CHAPTER XII.

THE WORST TREASON OF ALL.

It will be remarked, somewhat impatiently I fear, by the reader of this long and dismal series of stories of the way in which the municipal Thugs did their deadly work, But where were the citizens? The good honest citizens, we are told, are always in a majority. They proved that they were able to elect their own City Government. Why did they not do it? What is the use of talking about “the land of liberty,” “the Great Republic,” and the Democratic principle, if the richest, oldest, and most highly-educated city in the Western Continent is as impotent to use the ballot-box to protect itself as if it were a city in the dominions of the Great Mogul?

The answer of the Lexow Committee--not by any means a complete answer--is as follows:--

The results of the investigation up to this point may ... be properly summarised in the general statement that it has been conclusively shown that in a very large number of the election districts of New York, almost every conceivable crime against the elective franchise was either committed or permitted by the police, invariably in the interest of the dominant Democratic organisation of the City of New York, commonly called Tammany Hall. The crimes thus committed or permitted by the police may be classified as follows:--

Arrest and brutal treatment of Republican voters, watchers, and workers; open violations of the election laws; canvassing for Tammany Hall candidates; invasion of election booths; forcing of Tammany Hall pasters upon Republican voters; general intimidation of the voters by the police directly and by Tammany Hall election district captains in the presence and with the concurrence of the police; colonisation of voters, illegal registration and repeating, aided and knowingly permitted by the police; denial to Republican voters and election district officers of their legal rights and privileges; co-operation with and acquiescence in the usurpation by Tammany Hall election district captains and watchers of alleged rights and privileges, in violation of law.

In fact, it may be stated as characteristic of the conditions shown to exist by a cloud of witnesses that the police conducted themselves at the several polling places upon the principle that they were there, not as guardians of the public peace to enforce law and order, but for the purpose of acting as agents of Tammany Hall, in securing to the candidates of that organisation by means fair or foul the largest possible majorities. They evidently regarded themselves as coadjutors of that organisation, stationed at the several polls for the purpose of securing its success whether by lawful or unlawful means, resorting to device, oppression, fraud, trickery, crime, and intimidation of almost every conceivable character....--Vol. i., pp. 15, 16.

It is to be regretted that sufficient time was not at the disposal of your Committee to enable it to subject every district in the city to a rigorous examination upon the lines of this branch of inquiry, whereby a more accurate estimate of the effect of police interference might be reached. Sufficient, however, appears upon the record to show beyond peradventure that, owing to the practices above referred to during the years covered by the investigation, honest elections had no existence, in fact, in the City of New York, and that, upon the contrary, a huge conspiracy against the purity of the elective franchise was connived at and participated in by the municipal police, whereby the rights and privileges of the individual were trampled ruthlessly under foot, and crime against the ballot held high carnival.--Vol. i., p. 17.

The date of this Report, be it remembered, was January 15th, 1895. It may be supplemented by a very significant admission made by Mr. Goff, himself a Republican and now Recorder of New York. Speaking of the election frauds which he did so much to detect and punish in November, 1893:--

It would not be just to lay the blame exclusively upon the Tammany inspectors, though, of course, being in the majority and in full control, they were chargeable with all that took place. Republican inspectors either openly co-operated with or quietly acquiesced in the perpetration of the fraud.--_North American Review_, February, 1894, p. 210.

The fraud on the ballot, to which both parties were privy, was all the more abominable because the provisions of the law against such abuses were very strict. But it is a favourite method in other countries than the United States to salve an uneasy conscience by passing a rigorous law without taking any precautions to see that it is carried into operation. This mode of relieving the feelings had been indulged in by New Yorkers in 1890, when the Ballot Reform Act passed into law. But, writing in 1894, Mr. Goff, who was Counsel to the Committee for the Prosecution of Election Frauds, said:--

Since the enactment of the reform-ballot law in 1890 no organised effort has been made to watch its operation or to detect any illegal practices. The public was satisfied with the popular catch-name of the Act, and it slept peacefully upon the assurance that fraud was no longer possible; but the evidence obtained by the volunteer watchers, and the finding of over sixty indictments by the Grand Jury, mainly against election officials, demonstrate that false registration, false voting, and bribery are as easily and as safely practised as they ever were, and that perjury has enormously increased, owing to the number of safeguards which must be sworn away by the fraudulent voter and the collusive inspector.--_Ib._, p. 204.

There were 1,157 polling stations in New York in 1893, and it was not possible to obtain competent watchers for all of them. But the evidence obtained was sufficient to show on how colossal a scale the frauds were practised, with the co-operation or connivance of both parties. Ballot-stuffing seems to have been common. Mr. Goff says:--

Almost without exception there were more ballots found in the ballot-box than the ballot clerk’s number showed to have been delivered or the poll-list showed to have been voted, and in a great number of districts more than the registration. How they came there is to some extent a mystery: but in some places ballots were folded in duplicate, and in others the pile of ballots on the table was added to by a sleight-of-hand performance.--_Ib._, p. 209.

In the Thirty-sixth Election District of the Second Assembly District it was estimated that 5,000 out of the 12,770 votes counted were fraudulent. In the Seventh of the Third 567 ballots were found in the box for a district which had only 508 names on the register. Repeating and personation were almost universal. The lodging-houses played a leading part in the squalid and sordid drama. The tramps who use these dossing kens are all registered. But as they seldom pass three nights in the same place, they rarely vote where they are registered. That, however, is a mere detail. Mr. Goff says:--

The same men who registered did not, as a rule, vote upon the names given. To have them do so would require their maintenance at the lodging-house, and that would be too expensive. A more economic plan was adopted. A few days previous to election the proprietors of the lodging-houses were furnished, by the election-district captains, with lists of the names registered from their houses. Separate slips for each name were then supplied, and on election day the tramps, as they come along, were handed the slips, and they voted on the names thus given as frequently as they could get the slips. The election workers were never hard pushed to bring out the registered vote. They simply sent for the men when they wanted them, and were always supplied with the required number. Sometimes the floater forgot the name given to him or could not read the slip; sometimes a man who could not speak English wrestled with an American name, or an English-speaking man struggled with a Polish name. In all of these cases the obliging inspectors helped them out either by looking at the slip or by giving some sort of pronunciation to the unpronounceable name. In some election districts there was a rivalry as to who could vote on the most names, and the man who won the honours was an ex-convict, who voted eighteen times in two election districts of the Third Assembly District.--_Ib._, p. 205.

The evidence taken before the Lexow Committee abounds with vivid little vignettes of how elections were conducted in New York City only four years since.

Here, for instance, is what Mr. Louis Meyer, a Republican inspector in the Third Assembly District, heard given as official directions by Police Captain Devery to a platoon of policemen on the morning of the November poll, 1893. The Union League and the City Club had decided to send watchers to the polls to detect any illegal practices. So by way of preparing for their reception, Captain Devery told the police in Mr. Meyer’s hearing:--

There is a lot of silk-stocking people coming from up town to bulldose you people, and if they open their mouths, stand them on their heads.--Vol. i., p. 203, Lexow Report.

With such instructions it is not surprising that the police refused to interfere when their attention was called to the most flagrant breach of the law. Here is the story of Israel Ellis, Republican poll clerk at the Fifth Election District of the Third Assembly:--

When several voters came and they were handed sets of ballots, I wanted to get their names down, but the chairman and the officer told me it would be sufficient for me to take down the name and the vote.

I told them it was not sufficient, because if I did not do this, there would be a great deal of repeating done; and they said, “Never mind, it is none of your business; you do as we tell you; it has been carried on for a great length of time,” and I still kept on protesting. And once the chairman of inspectors and another inspector said if I didn’t shut up they would remove me from the board, and then the officer said if I would not stop he would take a hand in that too.

Q. The policeman said that to you?

A. Yes, sir; and then several times the repeaters came in openly, without any fear whatever, and they tried to vote, and each time I protested and challenged their votes; and one time a repeater came in and he passed the ballot clerk, he passed the chairman, but I recognised him as a repeater, and I challenged the man, and I said, “What is your name?” but the man had forgotten his name, because he was voting for the second--third--time, and so I caught hold of that man by the collar and ejected him, and the officer did not say one word; a second time a man came in to vote which I myself recognised as voting the second time in that election district; and another witness told me, whose name I do not know, that he was voting for the third time, and I waited until the man had voted, and I challenged his vote, and the man voted, and after he voted I caught hold of that man, and said, “Officer, I want you to arrest that man;” and the officer looked at the ceiling, not at me; he did not say a thing, and he did not arrest the man.

Q. Did you tell the officer what you wanted him to arrest him for?

A. I told him, the officer, that he voted for the second time to my own knowledge, and the third time to the knowledge of a witness, and wanted him to arrest him.

Q. And he looked at the ceiling?

A. He looked at the ceiling.--_Ib._, vol. i., pp. 216-17.

One voter was allowed to vote on the Christian name John. He could not remember the other name. At the close seventy-two more votes were found in the ballot-box than there had been voters in the booth.

A similar scene was described as occurring at the Third Election District by Jacob Subin, a Republican watcher, who deposed that he had seen Mr. Rosalsky, the captain of the Socialistic Labour Party, protest against a young man who actually attempted to vote in Mr. Rosalsky’s name under his very nose. Mr. Rosalsky grabbed hold of him and demanded that he should be locked up as a repeater caught in the act. Three Tammany heelers thereupon punched Mr. Rosalsky’s face for him. He called upon the policeman to protect him. That worthy stretched himself leisurely and replied, “Well, I guess I am pretty busy just now. I will see you after four o’clock, and will have more time to spend.” The heelers then were for mauling Rosalsky more severely; but the Tammany captain interfered, and, as an act of grace, secured his release on condition that he went right away. Rosalsky bolted for his life. After this Jacob Subin deemed it wiser to content himself with a simple protest when he saw such repeating as this:--

I have seen the Tammany Hall heelers bring in five or six men, drill them into line, and from the appearance of some of them they looked like Irishmen, and some like recent importations from Chatham Square or any of those dives, and most of those voted on Hebrew names; but the fun of it was that they could not pronounce the name under any circumstances that they were voting, and of course, as a rule, the chairman of the board of inspectors used to correct them, and in some instances they forgot their names entirely, and in such cases they went out of the line, and then the heelers would approach them and bestow such vile language upon them, and curse them and swear at them for being so stupid as not to recollect the name of the person they were voting under; and then they would drill them into line again, and I protested against them. I attempted to challenge them, and I was told unless I stopped monkeying with the regular way of doing business that I would be thrown through the window.--Vol. i., p. 303.

The appearance of the Tammany captain as master of the revels thus reported by Jacob Subin is significant. Frank Nichols, in the Twenty-ninth Election District of the Third Assembly, where they had eighty-four more votes than they had names on the register, took two voters to the poll. As he was on the wrong side his men were not allowed to vote:--

I said, “Why can’t they vote?” and they said, “No, they could not vote,” and I said, “What was the matter of these people they could not vote?” and they said, “You go home; go home; you people can’t vote any more,” and then I was put out in the middle of the street, and the captain of the election district said, “Take this fellow away from here,” and a fellow hit me in the eye with a brass knuckle.

Q. Did the police do anything at all?

A. No, sir; he would not arrest a cat that day as long as it belonged to Tammany Hall; he would not arrest a cat.--Vol. i., p. 301.

Canute A. Deas, who was Inspector of Election at the First Election District of the Third Assembly, protested fifty times in a single day against barefaced repeating. The policeman whispered in his ear that he meant to be fair, but he had his directions to take his orders from the Chairman of the Board. Captain Devery drove up and stood laughing and talking with the Tammany captain while the legal voters were in vain clamouring to be allowed to vote. The Republican watcher was thrown out by force under the eyes of the policeman:--

Q. Who threw him out?

A. The crowd--the Tammany Hall captain of the district, who was in there; he was authority for everything.--_Ib._, vol. i., p. 279.

Examined by Chairman Lexow: When you said that the Tammany Hall captain was authority for everything, what did you mean?

A. I meant that, whenever he desired to go into the polling place, he did so, that whatever he wanted was done; it seemed that they all worshipped him, bowed down to him.--_Ib._, vol. i., p. 287.

Another witness, Ralph Nathan, described how a Republican captain was hustled out because he swore that a voter had already voted in four election districts, for he had followed him round and had seen him do it. Mr. Nathan said:--

The Tammany henchmen around the Third Assembly district have a peculiar method of putting a man out; you cannot make a particular charge of assault against them, hardly, but they push them out and hustle them out; they have probably ten heelers at every election district, and the polling place is generally narrow and small, and they can fill up a place and push you out.--Vol. i., p. 290.

Here also is a description of the method in which repeaters were brought up when wanted. Mr. C. H. P. Collis, a prominent citizen who acted as watcher for the Twenty-second Election District of the Second Assembly District, deposed that he saw repeating going on openly:--

Q. Men voted under names that were not theirs?

A. I cannot go so far as that.

Q. Describe what you did see?

A. I saw a man who sat at my side ticking off the list, and those names that were not ticked he would take three or four of them, men who had not voted, and hand them to an active worker, I supposed for the purpose of having those people hunted up and brought to the polls, which would be legitimate; but I saw this man take them out in the street and hand them to the people there.

Q. Hand those names to the people?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then what occurred?

A. Then after awhile a man would come in and walk up to the polls.

Q. And would he call off one of those names?

A. Yes, sir. In fact one man had forgotten his name and turned to the man who brought him in, and said, “What is that?”--and he told him, “John Kelly,” or whatever the name was.--Vol. i., p. 130-1.

As a pendant to this scene take the following description of what happened at a previous election, where Mr. Thomas F. Harrington, Republican watcher, who had been challenging repeaters, was set upon by one Whitty, an ex-convict, as he was returning to the polling place to attend to his duties. Whitty was carrying a club and a revolver. Harrington argued with him, fearing that “they meant to inflict punishment upon me,” and remonstrated against causing blood to be spilled on election day. Whitty, however, held on to his man, whereupon, said Harrington:--

I grabbed him by the throat with my left hand and went to strike him with my right, when the two officers (who had been standing watching Whitty’s attack) rushed. One officer grabbed me by the coat and raised his club to strike me, and I told him if he struck me I would kill him where he stood, and a friend of mine came forward to help me, and the other officer rushed out and grabbed him, and up with his stick to strike him; they did not take hold of this Whitty at all; it was me and my friend they took hold of.

Q. And these policemen made no move to protect you in any wise in this assault, until you began to defend yourself?

A. No, sir.

Q. And then they laid hold of you and of your friend?

A. Yes, sir.--Vol. i., p. 135.

“We are in the business of carrying elections,” said Boss Tweed, and a very successful business Tammany has made of it.

But what becomes of popular sovereignty, of the majesty of the ballot, of the sacred privileges of citizenship?