to. But before you have caught onto your life meal ticket, be simple. Live like your neighbors, even if you have the means to live better. Make the poorest man in your district feel that he is your equal, or even a bit superior to you. Above all things, avoid a dress suit. You have no idea of the harm that dress suits have done in politics. They are not so fatal to young politicians as civil service reform and drink, but they have scores of victims. I will mention one sad case. After the big Tammany victory in eighteen ninety-seven, Richard Crocker went down to Lakewood to make up the slate of offices for Mayor Van Wick to distribute. All the district leaders and many more Tammany men went down there, too, to pick up anything good that was going. There was nothing but dress suits at dinner at Lakewood, and Crocker wouldn't let any Tammany men go to dinner without them. Well, a bright young West Side politician who held a three thousand dollar job in one of the departments went to Lakewood to ask Crocker for something better. He wore a dress suit for the first time in his life. It was his undoing. He got stuck on himself. He thought he looked too beautiful for anything, and when he came home he was a changed man. As soon as he got to his house every evening he put on that dress suit and sat around in it until bedtime. That didn't satisfy him long. He wanted others to see how beautiful he was in a dress suit. So he joined dancing clubs and began going to all the balls that was given in town. Soon he began to neglect his family. Then he took to drinking, and didn't pay any attention to his political work in the district. The end came in less than a year. He was dismissed from the department and went to the dogs. The other day I met him rigged out almost like a hobo, but he still had a dress suit vest on. When I asked him what he was doing he said, nothing at present, but I got a promise of a job enrolling voters at Citizens Union headquarters. Yes, a dress suit had brought him to that low. I'll tell you another case right in my own assembly district. A few years ago I had as one of my lie lieutenants a man named Zeke Thompson. He did fine work for me and I thought he had a bright future. One day he came to me, said he intended to buy an option on a house, and asked me to help him out. I liked to see a young man acquire property, and I had so much confidence in Zeke, that I put up for him on the house. A month or so afterwards I heard strange rumors. People told me that Zeke was beginning to put on style. They said he had a billiard table in his house, and it hired Jap servants. I couldn't believe it. The idea of a Democrat, a follower of George Washington Plunkett in the 15th Assembly District, having a billiard table and Jap servants? One morning I called at the house to give Zeke a chance to clear himself. A Jap opened the door for me. I saw the billiard table, Zeke was guilty. When I got over the shock I said to Zeke, Zeke, you are caught with the goods on. No excuses will go. The Democrats of this district ain't used to dukes and princes, and we wouldn't feel comfortable in your company. You'd overpower us. You had better move up to the 19th or 27th district, and hang a silk stocking on your door. He went up to the 19th Turned Republican and was looking for an albany job the last I heard of him. Now nobody ever saw me putting on any style. I'm the same Plunkett I was when I entered politics forty years ago. That is why the people of the district have confidence in me. If I went into the stylish business, even I, Plunkett, might be thrown down in the district. That was shown pretty clearly in this senatorial fight last year. A day before the election, my enemies circulated a report that I had ordered a $10,000 automobile and a $125 dress suit. I sent out contradictions as fast as I could, but I wasn't able to stamp out the infamous slander before the voting was over, and I suffered some at the polls. The people wouldn't have minded much if I had been accused of robbing the city treasury, for they're used to slanders of that kind in campaigns, but the automobile and the dress suit were too much for them. Another thing that people won't stand for is showing off your learning. That's just putting on style in another way. If you're making speeches in a campaign, talk the language the people talk. Don't try to show how the situation is by quoting Shakespeare. Shakespeare was all right in his way, but he didn't know anything about 15th District politics. If you know Latin and Greek, and have a hankering to work them off on somebody, hire a stranger to come to your house and listen to you for a couple of hours, then go out and talk the language of the 15th to the people. I know it's an awful temptation, the hankering to show off your learning. I felt it myself. I know the awful consequences. CHAPTER XIII I am, for municipal ownership, on one condition, that a civil service law be repealed. It's a grand idea, the city, the railroads, the gas works, and all that. Just see how many thousands of new places there would be for the workers in Tammany. Why? There would be almost enough to go around if no civil service law stood in the way. My plan is this. First get rid of that infamous law, and then go ahead and by degrees get municipal ownership. Some of the reformers are saying that municipal ownership won't do, because it would give a lot of patronage to the politicians. How those fellows mix things up when they argue. They're given the strongest argument in favor of municipal ownership when they say that, who is better fitted to run the railroads and the gas plants and the ferries than the men who make a business of looking after the interests of the city, who is more anxious to serve the city, who needs the jobs more. Look at the dock department. The city owns the docks, and how beautiful Tammany manages them. I can't tell you how many places they provide for our workers. I know there is a lot of talk about dock graft, but that talk comes from the outs. When the Republicans had the docks under low and strong, you didn't hear them saying anything about graft, did you? No. They just went in and made hay while the sun shone. That's always the case. When the reformers are out, they raise the yell that Tammany men should be sent to jail. When they get in, they're so busy keeping out of jail themselves, that they don't have no time to attack Tammany. All I want is that municipal ownership be postponed till I get my bill repealing the civil service law before the next legislature. It would be all a mess if every man who wanted a job would have to run up against a civil service examination. For instance, if a man wanted a job as motor-man on a surface car, it's ten to one that they would ask him, who wrote the Latin grammar, and if so, why did he write it? How many years were you at college? Is there any part of the Greek language you don't know? State all you don't know and why you don't know it. Give a list of all the sciences with full particulars about each one and how it came to be discovered. Write out word for word the last ten decisions of the United States Supreme Court and show if they conflict with the last ten decisions of the police courts of New York City. Before the would-be motor-man left the civil service room, the chances are he would be a Raven lunatic anyhow. I wouldn't like to ride on his car. Just here I want to say one last final word about civil service. In the last ten years I have made an investigation which I've kept quiet till this time. Now I have all the figures together and I'm ready to announce the result. My investigation was to find out how many civil service reformers and how many politicians were in state prisons. I discovered that there was forty percent more civil service reformers among the jailbirds. If any legislative committee wants the detailed figures, I'll prove what I say. I don't want to give the figures now because I want to keep them to back me up when I go to Albany to get the civil service law repealed. Don't you think that when I've had my ending the civil service law will go down and the people will see that the politicians are all right and that they ought to have the job of running things when municipal ownership comes? One thing more about municipal ownership. If the city owned the railroads, etc. Salaries would be sure to go up. Higher salaries is the cry and need of the day. Municipal ownership would increase them all along the line and would stir up such patriotism as New York City never knew before. You can't be patriotic on a salary that just keeps the wolf from the door. Any man who pretends he can will bear watching. Keep your hand on your watch and pocketbook when he's about. But when a man has a good fat salary he finds himself home in Hale, all unconscious. And he fancies when he's riding in a trolley car that the wheels are always seeing. Yankee Doodle came to town. I know how it is myself when I got my first good job from the city. I bought up all the firecrackers in my district to salute this glorious country. I couldn't wait for the Fourth of July. I got the boys on the block to fire them off for me. And I felt proud of being an American. For a long time after that I used to wake up night-singin' the star-spangled banner. Tammany, the only last in democracy. I've seen more than 100 democracies rise and fall in New York City in the last quarter of a century. At least a half-dozen new so-called democratic organizations are formed every year. All of them go into down Tammany and take its place. But they seldom last more than a year or two. While Tammany's, like the ever last in rocks, the eternal hills and the blockades on the L Road it goes on forever. I recall offhand the county democracy, which was the only real opponent Tammany had in my time. The Irving Hall democracy. The New York State democracy. The German American democracy. The Protection democracy. The Independent County democracy. The Greater New York Democracy. The Jimmy O'Brien democracy. The Delicatessen dealer's democracy. The Silver democracy. And the Italian democracy. Not one of them is living today, although I hear something about the ghost of the Greater New York Democracy being seen on Broadway once or twice a year. In the old days of the county democracy, a new democratic organization meant some trouble for Tammany for a time anyhow. Nowadays, a new democracy means nothing at all except that about a dozen bone-hunters have got together for one campaign only to try to induce Tammany to give them a job or two or in order to get in with the reformers for the same purpose. You might think that it would cost a lot of money to get up one of these organizations and keep it going for even one campaign. But Lord bless you, it cost next to nothing. Jimmy O'Brien brought the manufacturer of democracies down to an exact science and reduced the cost of production so as to bring it within the reach of all. Any man with fifty dollars can now have a democracy of his own. I've looked into the industry and can give rock bottom figures. Here's the items of cost of a new democracy. Dinner to twelve bone-hunters. Twelve dollars. A speech on Jeffersonian democracy. Zero dollars. A proclamation of principles. Typewriting. Two dollars. Rent of a small room. One month for headquarters. Twelve dollars. Stationary. Two dollars. Twelve second-hand chairs. Six dollars. One second-hand table. Two dollars. Twenty-nine cuspidores. Nine dollars. Sign painting. Five dollars. Total. Fifty dollars. Is there any reason for wonder then that democracies bring up all over when a municipal campaign is coming on? If you land even one small job, you get a big return on your investment. You don't have to pay for advertising in the papers. The New York papers tumble over one another to give columns to any new organization that comes out against Tammany. In describing the formation of a democracy on the fifty dollar basis according to the items I give, the papers would say something like this. The organization of the delicatessen democracy last night threatens the existence of Tammany Hall. It is a grand move for a new and pure democracy in this city. Well, may the Tammany leaders be alarmed. Panic has already broke loose in 14th street. The vast crowd that gathered at the launching of the new organization, the stern speeches, and the proclamation of principles, mean that at last there is an uprising that will end Tammany's career of corruption. The delicatessen democracy will open in a few days spacious headquarters where all true democrats may gather and prepare for the fight. Say, ain't some of the papers awful gullible about politics? Talk about comons from Iowa or Texas. They ain't in it with this childlike simplicity of these papers. It's a wonder to me that more men don't go into this kind of manufacturing industry. It has bigger profits generally than the green goods business and none of the risks. And you don't have to invest as much as the green goods men. Just see what good things some of these democracies got in the last few years. The New York State Democracy in 1897 landed a supreme court justiceship for the man who manufactured the concern, a 14-year term at $17,500 a year. That is $245,000. You see, Tammany was rather scared that year and was bluffed into giving this job to get the support of the state democracy, which, by the way, went out of business quick and prompt the day after it got this big plum. The next year the German democracy landed a place of the same kind and then see how the greater New York democracy worked the game on the reformers in 1901? The men who managed this concern were former Tammyanites who had lost their grip. Yet they made the Citizens Union innocents believe that they were the real thing in the way of reformers and that they had 100,000 voter back of them. They got the Burl President of Manhattan, the President of the Board of Aldermen, the Registrar, and a lot of lesser places. It was the greatest Bunko game of modern times. And then, in 1894, when Strong was elected mayor, what a harvest it was for all the little democracies that was made to order that year. Every one of them got something good. In one case, all the nine men in an organization got jobs paying from 2,000 to 5,000 dollars. I happened to know exactly what it cost to manufacture that organization. It was $42.04. They left out the stationery and had only 23 cuspadors. The extra four cents was for two postage stamps. The only reason I can imagine why more men don't go into this industry is because they don't know about it. And just here it strikes me that it might not be wise to publish what I've said. Perhaps if it gets to be known what a snap this manufacturer of democracies is, all the Green Goods men, the Bunko Steelers, and the young Napoleons of finance will go into it and the public will be humbug more than it has been. But after all, what difference would it make? There's always a certain number of suckers and a certain number of men looking for a chance to take them in. And the suckers are sure to be took one way or another. It's the everlasting