Classic Audiobook Collection - Plunkitt of Tammany Hall by Plunkitt ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall by Plunkitt audiobook. Genre: history Part memoir, part political primer, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall captures the voice of George Washington Plunkitt, a colorful, plainspoken power broker from New York City's Tammany Hall machine. In a series of candid conversations and speeches, Plunkitt lays out how ward politics really works - from turning out votes and settling neighborhood disputes to rewarding loyalty with jobs and favors. He proudly explains his famous idea of 'honest graft,' arguing that there is a practical difference between profiting from inside knowledge and outright theft, and he dares the reader to decide where the line should be drawn. As reformers, reporters, and rival factions circle, Plunkitt defends the machine as a force that feeds families, keeps order, and gives immigrants a foothold in American life, even as its methods raise urgent questions about corruption and democracy. Witty, blunt, and unexpectedly shrewd, this short classic offers an unvarnished look at patronage, persuasion, and the everyday bargaining that shaped urban politics at the turn of the twentieth century. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:05:28) Chapter 01 (00:12:58) Chapter 02 (00:21:16) Chapter 03 (00:32:22) Chapter 04 (00:39:49) Chapter 05 (00:47:10) Chapter 06 (00:55:06) Chapter 07 (01:02:56) Chapter 08 (01:11:17) Chapter 09 (01:18:13) Chapter 10 (01:25:26) Chapter 11 (01:34:22) Chapter 12 (01:41:02) Chapter 13 (01:46:47) Chapter 14 (01:54:28) Chapter 15 (02:02:04) Chapter 16 (02:07:50) Chapter 17 (02:15:12) Chapter 18 (02:22:57) Chapter 19 (02:29:32) Chapter 20 (02:35:04) Chapter 21 (02:41:57) Chapter 22 (02:45:41) Chapter 23 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 1. Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft Everybody is talking these days about Tammany men growing rich on graft, but nobody thinks a drondid 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've 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, blackmailing 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 him. 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 particularly for 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 onto 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 onto 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, 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 Comdenation commissioners came along and found piece after piece of the land in the name of George Blunkett 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 pays is in my line. For instance, the city is repaved in a street and has several hundred thousand old. granted blocks to sell. I am on hand to buy, and I know just what they are worth. How? 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 and 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 one at 15,000, other one at 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 am I bid for these 250,000 fine pavingstones? $2.50.50, says I. "'Two dollars and fifty cents!' screamed the auctioneer. "'Oh, that's a joke. Give me a real bid.' "'I found the bid was real enough. My rival stood silent. "'I got the lot for two dollars and fifty cents, 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 by honest graft. "'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 a reform administration comes in and spends half a million dollars trying to find the public robberies,

they talked about 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 graft.

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 graft, Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There was an awful howl by the reformers, but don't you know that Tamini gains 10 votes for every one at lost by salary raising?

The Wall Street banker thinks it's shameful to raise a department clerk's salary from 1,500 to 1,800 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 Tamini ticket on election day, just out of sympathy.

Tammany was beat in 1901 because the 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 a 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 right. George W. Plunkett. He's seen his opportunities, and he took him. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall

A series of very plain talks on very practical politics This Libre Vox 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 his success in politics. After 40 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, I haven't 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 collard rot. They couldn't make a bigger mistake. Now, understand me, I ain't saying nothing as colleges.

I guess he'll have to exist as long as there's bookworms, and I suppose they'd 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 become an 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, or 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 Tammy Hall.

The men who rule have practiced 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 and hustling 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 and moan. 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 a 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 aldermen, 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, offered 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 paris 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 block sides on the elevated roads and I'm the real thing in the way of silver-tonged 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. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 of Plunkard of Tammany Hall,

a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Liebervox 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 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? are 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 10,000 good offices,

but we can't get at more than a few hundred of them 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 servants. 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? They're

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 fool questions about the number of cubic inches of water in the Atlantic and the quality of sand in the Sahara Desert?

There 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 saloons 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 low? That's civil service for you. Just think. Fifty-five Republicans and Mugwamps hold an $8,000 and $4,000 and $5,000 in the tax department when 1555 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 all 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 for rewarding the men that won the vans.

victory. They call that the spoil system. All right, Tammany is for the spoil system, and when we go in, we fire every anti-Tamany 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 sometime? 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 Tamini 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 stirred 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, civilious 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 is sapping the foundation of the whole shooting match.

Let me argue it out for you. I end up to syllogisms, but I can give you some argument 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 clear? 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 busting 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 mass of 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

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 how hard they work for their 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 a light complexion, red hair and blue eyes. They could see it wasn't a 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 a young man determined to vote his life to the service of the city. He picked out a place that would suit him and sent 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 blasted 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, drawn a good salary. Ah, how many young men have 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 a czar 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 Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics.

This Libra Vox 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 4. Reformers. morning glories. College professors and philosophers who go up in 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 reformed. committees of 50, of 60, 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. Olly Teal, dear pretty Ollie and his big dog. They're 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 Steclites, 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 going, What's become of those reformers? What's become of Charles Stuart Smith? Where's bangs? 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 Pribal Tucker. Or, 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, you'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 a thing or two from us. 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 lately. But the union can't last.

Its people haven't been trained to politics, and whenever Tamini calls her bluff, They lay right down. You'll never hear of the Union again after a year or two. And 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&P 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 will start 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 be trained up to it or you're sure to fail. Suppose a man who knew nothing about the grocery trades 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 splurge 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 late 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 in statesmanship. Show me a boy that hustles for the organization on election day, and I'll show you a coming 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. A few years ago, 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 was abandoned 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 5 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Librevox 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 5. New York City is Pye for the Hayseats. 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 wards 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? Newburgh ain't big enough for him. He, like all the other upstate Republicans, wants to get hold of New York, 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, let me 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 says 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 shooting 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 a glass of beer on Sunday, 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 wanton 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 in a pity and sort of way as if they were humor and a spoiled child. But just let a Republican farmer from Chemburg or Wayne or Tyoga 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. How much do you want us to take off? I guess about 50% will about due 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 the 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 collar 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 in the river counties. 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 your leave. Then they called on Odell to put through a bill given 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 hayseeds 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. O'Dell and Lowe were pards, and, well, my dock was stolen. You heard a lot in the Senate campaign about Odell's great work in reducing the, 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 Milken 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, feller? Once a farmer in Orange County asked him, How did you do it, Ben? Dead 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 chartered, 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 Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Libravox 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 6. To hold your district. Study human nature and act accordon. 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 have 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, thinks they can sing fine. I ask him to come around to Washington Hall and join our glee club. He comes and sings, and he's a follower of a 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 on his 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 accord. But you may say this game won't work with the high.

toned fellers. The fellers that go through college and then join the Citizens 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 Citizens Union kind of a young man. I love him. He's a daintiest morsel of the 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 Citizens Union said they had 400 or 500 enrolled voters in my district. They had a lovely headquarters to beautiful roll-top desks and the cutest rugs in the world. If I was accused to haven't 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 Citizens' Union's candidate for Senator, who ran against me, just polled five votes in the district while I polled something more than 14,000 votes. What became of the 400 or 500 Citizens 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 Citizens Union enrolled voters in my district were missing and unaccounted for. I'd tell you frankly, though, how I have captured some of the Citizens Union young men. I have a plan that never fails.

I watch the city record to see when there's civil service examinations for good things. Then I take my young sit-in-hand. Tell him all about the good thing and get him worked up till he goes and takes an examination. I don't bother about him anymore. It's a cinch that he comes back to me in a few days and ask to join Tammany Hall.

Come over to Washington Hall some night and I'll show you a list of names on our role 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 win the papers.

Who reads speeches nowadays, anyhow. It's bad enough to listen to them. You ain't going to gain any votes by stuffing the letterboxes 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 letterbox 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 crammy letterbox 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 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 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 the time they are dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them, if they're clothes. were burned up, and fix them up till they get things running again. It's philanthropy, but it's

politics, too, 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. a special court to look up such cases. The consequence is that the poor look up to George W. Plunkett as a 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 roses 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, 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 to vote for me.

And she didn't. End of Chapter 6. Chapter 7 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Libra Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Bendetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics

by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 7. On the Shame of the Cities. I've been reading a book by Lincoln Steffens on the shame of the cities. Stephens 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.

Luter 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 luther. 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. Stefan 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. Tamini ain't no such fool. Well, I remember about 15 or 20 years ago, a Republican superintendent of the Philadelphia Almshouse

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 politics. 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 a 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 almehouse. 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 graft. It's going about the thing like a gentleman,

and there's more money in it than a tearing down an old roof and carting 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 gets. 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 first. 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 50 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 firebells would be run.

What credit was there in being honest under them? circumstances. Makes me tired to hear of old codgers back in the 30s or 40s boasting that they retired from politics without a dollar except what they earned in their profession or businesses. If they live today with all the existing opportunities, they would be just the same as 20th 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 I can't.

See the application? Understand, I ain't defending politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals is worse than the 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. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall's series of very plain talk. on very practical politics. This Lieber Fox 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 8. 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 Liri, I think you call him, had his own daughters go back on him, Platt had his Odell, and I've got my the McManus. 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 traitors have turned up in my camp, well, I only had the same experience as Caesar, Leary, and the others. About my Brutus, McManus, 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 McManus's, 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 Leary 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 the ticket with me. What do you think happened? We both carried the 15th Assembly District, but he ran

a way 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 McManus had sold me out with the idea of knocking me out of the censorship 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 McMannison 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 abjure the name of the name of the Mac Manus. I'm going out right now to find them.

Well, the kept his word as far as going out and finding the traders 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's 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 flourish as long. I can give you lots of examples. Look at the men who done up Roscoe Conkling when he resigned from the United States Senate and went to Albany to ask for re-election.

What's become of them? Passed 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 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 traitor. You can't hold them back when a traitor of any kind is in sight and remember an old Ireland. They take particular delight in doing up a political traitor. 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's

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 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 allegiance, and they may up and swat him without being put down as political ingrates.

End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Libravox 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 9.

Reciparcity in patronage. Whenever Tammany is whipped at the polls, the people set to predicting 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 dessert wholesale. That was what was said after the throwdowns in 1894 and 1901, but it didn't happen, did it? Not one big Tamini man deserted, and today the organization is stronger than ever. How was that? It was because Tamini has more than one string to its bow. I acknowledge that you can't keep an organization together without patronage. Men ain't in polandies. Men ain't in poles.

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 have fixed them all right. I didn't know how many jobs I got for them on the surface and elevated railroads several hundred. I placed a lot more on public works done by contractors, and no Tammany man goes hungry in my district. Plunkett's okay.

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 other, wise. When Tammany's on top, I do good turns for the Republicans. When they're on top, they don't forget me. Me and the 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 of friends. I can go to him and say, George, I want you to place this friend of mine, he says. All 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 Vivalry royal! The very thought of this civil service monastery 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 a flag, and nobody shot off as many

fire-grackers on the Fourth of July. And when he got to be a star-to-july, and when he got to the star-es'-y-law, 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 fool questions. I saw him the next day. It was Memorial Day, and soldiers were marching and flags flying and people cheering. Where was my young man? Standing on a corner. scowling at the whole show. When I 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 non-partisan business, but I do think that all of the people, All the leaders of the two parties should get together and make an open, 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 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 nine. Chapter 10 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Libra Box 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. It's 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 in Gawanna'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,

years old when he left Brooklyn and was 23 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 Gawanna'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 do 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 two rights, and I said to him, Jim, 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.

McFarren 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 Supporting Hill, and his hayseeds against Murphy. I had some hopes of McCarron 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 tot 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 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. Odell 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 a hundred and twenty-three thousand majority for Kohler in the city in 1902. The Republicans went 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. Tamini has had to foot the whole bill. And when any of hillsmen 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 are always providing that there is any Democrats there, take to the woods. Suppose in Tammany turned over the campaigns to the Hillmen 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 in the cash. The hill crowds only got hot air. End of Chapter 10. Chapter 11 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Lieber Vox 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 11. Tamini Leaders, not Bookworms. 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 brokeworms and college professors. If we were, Tammany might win an election once in 4,000 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 of just a 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 a 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 some 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 Donne. Come off, you ain't Bishop Donne said the poll clerk. The hell I ain't, you, I yelled to repeat her. Now that is the 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-stock and 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 made 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 a 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 Hoare of Massachusetts. Of course, that was putting it on too thick. But, say, honest, I like Senator Horace 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 a man. 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 cent for political jobs as I have. When I get up in a morning, I can almost tell every time whether 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 sent 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 two. 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 Charterman Square. Pat Ryder and Johnny Aaron of the 3rd and 4th districts are just the men for the places. Aaron's constituents are about half-Irishmen and half Jews. He is

as popular with one race as with the other. He eats corned 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 5th, Tim Sullivan of the 6th, Pat Kean of the 7th,

Flory Sullivan of the 8th, Frank Goodwin of the 9th, Julius Harberger of the 10th, Pete Dueling of the 11th, Joe Scully of the 12th, Johnny Oakley of the 14th, and Pat Keenan of the 16th, 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 24th. 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 27th, is also something of a high toner, and publishes a law paper, while Thomas E. Rush of the 29th is a lawyer, and Isaac Hopper of the 31st is a big contractor

that downtown leaders wouldn't do uptown, and vice versa. So you see, these fool critics don't know what they're talking about when they criticize Tamney Hall, the most perfect political machine on earth. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall. A series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Bendetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George

Washington Plunkett. Chapter 12. Dangerous of the Dress Suit in Politics Putting on this style don't pay in politics. The people won't stand for it. If you've got an aching for style, sit down on it till you have made your pile and landed at a Supreme Court Justice ship

with a 14-year term at 17,000 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. 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 servants. service reform and drink, but they have scores of victims. I will mention one sad case. After the Big Tammany victory in 1897, 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

dressed suits at dinner at Lakewood. And Crocker wouldn't look. had any Tammany men go to dinner without them. Well, a bright young Westside politician who held a $3,000 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 set 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 drink it, and didn't pay any attention to his political work in the district. The end came and less than a year. 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 lieutenants, a man named Zeke Thompson. He did find 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 like to see a young man acquiring property, and I had so much confidence in Zeke than 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 on Jap servants? One morning I called at the house to give Zika a chance to clear himself. A Jap opened the door for me. I saw the billiard table Zeeq was guilty. When I got over the shock, I said to 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 as was when I entered politics 40 years ago. That is why the people of the district have confidence in me.

If I went into the stylish business, Eve and I, Plunkett, might be thrown down in the district. That was shown pretty clearly in the senatorial fight last year. A day before the election, my enemy's circulated a report that I had ordered a $10,000 dollar, 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 you're learning. I've felt it myself. I know the awful consequences.

End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of Plunkhead of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. According by Mike Vendetti, Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 13.

On municipal ownership. I am for municipal ownership on one condition. That the civil service law be repealed. It's a grand idea, the city, the railroads, the gasworks, 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 in 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 Doc Graft, but that talk comes from the outs.

When the Republicans had the docks under their 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 do you? 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 motorman 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 40% 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 inning, 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 in 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, we'll 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 and hail Columbia, all unconscious. Andy 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 singing the star-spangled banner.

End of Chapter 13. Chapter 14 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Libre Vox 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 14. Tamini, the only lasted 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 everlasting 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 dealers democracy, the silver democracy, and the Italian democracy. Not one of them is living today, although I hear something about the go-beau-beyond 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 $50 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 12 Bone Hunters, $12. A speech on Jeffersonian democracy, $0. A proclamation of principles, typewriting, $2. Rent of a small room one month for headquarters, $12. Stationary, $2. $12 second-hand chairs, $6. One second-hand table, $2. $29 Cuspidors, $9. Sign painting, $5.

Total, $50. Is there any reason for wonder, then, that democracies spring 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 $50 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 come-ons 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 Tammianites, 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 borough president of Manhattan, the president of the board of aldermen,

the registrar, and a lot of lesser places. It was the greatest bunkal 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. I happened to know exactly what it cost to manufacture that organization. It was $42 and $4,000. They left out the stationery and had only 23 Cuspidors. 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 Bonco Steelers, and the young Napoleon's of finance will go into it and the public will be humbugged 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 law of demand and supply. End of chapter 14. Chapter 15 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vindetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 15.

Concerning gas in politics. Since the 80-cent gas bill was defeated in Albany, everybody's talking about senators being bribed. Now, I wasn't in the Senate last summer. and I don't know the ends and outs of everything that was done, but I can tell you that the legislators are often hauled over the coals when they are all on the level. I've been there and I know. For instance, when I voted in the Senate in 1904 for the Remsen bill,

that the newspapers called the Astoria Gas Grab Bill, they didn't do a thing to me. The papers kept up a howl about all the supporters of the bill being bought up by the consolidated gas company and the Citizens Union, did me the honor to call me the commander in chief of the black horse cavalry. The fact is that I was working for my district all this time, and I wasn't bribeer nobody. There's several of these gas houses in the district, and I wanted to get them over to Astoria for three reasons. First, because they're nuisances. Second, because there's no votes in them for me any longer. Third, because, well, I had a little private reason,

which I'll explain further on. I needn't explain how they're nuisances. They're worse than open sewers. Still, I might have stood that if they hadn't degenerated so much in the last few years. Ah, gas houses, ain't what they used to be. Not very long ago, each gas house was good for a couple of hundred votes. All the men employed in them were Irishmen and Germans who lived in the district. Now it is all different. The men are Dagoes who live across in Jersey and take no interest in the district. What's the use of having ill-smell at gas houses if there's no votes in them? Now as to my private reason. Well, I'm a businessman and go in for any business that's profitable and honest. Real estate is one of my specialties. I know the value of every foot of ground in my district,

and I calculated long ago that if them gas houses were removed, surrounding property would go up 100%. When the Remsen bill, providing for the removal of the gas houses to Queens County came up, I said to myself, George, hasn't your chance come? I answered, sure. Then I sized up. Then I sized up. up the chances of the bill. I found it was certain to pass the Senate and assembly, and I got assurances straight from headquarters that Governor O'Dell would sign it. Next I came down to the city to find out the mayor's position. I got it straight, that he would approve the bill too. Can't you guess what I did then? Like any sane man who had my information, I went in and got options on a lot of the property around the gas houses.

Well, the bill went through the Senate and the Assembly all right, and the mayor signed it, but Odell backslided, at the last minute and the whole game fell through. If it had succeeded, I guess I would have been accused of Grafton. What I want to know is, what do you call it when I got left and lost a pot of money? I not only lost money, but I was abused, for voting for the bill.

Wasn't that outrageous? They said I was in with the consolidated gas company and all other kinds of rot when I was really only working for my district and trying to turn an honest penny on the side. Anyhow, I got a little fun out of the business when the Remsen bill was up. I was trying to put through a bill of my own.

The Spayuton Diable Bill, which provided for filling, in some land underwater that the New York Central Railroad wanted. Well, the Remsen managers were afraid of being beaten, and they went around offering to make trades with senators and assemblymen who had bills they were anxious to pass. They came to me and offered six votes from my Spayuton-Duyoville bill in exchange for my vote on Remsen bill.

I took them up in a hurry, and they felt pretty sore afterwards when they heard I was going to vote for the Remington bill. and Bill anyhow. A word about the Spayuton-Doyovil Bill. I was criticized a lot for introducing it. They said I was working in the interest of the New York Central and was going to get the contract for filling in. The fact is that the filling in was a good thing for the city, and if it helped the New York Central to, what of it? The railroad is a great public institution, and I was never an enemy of public institutions. As to the contract, it hasn't come along yet. If it does come, it will find me at home at all proper and reasonable hours, if there is a good profit in sight.

The papers and some people are always ready to find wrong motives and what us statesmen do, if we bring about some big improvement that benefits the city, and it just happens, as a sort of Coincidence, that we make a few dollars out of the improvement. They say we are grafters, but we are used to this kind of ingratitude. It falls to the lot of all statesmen, especially Tammany statesmen. All we can do is to bow our heads in silence and wait till time has cleared our memories. Just think of mention a dishonest grafting connection with the name of George Washington Plunkett. The man who gave the city its magazine.

significant chain of parks, its Washington Bridge, its Speedway, its Museum of Natural History, its 155th Street vianduct, and its west-thide courthouse. I was the father of the bills that provided for all these, yet because I supported the Remsen and Spayuton-Duyahville builds. Some people have questioned my honest motives. If that's the case, How can you expect legislatures to fare who are not the fathers of the parks, the Washington Bridge, the Speedway, and the viaduct? Now understand, I ain't defending the senators who killed the 80-cent gas bill. I don't know why they acted as they did.

I only want to impress the idea to go slow before you make up your mind that a man occupying the exalted position that I held, for so many years has done wrong. For all I know, these senators may have been as honest and high-minded about the gas bill as I was about the Remsen and Spayuton-Duyahill bills. End of Chapter 15.

Chapter 16 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vindetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett. Chapter 16. Plunkett's fondest dream. The time is common, and though I'm no youngster,

I may see it when New York City will break away from the state and become a state itself. It's got to come. The feeling between this city and the hayseeds that make a living by plundering it is every bit as bitter as the feeling between the north and south before the war, And let me tell you, if there ain't a peaceful separation before long, we may have the horrors of Civil War right here in New York State, why I know a lot of men in my district, who would like nothing better today than go out gunning for hayseeds. New York City has got a bigger population than most of the states in the Union. It's got more wealth than any dozen of them, yet the people here, as I explained before, are nothing but slaves of the Albany gang.

have stood the slavery a long, long time, but the uprising is near at hand. It will be a fight for liberty, just like the American Revolution. We'll get liberty peaceful if we can, by cruel war if we must. Just think of how lovely things would be here. If we had a Tamini governor and legislator meeting, say, in the neighborhood of 59th Street, and a Tamini mayor and board of Alderman doing business in City Hall, how sweet and peaceful everything would go on. The people wouldn't have to bother about nothing. Tammany would take care of everything for them in its nice, quiet way. You wouldn't hear of any conflicts between the state and city authorities. They would settle everything pleasant and comfortable at Tammany Hall, and every bill introduced in

the legislature by Tammany would be sure to go through. The Republicans wouldn't count. Imagine. how the city would be built up in a short time. At present, we can't make a public improvement of any consequence without going to Albany for permission. And most of the time we get turned down when we go there. But with a Tammany governor and legislature up at 59th Street, how public works would hum here. The mayor and alderman could decide on an improvement,

telephone the Capitol, have a bill put through in a jiffy, and there you are. We could have a state constitution too, which would extend the debt limits so that we could issue a whole lot more bonds. As things are now, all the money spent for docs, for instance, is charged against the city in calculating the debt limit, although the dock department provides immense revenues. It's the same with some other departments. This humbug would be dropped if Tammany ruled at the capital and the city hall, and the city would have money to burn.

Another thing, the Constitution of the new state wouldn't have a word about civil service, and if any man dared to introduce any kind of a civil service bill in a legislature, he would be fired out the window. Then we would have government of the people by the people who were elected to govern them. That's the kind of government Lincoln meant. Oh, what a glorious future for the city. Whenever I think of it, I feel like going out and celebrating. and I'm really almost sorry that I don't drink.

You may ask what would become of the upstate people if New York City left them in the lurch and went into the state business on its own account. Well, we wouldn't be under no obligation to provide for them. Still, I would be in favor of helping them along for a while until they could learn to work and earn an honest living, just like the United States government looks after the Indians. These hayseeds have been so used to living off of New York City,

that they would be helpless after we left them. It wouldn't do to let them starve. We might make some sort of appropriation for them in a few years, but it would be with a distinct understanding that they must get busy right away and learn to support themselves. If after, say, five years, they weren't self-supporting, we could withdraw the appropriation and let them shift for themselves. The plan might succeed, and it might not.

We'd be doing our duty anyhow. Some persons might say, but how about if the hayseed politicians moved down here and went in to get control of the government of the new state? We could provide against that easy by passional law that these politicians couldn't come below the Bronx without a sort of passport

limited at the time of their stay here and forbidding them to monkey with politics here. I don't know just what kind of a bill would be required to fix this, but with the Tammany Constitution, governor, legislature, and mayor, there would be no trouble in settling a little matter of that sort. Say, I don't wish I was a poet, for if I was, I guess I'd be living in a garret on no dollars a week

instead of running a great contracting and transportation business, which is doing pretty well, thank you, but honest now. The notion takes me sometimes to yell poetry of the red-hot, hail-glorious land kind when I think of New York City as a state by itself. End of Chapter 16. Chapter 17 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics.

This Lieberbox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vindetti. Blunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett, Chapter 17. Tammany's Patriotism. Tammany's the most patriotic organization on earth. notwithstanding the fact that the civil service laws saping the foundations of patriotism all over the country.

Nobody pays any attention to the Fourth of July any longer, except Tammany and the small boy. When the Fourth comes, the reformers with revolutionary names, parted in the middle, run off to Newport or the Adirondacks to get out of the way of the noise and everything that reminds them of the glorious day. How different it is with Tammany. the very constitution of the Tammany Society requires that we must assemble at the wigwam on the fourth, regardless of the weather, and listen to the reading of the Declaration of Independence

and Patriotic speeches. You ought to attend one of these meetings. Their liberal education in patriotism. The Great Hall upstairs is filled with 5,000 people, suffocating from heat and smoke. Every man jack of these 5,000, knows that down in the basement there's a hundred cases of champagne

and 200 kegs of beer ready to flow when the signal is given. Yet that crowd stick to their seats without turning a hair while for four solid hours. The Declaration of Independence is read. Long-winded orator speak and the Glee Club sings itself hoarse.

Talk about heroism in the battlefield. That comes and passes away in a moment. You ain't got time to be anything but heroic. But just think of five thousand men sitting in the hottest place on earth for four long hours, with parched lips and non-stomics and known all the time, that the delights of the oasis in the desert were only two flights downstairs. Ah, that is the highest kind of patriotism. The patriotism of long-suffering and endurance.

What man wouldn't rather face a cannon for a minute or two than thirst for four hours with champagne and beer almost under his nose? And then see how they applaud and yell when patriotic things are said as soon as the man on the platform starts off with when in the course of human events, word goes around that it's the Declaration of Independence

and a mighty roar goes up. The declaration ain't a very short, document and the crowd has heard it on every fourth but they give it just as fine as send-off as if it was brand new and awful exciting. Then the long talkers get in their work. That is two or three orators who are good for an hour each. Heat never has any effect on these men. They use every minute of their time. Sometimes human nature gets the better of a man in the audience and he begins to nod, but he always wakes up with a hurrah for the Declaration of Independence. The greatest hero of the occasion is the Grand Seekum of the Tammany's Society who presides.

He and the rest of us Seikums come on the stage wearing stovepipe hats according to the Constitution, but we can shed ours right off, while the Grand Seacom is required to wear his hat all through the celebration. Have you any idea what that means? four hours under a big silk hat in a hall where the heat registers 110 and the smoke 250, and the Grand Sakem is expected to look pleasant all the time and say nice things when introducing the speakers. Often his hand goes to his hat, unconscious like.

Then he catches himself up in time and looks around like a man who is in the tenth story of a burning building seeking a way to escape. I believe that Fourth of July's silk hat shortened to the life of one of our Grand Sakeems, the late Supreme Court Justice Smith. And I know that one of our Sakems refused the office of Grand Sakem because he couldn't get up sufficient patriotism to perform this Four-hour Hat Act. You see, there's degrees of patriotism, just as there's degrees in everything else. You don't hear of the Citizens Union people holding Fourth of July celebrations under a five-pound silk hat, or any other weight, do you? The sits take the fourth like a dog I had

when I was a boy. That dog knew as much as some sits, and he act just like them, about the glorious day. Exactly 48 hours before each fourth of July the dog left her house and run and hit himself in the Bronx woods. The day after the fourth, he turned up at home as regular as clockwork. He must have known what a dog is up against on the fourth. Anyhow, he kept out of the way. The name parted in the middle of aristocrats act in just the same way. They don't want to be annoyed with firecrackers and the Declaration of Independence,

and when they see the forthcoming, they hustle off to the woods like my dog. Tamini don't only show its patriotism at Fourth of July celebrations. It's always on deck when the country needs its services. After the Spanish-American War broke out, John J. Sannell, the Tamini leader of the 25th District,

wrote to Governor black offering to raise a Tammany regiment to go to the front. If you want proof, go to Tammany Hall and see the beautiful set of engrossed resolutions about this regiment. It's true that the governor didn't accept the offer, but it showed Tammany's patriotism. Some enemies of the organization have said that the offer to raise the regiment was made after the governor let it be known that no more volunteers were wanted. But that's the talk of envious slanderers. Now a word about Tammany's love for the American flag.

Did you ever see a Tammany Hall decorated for a celebration? It's just a mass of flags. They even take down the window shades and put flags in place of them. There's flags everywhere except on the floors. We don't care for her expense where the American flag is concerned, especially after we have won an election. In 1904, we originated the custom of given a small flag to each man man as he entered Tammany Hall for the Fourth of July celebration. It took like wildfire.

The men waved their flags whenever they cheered, and the sight made me feel so patriotic that I forgot all about civil service for a while, and the good work of the flags didn't stop there. The men carried them home and gave them to the children, and the kids got patriotic too. Of course, it all cost a pretty penny. But what of that? We had won at the polls the preceding November, had the offices and could afford to make an extra investment in patriotism. End of Chapter 17. Chapter 18 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall. A series of very plain talks on very practical politics.

This LeBrovoc's 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 18. On the use of money in politics. The civil service gang is always howling about candidates and of officeholders putting up money for campaigns and about corporations chipping in. They might as well howl about giving contributions to churches.

A political organization has to have money for its business, as well as a church. And who has more right to put up than the men who get the good things that are going? Take, for instance, a great political concern like Tammany Hall. It does missionary work like a church. It's got big expenses, and it's got to be supported by the faithful. If a corporation sends in a check to help the good work of the Tammany Society, why shouldn't we take it like other missionary societies? Of course, the day may come when we'll reject the money of the rich as tainted,

but it hadn't come when I left Tammany Hall at 11.25 a.m. today. Not long ago, some newspapers had fits because the Assemblyman from my district said he put up $500 when he was nominated for the Assembly last year. Every politician in town laughed at these papers. I don't think there was even a Citizens Union man, who didn't know that candidates of both parties have to chip in for campaign expenses. The sum they pay are according to their salaries and the length of their terms of office if elected. Even candidates for the Supreme Court have to fall in line.

A Supreme Court judge in New York County gets 17,500 a year, and he's expected when nominated to help along the good cause with a year's salary. Why not? He has 14 years on the bench ahead of him, and 10,000 other lawyers would be willing to put up twice as much to be in his shoes. Now, I ain't saying that we sell nominations. That's a different thing altogether. There's no auction and no regular bidding.

The man is picked out and somehow he gets to understand what's expected of him in the way of a contribution. And he ponies up all from gratitude to the organization that honored him. See? Let me tell you an instance that shows the difference between selling nominations and arranging them in the way I described. A few years ago, a Republican district leader controlled the nomination for Congress. in his congressional district. Four men wanted it. At first, the leader asked for bids privately, but decided, at last, that the best thing to do was to get the four men together in the back room of a certain saloon and have an open auction. When he had his men lined up, he got on a chair,

told about the value of the goods for sale, and asked for bids in regular auctioneer style. The highest bidder got the nomination for $5,000. Now, that wasn't right at all. These things ought to be always fixed up nice and quiet. As to office holders, they would be ingrates if they didn't contribute to the organization that put them in office. They needn't be assessed. That would be against the law, but they know what's expected of them, and if they happen to forget, they can be reminded polite and courteous. Dan Donagin, who used to be the Wiskinsky of the Tammany Society,

and received contributions from grateful office holders, had a pleasant way of remind it. If a man forgot his duty to the organization that made him, Dan would call on the man, smile as sweet as you please and say, You haven't been around at the hall lately, have you? If the man tried to slide around the question, Dan would say, it's getting off cold,

then he would have a fit of shivering and walk away. What could be more polite and at the same time more to the point? No force, no threats. Only a little shivered, which any man is liable to, even in the summer. Just here, I want to charge one more crime to the infamous civil service law.

It has made men turn ungrateful. A dozen years ago, when there wasn't much civil service business in the city government, and when the administration would turn out to almost any man holding office, Dan shiver took effect every time and there was no ingratitude in the city departments. But when the civil service law came in and all the clerks got lead-pipe cinches on their jobs, and gratitude spread right away. Dan shivered and shook till his bones rattled.

But many of the city employees only laughed at him. One day, I remember he tackled a clerk in the Public Works Department, who used to give up pretty regular, and after the usual question began to shiver. The clerk smiled. Dan shook till his hat fell off. Clerk took ten cents out of his pocket, handed it to Dan and said, Poor man, go get a drink to warm yourself up.

Wasn't that shameful? And yet, if it hadn't been for the civil service law, that clerk would be contributing right along to this day. The civil service law don't cover everything, however. There's lots of good jobs outside his clutch, and the men that get them are grateful every time. I'm not speaking to Tammany Hall alone. Remember, it's the same with Republican, federal,

and state office holders, and every organization it has or has had jobs to give out, except, of course, the Citizens Union. The sits held office only a couple of years and knowing that they would never be in again, each sit office holder held on for dear life to every dollar they came his way. Some people say they can't understand

what becomes of all the money that's collected for campaigns. They would understand fast enough if they were district lead them. There's never been half enough money to go around. Besides, expenses for meetings, bands, and all that, There's the bigger bill for the district workers who get men to the polls. They're these workers who are mostly men who want to serve their country but can't get jobs in the city department on account of the civil service law. They do the next best thing by keeping track of the voters

and seem that they come to the polls and vote the right way. Some of these deserving citizens have to make enough on registration and election days to keep them the rest of the year. Isn't it right that they should get a share of the campaign money? Just remember that there's 35 assembly districts in New York County and 36 district leaders reaching out for the Tammany Doe Bag for something to keep up the patriotism of 10,000 workers, and you wouldn't wonder that the cry for more more is going up from every district organization

now and forevermore. Amen. End of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall A series of very plain talks on very practical politics This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain recording by Mike Van Dedy Plunkettie of Tammany Hall

A series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett Chapter 19 The successful politician Does Not Drink I have explained how to succeed in politics I want to add that no matter how well you learn to play the political game

you won't make a lasting success of it if you're a drinking man. I never take a drop of any kind of intoxicating liquor. I ain't no fanatic. Some of the saloon keepers are my best friends, and I don't mind going into a saloon any day with my friends. But as a matter of business, I leave whiskey and beer and the rest of that stuff alone. As a matter of business, too, I take for my lieutenants in my district,

men who don't drink. I tried the other kind for several years, but it didn't pay. They cost too much. For instance, I had a young man who was one of the best hustlers in town. He knew every man in a district was popular everywhere and could induce a half-dead man to come to the polls on election day. But regularly, two weeks before election, he started on a drunk. And I had to hire two men to guard him day and night and keep him sober enough to do his work. That cost a lot of money, and I dropped the young man after a while. Maybe you think I'm unpopular with the saloonkeepers because I don't drink. You're wrong.

The most successful saloon keepers don't drink themselves, and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition, just like their own. I have a saloon under my headquarters. If a saloon keeper gets into trouble, he always knows that Senator Plunkett is the man to help him out. If there is a bill in the legislature making it easier for the liquor dealers, I am for it every time.

I am one of the best friends the saloon men have, but I don't drink their whiskey. I won't go through the temperance lecture, Dodge, and tell you how many bright young men I've seen fall victims to intemperance. but I'll tell you that I could name some dozens young men who had started on the road to statesmanship, who could carry their districts every time, and who could turn out any vote you wanted at the primaries.

I honestly believe that drink is the greatest curse of the day, except, of course, civil service, and that it has driven more young men to ruin than anything except civil service examinations. Look at the great leaders of Tammany Hall. No regular drinkers among them. Richard Crocker's strongest drink was Vitchie. Charlie Murphy takes a glass of wine at dinner sometimes,

but he don't go beyond that. A drunken man wouldn't last two weeks as leader of Tammany Hall. Nor can a man manage an assembly district long if he drinks. He's got to have a clear head at all times. I could name ten men, who in the last few years lost their grip in their districts because they began drinking. There's now 36 district leaders in Tammany Hall, and I don't believe a half dozen of them ever drink anything except at meals.

People have got an idea that because the liquor men are with us in campaigns, our district leaders spend most of their time leaning against bars. There couldn't be a wronger idea. The district leader makes a business of politics, gets his living out of it, and in order to succeed, he's got to keep sober, just like in any other business. Just take its examples, Big Tim and Little Tim Sullivan.

They're known all over the country as the Bowery leaders. And as there's nothing but saloons on the Bowery, people might think that they are hard drinkers. The fact is that neither of them has ever taught. a drop of liquor in his life or even smoked a cigar. Still, they don't make no pretences of being better than anybody else. And don't go around delivering temperance lectures. Big Tim made money out of liquor, selling it to other people.

That's the only way to get good out of liquor. Look at all the Tammany heads of city departments. There's not a real drinking man in the lot. Yes, there are some prominent men in the order. organization who drink sometimes, but they are not the men who have power, their ornaments, fancy speakers, and all that, who make a fine show behind the footlights. But am I in it when it comes to directing the city government and the Tammany organization? The men who sit in the executive committee room at Tammany Hall and direct things are men who celebrate on Apollinaris

and Vichy. Let me tell you what I am. saw on election night in 1897, when the Tammany ticket swept the city, up to 10 p.m., Crocker, John F. Carroll, Tim Sullivan, Charlie Murphy, and myself sat in the committee room receiving returns. When nearly all the city was heard from and we saw that Van Wick was elected by a big majority, I invited the crowd to go across the street for a little celebration. A lot of small politicians followed us, expecting to see magnives of champagne opened. The waiters in the restaurant expected it, too, and you never saw a more disgusted lot of waiters

when they got our orders. Here's the orders. Crocker, Vichy, and Bicarbonate of Soda, Carol, Seltzer Lemonade, Sullivan, Appalonaris, Murphy, Vitchie, Plunkett, Ditto. Before midnight, we were all in bed, and next morning we were up bright and early attended to business. while other men were nursing swelled heads.

Is there anything the matter with temperance as a pure business proposition? End of chapter 19. Chapter 20 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Lieber Vox 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 20. Bosses. reserve the nation. When I retired from the Senate, I thought I would take a good long rest. Such a rest is a man Neat, who has held office for about 40 years, and has held four different offices in one year, and drawn salaries from three of them at the same time.

Drawn so many salaries is rather fatiguing. You know, and as I said, I started out for a rest, but when I seen how things were going in New York State and how a great big black shadow hung over us, I said to myself, no rest for you, George, your work ain't done. Your country still needs you, and you mustn't lay down yet. What was the great big black shadow? It was the primary election law, amended so as to knock out what are called the party bosses by letting in everybody at the primaries and given control over them to state officials. Oh, yes, that is a good way to do up the so-called bosses.

But have you ever thought what would become of the country if the bosses were put out of business and their places were taken by a lot of cart-tailed orators and college graduates? It would mean chaos. It would be just like taking a lot of dry goods clerk and sending them to run express trains on the New York Central Railroad. It makes my heart bleed to think of it.

Ignorant people are always talking against party bosses, but just wait till the bosses are gone. Then, and not until then, will they get the right sort of epitaphs, as Patrick Henry or Robert Emmett said? Look at the bosses of Tammany Hall in the last 20 years. What magnificent men! To them New York City owes pretty much all it is today.

John Kelly, Richard Crocker, and Charles F. Murphy? What names in American history compares with them, except Washington and Lincoln. They built up the Grand Tammany Organization, and the organization built up New York. Suppose the city had depended for the last 20 years on irresponsible concerns like the Citizens Union. Where would it be now?

You can make a pretty good guess, if you recall the strong and low administrations when there was no boss, and the heads of departments were at odds all the time with each other, and the mayor was at odds with a lot of them. they spent so much time in arguing and making grandstand play that the interests of the city were forgotten another administration of that kind would put new york back a quarter of a century then see how beautiful a tammany city government runs with a so-called boss directing the whole shooting match the machinery moves so noiselessly that you wouldn't think there was any if there's any differences of opinion the tammany leader settles them quietly and who's his machinery moves so noiselessly that you wouldn't think there was any if there's any differences of opinion the tammany leader settles them quietly and who's

orders go every time. How nice it is for the people to feel that they can get up in the morning without him afraid of seeing the papers that the Commissioner of Water Supply has sandbagged to docked commissioner, and that the mayor and heads of the departments have been taken to the police court as witnesses? That's no joke. I remember that under Strong. Some commissioners came very near sandbagging one another. Of course, the newspapers like the Reform Administration. Why? Because these administrations with their daily rouse, furnish as racing news as prize fights or divorce cases. Tammany don't care to get in the papers.

He goes right along, attendant to business quietly and only wants to be let alone. That's one reason why the papers are against us. Some papers complain that the bosses get rich while devoting their lives to the interest of the city. What of it? If opportunities for turning an honest dollar comes their way, why shouldn't they take advantage of them? Just as I have done. As I said in another talk,

there is honest graft and dishonest graft. The bosses go in for the former. There is so much of it in this big town, but they would be fools to go for dishonest graft. Now the primary election law threatens to do away with the boss and make the city government a menagerie. That's why I can't take the rest I counted on. I'm going to propose a bill the next session of the legislature

repealing this dangerous law leaving the primaries entirely to the organizations themselves, as they used to be. Then we'll return the good old times. When our district leaders could have nice comfortable primary elections, at some place selected by themselves, and let in only the men the approved of as good Democrats. Who is a better judge of the democracy of a man, who offers his vote than the leader of the district,

who is better equipped to keep out undesirable voters? The men who put through the primary law are the same, crowd that stand for the civil service blight, and they have the same objects in view the destruction of governments by party, the downfall of the Constitution, and hell generally. End of Chapter 20. Chapter 21 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This lever-watch recording is in the public domain, recording by Mike Bendetti. Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics, by George Washington Plunkett, Chapter 21.

Concerning excise. Although I'm not a drinking man myself, I'm horned with the poor liquor dealers of New York City who are taxed and oppressed for the benefit of the farmers up the state. The rain's liquor law is infamous. It takes away nearly all the profits of the saloon keepers and then turns in a large part of the money

to the state treasury to relieve the hayseeds from taxes. Ah, who knows? how many honest, hard-working saloon-keepers have been driven to untimely graves by this law. I know personally of a half-dozen who committed suicide because they couldn't pay the enormous license fee, and I've heard of many others. Every time there is an increase of the fee,

there is an increase in the suicide record of the city. Now, some of these Republican hayseeds are talking about making the liquor tax $1,500 or even $2,000 a year. That would mean the suicide of half of the liquor dealers in the city. Just see how these poor fellows were oppressed all around. First, liquor is taxed in the hands of the manufacturer by the United States government. Second, the wholesale dealer pays a special tax to the government.

Third, the retail dealer is specially taxed by the United States government. Fourth, the retail dealer has to pay a big tax to the state government. Now, liquor dealing is criminal or it ain't. If it's criminal, the man engaged in it ought to be sent to prison. If it ain't criminal, they ought to be protected and encouraged to make all the profit they honestly can. If it's right to tax a saloon keeper $1,000, it's right to put a heavy tax on dealers and other beverages, in milk, for instance, and make the dairyman pay up.

But what a howl would be raised if a bill was interested in. reduced in Albany to compel the farmers to help support the state government. What would be said of a law that put a tax of, say, $60 on a grocer? 150 on a dry goods man, and 500 more if he includes the other goods that are kept in a country store. If the Raines law gave the money extorted from the saloonkeepers to the city, there might be some excuse for the tax. We would get some benefit from it. But it gives a big part of the tax to local option,

localities where the people are always shouting that liquor dealing is immoral. Ought these good people be subjected to the immoral influence of money, taken from the saloon tainted money? Out of respect for the tender consciences of these pious people, the Raines law ought to exempt them from all contamination from the plunder that comes from the saloon traffic. Say, mark that sarcastic. Some people who ain't used to find sarcasm,

might think I meant it. The range people make a pretense that the high license fee promotes temperance. It's just the other way around. It makes more intemperance. And what is bad, it makes a monopoly in dram shops.

Soon the saloons will be in the hands of a vast trust and any stuff can be sold for whiskey or beer. It's getting that way already. Some of the poor liquor dealers in my district have been forced to sell wood alcohol for whiskey, and many deaths have followed.

A half-dozen men died in a couple of days from this kind of whiskey, which was forced down their throats by the high liquor tax. If they raise the tax higher, wood alcohol will be too costly. And I guess some dealers will have to get down to kerosene oil and add to the Rockefeller millions. The way the Raines Law divides the different classes of licenses

is also an outrage. The sumptuous hotel saloon, with $10,000 paintings and bric-y-brack and oriental splendors, gets off easier than a shanty on the rocks by the water's edge in my district, where boatmen drink their grog, and the only ornaments is a three-cornered mirror nailed to the wall, and a chromo of the fight between Tom Heyer and Yankee Sullivan. Besides, a premium is put on places that sell liquor not to be drunk on the premises, but to be taken home.

Now, I want to declare that from my experience in New York City, I would rather see rum sold in the dram shops, unlicensed, provided the rum is swallowed on the spot, than to encourage by low-tax bucket shops, from which the stuff is carried into the tenements at all hours of the day and night, and make drunkenness and debauchery among the women and children. A bucket shop. In the tenements district,

means a cheap so-called distillery, where raw spirits, poisonous color and matter, and water are sold for brandy and whiskey at 10 cents a quart, and carried away in buckets and pitchers. I have always noticed that there are many undertakers wherever the bucket shop flourishes, and they have no dull seasons. I want to understand that I am not an advocate of the liquor dealers or of drinking. I think every man would be better off if he didn't take any intoxication drink at all. But as men will drink, they ought to have good stuff without impoverishing themselves by going to fancy places and without risk and death by going to poor places. The state should look after their interests as well as the interest of those who drink nothing stronger than milk.

Now, as to the liquor dealers themselves, they ain't criminals. That can't and hip-curt say they are. I know lots of them, and I know that as a rule, they're good honest citizens who conduct their business in a straight, honorable way. At a convention of the liquor dealers a few years ago, a big city official welcomed then on behalf of this city and said, go on elevating your standard, higher and higher, go on with your good work. Heaven will bless you. That was putting it just a little strong,

but the sentiment was all right, and I guess the speaker went a bit further, than he intended in his enthusiasm over meeting such a fine set of men, perhaps dining with them. End of Chapter 21. Chapter 22 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics. This Cedar of Vox 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 22. A parting word on the future of the Democratic Party in a moment, America. The Democratic Party of the nation ain't dead, though it's been given a lifelike imitation of a corpse for several years. You can't die while it's got Tammany for its backbone. The trouble is that the party's been chasing after theories and staying up nights reading books instead of studying human nature and acting accordon, as I've advised in telling how to hold your

district. In two presidential campaigns, the leaders talk themselves red in the face about silver being the best money and gold, he'm in no good. And they tried to prove it out of books. Do you think the people cared for all that guff? No. They hardly endorsed what Richard Crocker said at Di Hoffman House one day in 1900.

What's the use of discussing? What's the best kind of money, said Crocker? I'm in favor of all kinds of money. The more the better. See how a real Tammany statesman can settle in 25 words of price. problem that monopolized two campaigns? Then imperialism.

The Democratic Party spent all its breath on that in the last national campaign. Its position was all right, sure. But you can't get people excited about the Philippines. They've got too much at home to interest them. They're too busy making a living to bother about the niggers in the Pacific. The party's got to drop all them put you to sleep issues and come out in 1908. for something that will wake the people up, something that will make it worthwhile to work for the party.

There's just one issue that would set this country on fire. The Democratic Party should say in the first plank of its platform, we hereby declare, in National Convention assembled, that the Paramount issue now, always and forever, is the abolition of the iniquious and volitious civil service laws, which are destroying all patriotism, ruining the country, and taken away good jobs from them that earn them.

We pledge ourselves, if our ticket is elected, to repeal those laws at once and put every civil service reformer in jail. Just imagine the wild enthusiasm of the party if that plank was adapted and the rush of Republicans to join us in restoring our country to what it was before this college professor's nightmare

called civil service reform got hold of it. Of course. It would be all right to work in the platform some stuff about the tariff and sound money in the Philippines, as no platform seems to be complete without them. But they wouldn't count. The people would read only the first plank, then hanker for election day to come,

to put the Democratic Party in office. I see a vision. I see the civil service monster lying flat on the ground. I see the Democratic Party stand at, and over it, with foot on its neck and wearing the crown of victory, I see Thomas Jefferson, looking out from a cloud and saying, Give him another sock-dogler. Finish him. And I see millions of men waving their hats and singing glory, hallelujah. End of Chapter 23 of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, a series of very plain

talks on very practical politics. This Lieber Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Bendetti. Tammany Hall, a series of very plain talks on very practical politics by George Washington Plunkett, Chapter 23. Strenuous Life of the Tammany District Leader. Note this chapter is based on extracts from Plunkett's diary, and on my daily observation of the work of the district leader, WLR. The life of the Tammany District Leader is strenuous. To his work is due the wonderful recuperative power of the organization. One year it goes down in defeat, and the prediction is made that it will never raise its head.

The district leader, undaunted by defeat, collects his scattered forces, organizes them, as only Tammany knows how to organize, and at a little while, the organization is as strong as ever. No other politician in New York or elsewhere is exactly like the Tammany district leader or works as he does. As a rule, he has no business or occupation other than politics. He plays politics every day and night of the year, and his headquarters bears the inscription never closed. Everybody in the district knows him, everybody knows where to find him, and nearly everybody goes to him for assistance of one sort or another, especially the poor of the tenements. He is always obliging. He will go to the police courts to put in a good word for the drunks and disorderlies,

or pay their fines if a good word is not effective. He will attend christening's, weddings, and funerals. He will feed the hungry and help bury the dead. A philanthropist? Not at all. He is playing politics all the time. Brought up in Tammany Hall, he has learned how to reach the hearts of the great mass of voters.

He does not bother about reaching their heads. It is his belief that arguments in campaign literature have never gained votes. He seeks direct contact with the people, does them good turns when he can and relies on their not forgetting him on election day. His heart is always in his work, too, for his subsistence depends on its results. If he holds his district and Tammany is in power, he is amply rewarded by a good office and the opportunities that go with it. What these opportunities are has been shown by the

quick rise to wealth of so many Tammany district realtors. With the examples before him of Richard Crocker, once leader of the twentieth district john f carroll formerly leader of the twenty ninth timothy dry dollar sullivan late leader of the sixth and many others he can always look forward to riches and ease while he is going through the drudgery of his daily routine this is a record of a day's work by plunkett two a m aroused from sleep by the ringing of his door-bell went to the door and found a bartender who asked him to go to the police station and bail out a saloon-keeper who had been arrested for violating the excise law furnished bail and returned to bed at three o'clock six a m awakened by fire-engines passing his house hastened to the scene of the fire according to the custom of the tamany district leaders to give assistance to the fire sufferers if needed, met several of his election district captains who are always under orders to look out for fires, which are considered great vote-getters, found several tenants who had been burned out, took them to a hotel, supplied them with clothes, fed them, and arranged temporary quarters for them until they could rent and furnish new apartments.

8.30 a.m. went to the police court to look after his constituents, found six drunks, secured the discharge of four by a timely word with the judge and paid the fines of two. 9 a.m. appeared in the municipal district court, directed one of his district captains to act as counsel for a widow against whom dispossessed proceedings had been initiated and obtained an extension of time, paid the rent of a poor family, about to be dispossessed,

and gave them a dollar for food. 11 a.m., at home again, found four men waiting for him. One had been discharged by the Metropolitan Railway Company for Denglect of Duty, and wanted the district leader to fix things. Another wanted a job on the road. The third sought a place on the subway and the fourth plumber, was looking for work with the Consolidated Gas Company. The district leader spent nearly three hours fixing things for the four men and succeeded in each case. 3 p.m. attended the funeral of an Italian as far as the ferry, hurried back to make his appearance at the funeral of a Hebrew constituent, went conspicuously to the front both in the

Catholic Church and the synagogue, and later attended the Hebrew Confirmation Ceremonies in the synagogue. 7 p.m. went to district headquarters and presided over a meeting of election district captains. Each captain submitted a list of all the voters in his district, reported on their attitude toward Tammany, suggested who might be won over and how they could be won, told who were in need, and who were in trouble, of of any kind and the best way to reach them. District leader took notes and gave orders. 8 p.m.

Went to a church fair, took chances on everything, bought ice cream for the young girls and the children, kissed the little ones, flattered the mother, and took their fathers out for something down at the corner. 9 p.m. at the clubhouse again. Spent $10 on tickets for a church excursion

and promised a subscription for a new church bell. Bought tickets for a baseball game to be played by two nines from his district. Listen to the complaints of a dozen push-cart peddlers who said they were persecuted by the police and assured them he would go to police headquarters in the morning and see about it. 10.30 p.m. attended a Hebrew wedding reception and dance,

had previously sent a handsome wedding present to the bride. 12 p.m. in bed. This is the actual record of one day in the life of Plunkett. He does some of the same things every day, but his life is not so monotonous as to be wearisome. Sometimes the work of a district leader is exciting, especially if he happens to have a rival who intends to make a contest for the leadership at the primaries.

In that case, he is even more alert, tries to reach the fires before his rival, sends out runners to look for drunks and disorderlies at the police stationed, and keeps a very close watch on the obituary columns of the newspapers. A few years ago, there was a bitter contest for the Tammany leadership of the 9th District between John C. Sheehan and Fred J. Goodwin. Both had long experience in Tammany politics, and both understood every move of the game.

Every morning their agents went to their respective headquarters before 7 o'clock and read through the death notices in all the morning papers. If they found that anybody in the district had died, they rushed to the homes of their principals with the information, and then there was a race to the house of the decision. ceased to offer condolences, and if the family were poor, something more substantial. On the day of the funeral, there was another contest. Each faction tried to surpass the other in number and appearances of the carriages it sent to the funeral, and more than once they almost came to blows at the church or in the cemetery. On one occasion, the Goodwinites

played a trick on their adversaries, which has since been imitated in other districts, a well-known liquor dealer, who had a considerable following, died, and both Sheehan and Goodwin were eager to become his political error by making a big showing at the funeral. Goodwin managed to catch the enemy napping. He went to all the livery stables in the district, hired all the carriages for the day, and gave orders to 200 of his men to be on hand as mourners. Sheehan had never had any trouble about getting all the carriages that he wanted, so he let the matter go until the night before the funeral. Then he found that he could not hire a carriage in the district. He called his district committee together in a hurry and explained the situation to them. He could get all the vehicles he needed

in the adjoining district, he said. But if he did that, Goodwin would rouse the voters of the ninth by declaring that he, Sheehan, had patronized foreign industries. Finally, it was decided that there was nothing to do but to go over to Sixth Avenue and Broadway for carriages. Sheehan made a fine turnout at the funeral, but the deceased was hardly in his grave before Goodwin raised the cry of protection to home industries and denounced his rival for patronizing livery-stable keepers outside of his district. The heir had its effect in the primary campaign, as all events, Goodwin was elected leader. A recent contest for the leadership of the second district illustrated further the strenuous work of the Tammany district leaders. The contestants

were Patrick Dibber, who had managed the district for years and Thomas F. Foley. Both were particularly anxious to secure the large Italian vote. They not only attended all the Italian christening's and funerals, but also kept a close lookout for the marriages in order to be on hand with wedding presents. At first, each had his own reporter in the Italian quarter to keep track of the marriages. Later, Foley conceived a better plan. He hired a man to stay all day at the the City Hall Marriage Bureau, where most Italian couples go through the civil ceremony, and telephoned to him at his saloon when anything was doing at the Bureau. Foley had a number of presents ready for use, and whenever he received a telephone message

from his man, he hastened to the City Hall with a ring or watch or a piece of silver and handed it to the bride with his congratulations. As a consequence, when Diver got the news and went to the home of the couple with his present, he always found that Foley had been ahead of him. Toward the end of the campaign, Diver also stationed a man at the Marriage Bureau, and then there were daily foot races and fights between the two healers. Sometimes the rivals came into conflict at the deathbed.

One night, a poor Italian peddler died in Roosevelt Street. The news reached Diver and fully about the same time, and as they knew, the family of the man was destitute. Each went to an undertaker and brought him to the Roosevelt Street tenement. The rivals and the undertakers met. the house and an altercation ensued. After much discussion, the diver undertaker was selected. Foley had more carriages at the funeral, however, and he further impressed the Italian voters by paying the widow's rent for a month, and sending her half a ton of coal and a barrel of flour.

The rivals were put on their medal toward the end of the campaign by the wedding of a daughter of one of the original Coens of the Baxter Street region. The Hebrew vote in the district is nearly as large as the Italian vote, and Diver and Folly set out to capture the Coens and their friends. They stayed up nights thinking about what they would give the bride. Neither knew how much the other was prepared to spend on a wedding present, or what form it would take, so spies were employed by both sides to keep watch on the jewelry stores, and the jewelers of the district were bribed by each side to impart the desired information. At last Foley heard that Diver had purchased a set of silver knives, forks, and spoons. He at once bought a duplicate set,

and added a silver tea service. When the presents were displayed at the home of the bride, Diver was not in a pleasant mood, and he charged his jeweler with treachery. It may be added that Foley won it to primaries. One of the fixed duties of a Tammany district leader is to give two outings every summer, one for the men of his district, and the other for the women and children, and a beefsteak dinner and a ball every winter. The scene, The mean of the outings is usually one of the groves around the sound. The ambition of the district leader on these occasions is to demonstrate that his men have broken all records in the matter of eating and drinking.

He gives out the exact number of pounds of beef, poultry, butter, etc., that they have consumed and professes to know how many potatoes and ears of corn have been served. According to his figures, the average eating record of each man at the outing is about 10 pounds of beef, two or three chickens, a pound of butter, a half peck of potatoes, and two dozen ears of corn. The drinking records, as given out, are still more phenomenal. For some reason, not yet explained, the district leader thinks that his popularity will be greatly increased if he can show that his followers can eat and drink more than the followers of any other district leader. The same idea governs the beefsteak dinners

in the winter. It matters not what sort of steak is served, or how it is cooked. The district leader considers only the question of quantity, and when he excels all others in this particular, he feels somehow that he is a bigger man and deserves more patronage than his associates in the Tammany Executive Committee. As to the balls, they are the events of the winter

in the extreme East Side and West Side Society. Mamie and Maggie and Jenny prepare for them months in advance and their young men save up for the occasion, just as they save for the summer trips to Coney Island. The district leader is in his glory at the opening of the ball. He leads the coalition with the prettiest women present, his wife, if he has one permitting and spends almost the whole night shaking hands with his constituents.

The ball costs him a pretty penny, but he has found that the investment pays. By these means, the Tammany District Leader reaches out, into the homes of his district, keeps watch not only on the men, but also on the women and children, knows their needs, their likes and dislikes, their troubles, and their hopes, and places himself in a position to use his knowledge for the benefit of his organization and himself. Is it any wonder that scandals do not permanently disable Tammany, and that it speedily recovers from what seems to be crushing defeat?

End of Chapter 23. End of Plunkett of Tammany Hall. A series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics by George Washington Plunkett.