Lights and Shadows of New York Life

J >> James D. McCabe >> Lights and Shadows of New York Life

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58

Under the rule of such a Council the public money disappeared. Men who
went into the Council poor came out of it rich. Taxes increased, the
cost of governing the city became greater, crime flourished, and the
chief city of the Union became noted for its corrupt government.

IV. "THE RING."

I. THE HISTORY OF THE RING.

We have spoken of the outrages practised upon the citizens of New York by
the Common Council of that city. We must now turn our attention to the
other branches of the City Government, and investigate the conduct of the
real rulers of New York.

For several years the political power and patronage has been lodged in
the hands of, and exercised by a set of men commonly known as "_The
Ring_." They rose to power in consequence of the neglect of their
political duties by the respectable citizens of New York, and, having
attained power, were not slow in arranging affairs so that their
ill-gotten authority might be perpetuated. They controlled the elections
by bribery, and the fraudulent counting of votes, and so filled the
elective offices with their own creatures. Having done this, they
proceeded to appoint to the other offices only such men as were bound to
them, and whom they could trust to cover up their mutual dishonesty.
Competency to discharge the duties of the offices thus given was not once
considered. The Ring cared only for men who would unite in plundering
the public treasury, and be vigilant in averting the detection of the
theft. They wanted to exercise political power, it is true, but they
also desired to enrich themselves at the public expense.

Having secured the city offices, with the control of the finances, the
police, the fire department, and the immense patronage of the city, they
believed themselves strong enough to hold all they had won. They did not
believe that the people of New York would ever awake to a true sense of
their public duties, and, if they did, the Ring felt confident that they
could control any election by filling the ballot-boxes with fraudulent
votes. In many cases money was taken from the city treasury, and used to
purchase votes for the Ring or Tammany Hall ticket. It was also used to
bribe inspectors of elections to certify any returns that the leaders of
the Ring might decide upon; and it came to be a common saying in New York
that the Tammany ticket could always command a majority in the city
sufficient to neutralize any hostile vote in the rest of the State. If
the leaders of the Ring desired a majority of 25,000, 30,000, or any
number, in the city, that majority was returned, and duly sworn to by the
inspectors of election, even by those of the party opposed to the Ring;
for money was used unsparingly to buy dishonest inspectors.

As a matter of course, no honest man took part in these disgraceful acts,
and the public offices passed, almost without exception, into the hands
of the most corrupt portion of the population. They were also the most
ignorant and brutal. The standard of education is, perhaps, lower among
the public officials of New York than among any similar body in the land.
Men whose personal character was infamous; men who were charged by the
newspaper press, and some of whom had been branded by courts of justice
with felonies, were elected or appointed to responsible offices. The
property, rights and safety of the greatest and most important city in
the land, were entrusted to a band of thieves and swindlers. The result
was what might have been expected. Public interests were neglected; the
members of the Ring were too busy enriching themselves at the expense of
the treasury to attend to the wants of the people. The City Government
had never been so badly administered before, and the only way in which
citizens could obtain their just rights was by paying individual members
of the Ring or their satellites to attend to their particular cases. It
was found almost impossible to collect money due by the city to private
parties; but, at the same time, the Ring drew large sums from the public
treasury. Men who were notoriously poor when they went into office were
seen to grow suddenly and enormously rich. They made the most public
displays of their suddenly acquired magnificence, and, in many ways, made
themselves so offensive to their respectable neighbors, that the virtue
and intelligence of the city avoided all possible contact with them.
Matters finally became so bad that a man laid himself open to grave
suspicion by the mere holding of a municipal office. Even the few good
men who retained public positions, and whom the Ring had not been able,
or had not dared, to displace, came in for a share of the odium attaching
to all offices connected with the City Government. It was unjust, but
not unnatural. So many office-holders were corrupt that the people
naturally regarded all as in the same category.

In order to secure undisturbed control of the city, the Ring took care to
win over the Legislature of the State to their schemes. There was a
definite and carefully arranged programme carried out with respect to
this. The delegation from the City of New York was mainly secured by the
Ring, and agents were sent to Albany to bribe the members of the
Legislature to vote for the schemes of the Ring. Mr. Samuel J. Tilden,
in his speech at Cooper Institute, November 2, 1871, says that
$1,000,000, stolen from the treasury of the city, were used by the Ring
to buy up a majority of the two Houses of the Legislature. By means of
these purchased votes, the various measures of the Ring were passed. The
principal measure was the Charter of the City of New York. "Under the
pretence of giving back to the people of the City of New York local
self-government, they provided that the Mayor then in office should
appoint all the heads of Departments for a period of at least four years,
and in some cases extending to eight, and that when those heads of
Departments, _already privately agreed upon_, were once appointed they
should be removable only by the Mayor, who could not be impeached except
on his own motion, and then must be tried by a court of six members,
every one of whom must be present in order to form a quorum. And then
they stripped every legislative power, and every executive power from
every other functionary of the government, and vested it in half a dozen
men so installed for a period of from four to eight years in supreme
dominion over the people of this city." {78}

Besides passing this infamous charter, the Ring proceeded to fortify
their position with special legislation, designed to protect them against
any effort of the citizens to drive them from office, or punish them.
This done, they had unlimited control of all the public affairs, and
could manage the elections as they pleased, and they believed they were
safe.

The "Committee of Seventy," appointed by the citizens of New York to
investigate the charges against the municipal authorities, thus speak of
the effect of the adoption of the New Charter, in their report presented
at the great meeting at Cooper Institute, on the 2d of November, 1871:

"There is not in the history of villainy a parallel for the gigantic
crime against property conspired by the Tammany Ring. It was engineered
on the complete subversion of free government in the very heart of
Republicanism. An American city, having a population of over a million,
was disfranchised by an open vote of a Legislature born and nurtured in
Democracy and Republicanism, and was handed over to a self-appointed
oligarchy, to be robbed and plundered by them and their confederates,
heirs and assigns for six years certainly, and prospectively for ever. A
month's exhumation among the crimes of the Tammany leaders has not so
familiarized us with the political paradox of the New Charter of the City
of New York, that we do not feel that it is impossible that the people of
this State gave to a gang of thieves, politicians by profession, a
charter to govern the commercial metropolis of this continent--the great
city which is to America what Paris is to France--to govern it with a
government made unalterable for the sixteenth part of a century, which
substantially deprived the citizens of self-control, nullified their
right to suffrage, nullified the principle of representation--which
authorized a handful of cunning and resolute robbers to levy taxes,
create public debt, and incur municipal liabilities without limit and
without check, and which placed at their disposal the revenues of the
great municipality and the property of all its citizens.

"Every American will say: 'It is incredible that this has been done.'
But the history of the paradox is over two years old. And it is a
history of theft, robbery, and forgery, which have stolen and divided
twenty millions of dollars; which have run up the city debt from
$36,000,000 in 1869 to $97,000,000 in 1871, and which will be
$120,000,000 by August, 1872; which have paid to these robbers millions
of dollars for work never performed and materials never furnished; which
paid astoundingly exorbitant rents to them for offices and armories, many
of which were never occupied and some of which did not exist--which
remitted their taxes, released their indebtedness, and remitted their
rents, to the city due and owing--which ran the machinery for widening,
improving and opening streets, parks and boulevards, to enable these men
to speculate in assessed damages and greatly enhanced values--which
created unnecessary offices with large salaries and no duties, in order
to maintain a force of ruffianly supporters and manufacturers of
votes--which used millions of dollars to bribe and corrupt newspapers,
the organs of public opinion, in violation of laws which narrowly limited
the public advertising--which camped within the city a reserve army of
voters by employing thousands of laborers at large pay upon nominal work,
neither necessary nor useful--which bought legislatures and purchased
judgments from courts both civil and criminal.

* * * * *

"Fellow-citizens of the City and State of New York, this report of the
doings of the Committee of Seventy would be incomplete if it did not
fully unfold to you the perils and the difficulties of our condition.
You know too well that the Ring which governs us for years governed our
Legislatures by bribing their members with moneys stolen from their
trusts. That, seemingly, was supreme power and immunity. But it was not
enough. A City Charter to perpetuate power was needed. It was easily
bought of a venal Legislature with the proceeds of a new scoop into the
city treasury. Superadded to this the Ring had devised a system,
faultless and absolutely sure, of counting their adversaries in an
election out of office and of counting their own candidates in, or of
rolling up majorities by repeating votes and voting in the names of the
absent, the dead, and the fictitious. Still their intrenched camp of
villainy was incomplete. It was deficient in credit. This is a ghastly
jest, the self-investment of the robbers of the world with a boundless
financial credit. And yet the Ring clothed themselves with it. They
entrenched themselves within the imposing limits of some of our most
powerful bank and trust companies. They created many savings banks out
of the forty-two which exist in the city and county of New York. This
they did within the last two years. The published lists of directors
will enable you to identify these institutions. Now the savings bank is
a place to which money travels to be taken care of; and if the bank has
the public confidence, people put their money in it freely at low rates
of interest, and the managers use the funds in whatever way they please.
In the Ring savings banks there are on deposit to-day, at nominal rates
of interest, many millions of dollars. It is believed that into these
banks the Ring have taken the city's obligations and converted them into
money, which has been sent flowing into the various channels of wasteful
administration, out of which they have drawn into their pockets millions
on millions. The craft of this contrivance was profound. It wholly
avoided the difficulty of raising money on the unlawful and excessive
issues of city and county bonds, and took out of public sight
transactions which, if pressed upon the national banks, would have
provoked comment and resistance, and have precipitated the explosion
which has shaken the country. I think that among the assets of the
savings banks of this city, county and State will be found not far from
$50,000,000 of city and county debt taken for permanent investment. For
the first time in the history of iniquity has the bank for the saving of
the wages of labor been expressly organized as a part of a system of
robbery; and for the first time in the history of felony have the workmen
and workwomen, and the orphans and the children of a great city
unwittingly cashed the obligations issued by a gang of thieves and
plunderers."

Having made themselves secure, as they believed, the Ring laughed at the
idea of punishment, if detected. They not only controlled the elections,
but they also controlled the administration of justice. The courts were
filled with their creatures, and were so distorted from the purposes of
the law and the ends of justice, that no friend of the Ring had any cause
to fear punishment at their hands, however great his crime. The majority
of the crimes committed in the city were the acts of the adherents of the
Ring, but they escaped punishment, as a rule, except when a sacrifice to
public opinion was demanded. If the criminal happened to be a politician
possessing any influence among the disreputable classes, he was sure of
acquittal. The magistrate before whom he was tried, dared not convict
him, for fear of incurring either his enmity, or the censure of the
leaders of the Ring to whom his influence was of value. So crime of all
kinds increased in the city.

[Picture: A. OAKEY HALL, MAYOR OF NEW YORK.]

Under the protection of the New Charter, the Ring began a systematic
campaign of robbery. Section four of the County Tax Levy, one of their
measures, provided that liabilities against the county, the limits of
which coincide with those of the city, should be audited by the Mayor,
the Comptroller and the President of the Board of Supervisors, or in
other words, Mayor Hall, Comptroller Connolly, and Mr. William M. Tweed,
and that the amount found to be due should be paid. "These Auditors,"
says Mr. Tilden, "met but once. They then passed a resolution, which
stands on the records of the city in the handwriting of Mayor Hall. It
was passed on his motion, and what was its effect? It provided that all
claims certified by Mr. Tweed and Mr. Young, Secretary of the old Board
of Supervisors, should be received, and, on sufficient evidence, paid."
Thus the door was thrown open to fraud, and the crime soon followed.
"Mayor Hall," continues Mr. Tilden, "is the responsible man for all this.
He knew it was a fraudulent violation of duty on the part of every member
of that Board of Audit to pass claims in the way they did."

The door being thus thrown open to fraud, the thefts of the public funds
became numerous. All the appropriations authorized by law were quickly
exhausted, and large sums of money were drawn from the treasury, without
the slightest warrant of law.

[Picture: WILLIAM M. TWEED.]

The new Court House in the City Hall Park was a perfect gold mine to the
Ring. Immense sums were paid out of the treasury for work upon this
building, which is still unfinished. Very little of this money was spent
on the building, the greater part being retained, or stolen by the Ring
for their own private benefit. The Court House has thus far cost
$12,000,000, and is unfinished. During the years 1869, 1870, and a part
of 1871, the sum of about $8,223,979.89 was expended on the new Court
House. During this period, the legislative appropriation for this
purpose amounted to only $1,400,000. The Houses of Parliament in London,
which cover an area of nearly eight acres, contain 100 staircases, 1100
apartments and more than two miles of corridors, and constitute one of
the grandest architectural works of the world, cost less than
$10,000,000. The Capitol of the United States at Washington, the largest
and most magnificent building in America, will cost, when completed,
about $12,000,000, yet, the unfinished Court House in New York has
already cost more than the gorgeous Houses of Parliament, and as much as
the grand Capitol of the Republic.

[Picture: THE NEW COUNTY COURT HOUSE]

The Court House was not the only means made use of to obtain money.
Heavy sums were drawn for printing, stationery, and the city armories,
and upon other pretexts too numerous to mention. It would require a
volume to illustrate and rehearse entire the robberies of the Ring.
Valid claims against the city were refused payment unless the creditor
would consent to add to his bill a sum named by, and for the use of, the
Ring. Thus, a man having a claim of $1500 against the city, would be
refused payment until he consented to make the amount $6000, or some such
sum. If he consented, he received his $1500 without delay, and the $4500
was divided among the members of the Ring. When a sum sufficient for the
demands of the Ring could not be obtained by the connivance of actual
creditors, forgery was resorted to. Claims were presented in the name of
men who had no existence, who cannot now be found, and they were paid.
The money thus paid went, as the recent investigations have shown, into
the pockets of members of the Ring. Further than this, if Mr. John H.
Keyser is to be believed, the Ring did not hesitate to forge the
endorsements of living and well-known men. He says: "The published
accounts charge that I have received upwards of $2,000,000 from the
treasury. Among the warrants which purport to have been paid to me for
county work alone _there are upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars
which I never received nor saw_, _and the endorsements on which_, _in my
name_, ARE CLEAR AND UNMISTAKABLE FORGERIES."

Another means of purloining money is thus described by Mr. Abram P.
Genung, in a pamphlet recently issued by him:

"A careful examination of the books and pay-roll (of the Comptroller's
Office) developed the important fact that the titles of several accounts
might be duplicated by using different phraseology to convey the same
meaning; and that by making up pay-rolls, by using fictitious names of
persons alleged to be temporarily employed in his (the Comptroller's)
department, he could even cheat the 'heathen Chinee,' who had invited him
to take a hand in this little game of robbery. Hence, Mr. 'Slippery' set
about finding additional titles for several of the accounts, and in this
way 'Adjusted Claims' and 'County Liabilities' became synonymous terms,
and all moneys drawn on either account, instead of being charged to any
appropriation, became a part of the permanent debt of the city and
county. Under the same skilful manipulation, 'County Contingencies,' and
'Contingencies in the Comptroller's Office' meant the same thing, as did
also the amount charged to 'Contingencies in the Department of Finance,'
generally charged in the city accounts to make it less conspicuous.
Again, there are three distinct pay-rolls in the County Bureau. One of
these contains the names of all the clerks regularly employed in the
Bureau, and about a dozen names of persons who hold sinecure positions,
or have no existence. The other two rolls contain about forty names, the
owners of which, if, indeed, they have any owners, have never worked an
hour in the department. The last two rolls are called 'Temporary Rolls,'
and the persons whose names are on them are said to be 'Temporary Clerks'
in the Comptroller's Office. One of them is paid out of the regular
appropriation of 'Salaries Executive,' but the other is paid out of a
fund raised by the sale of 'Riot Damages Indemnity Bonds,' and becomes a
part of the permanent debt of the county. Again, there are no less than
five different accounts to which repairs and furniture for any of the
public offices, or the armories of the National Guard, can be charged;
while more than half of the aggregate thus paid out, is not taken out of
any appropriation, but is raised by the sale of revenue bonds or other
securities, which may be converted at the pleasure of the Comptroller
into long bonds, which will not be payable until 1911--forty years after
many of the frauds which called them into existence shall have been
successfully consummated by Connolly and his colleagues. . . .

"When it becomes necessary to place a man in an important position, or a
position where he must necessarily become acquainted with the secrets of
the office, some one who is already in the confidence of the thieves
throws out a hint that their intended victim can make $100 or $200 a
month, in addition to his salary, by placing one or two fictitious names
on one of the rolls, and drawing the checks for the salaries to which
actual claimants would be entitled at the end of each month.. This
involves the necessity of signing the fictitious names on the payroll or
voucher, when the check is received, and endorsing the same name on the
check before the bank will cash it. . . . So long as he is willing to do
their bidding, and to embark in every description of rascality at their
dictation, he can go along very smoothly; but if he should become
troublesome at any time, or if he should show any conscientious scruples
when called upon to execute the will of his masters, they would turn him
adrift without an hour's warning, and crush him, with the evidence of his
guilt in their possession, if he had the hardihood to whisper a word
about the nefarious transactions he had witnessed."

We have not the space to enumerate the various methods of plundering the
city adopted by the Ring. What we have given will enable the reader to
obtain a clear insight into their system. During the years 1869 and
1870, the following sums were paid by the Comptroller:

$
Keyser & Co. 1,561,619.42
Ingersoll & Co. 3,006,391.72
C. D. Bollar & Co. 951,911.84
J. A. Smith 809,298.96
A. G. Miller 626,896.74
Geo. S. Miller 1,568,447.62
A. J. Garvey and others 3,112,590.34
G. L. Schuyler 463,039.27
J. McBride Davidson 404,347.72
E. Jones & Co. 341,882.18
Chas. H. Jacobs 164,923.17
Archibald Hall, jr. 349,062.85
J. W. Smith 53,852.83
New York Printing Co. 2,042,798.99
Total 15,457,063.65

These are the figures given by the "Joint Committee of Supervisors and
Aldermen appointed to investigate the public accounts of the City and
County of New York." {86} In their report, presented about the 9th of
October, 1871, they say: "Your Committee find that immense sums have been
paid for services which have not been performed, for materials which have
not been furnished, and to employes who are unknown in the offices from
which they draw their salaries. Also, that parties having just claims
upon the city, failing to obtain payment therefor, have assigned their
claims to persons officially or otherwise connected with different
departments, who have in many instances fraudulently increased their
amounts, and drawn fourfold the money actually due from the city. Thus
it appears in the accounts that hundreds of thousands of dollars have
been paid to private parties who positively deny the receipt of the
money, or any knowledge whatever of the false bills representing the
large sums paid to them. These investigations compel the belief that not
only the most reckless extravagance, but frauds and peculations of the
grossest character have been practised in several of the departments, and
that these must have been committed in many instances with the knowledge
and cooperation of those appointed, and whose sworn duty it was to guard
and protect the public interests."

Under the management of the Ring, the cost of governing the city was
about thirty millions of dollars annually. The city and county debt
(practically the same, since both are paid by the citizens of New York,)
was doubled every two years. On the 1st of January, 1869, it was
$36,000,000. By January 1st, 1871, it had increased to $73,000,000. On
the 14th of September, 1871, it was $97,287,525, and the Citizens'
Committee declare that there is grave reason to believe that it will
reach $120,000,000 during the present year (1871).

For several years the Ring continued their robberies of the treasury,
enriching themselves and bringing the city nearer to bankruptcy every
year. Taxes increased, property was assessed for improvements that were
never made, and the assessments were rigorously collected. Large sums
were paid for cleaning the streets, which streets were kept clean only by
the private subscriptions of the citizens residing in them, as the writer
can testify from his personal experience. The burdens of the people
became heavier and heavier, and the members of the Ring grew richer and
richer. They built them palatial residences in the city, and their
magnificent equipages were the talk of the town. They gave sumptuous
entertainments, they flaunted their diamonds and jewels in the eyes of a
dumbfounded public, they made ostentatious gifts to the poor, and
munificent subscriptions to cathedrals and churches, _all with money
stolen from the city_; and with this same money they endeavored to
control the operations of Wall street, the great financial centre of the
Republic. They built them country seats, the beauty and magnificence of
which were duly set forth in the illustrated journals of the day; and
they surrounded themselves with every luxury they could desire--all with
money stolen from the city. Did any man dare to denounce their
robberies, they turned upon him with one accord, and the whole power of
the Ring was used to crush their daring assailant. They encouraged their
adherents to levy blackmail upon the citizens of New York, and it came to
be well understood in the great city that no man, however innocent,
arrested on a civil process, could hope to regain the liberty which was
his birthright, without paying the iniquitous toll levied upon him by
some portion of the Ring. Even the great writ of Habeas Corpus--the very
bulwark of our liberties--was repeatedly set at defiance by the
underlings of the Ring, for the purpose of extorting money from some
innocent man who had fallen into their clutches.