When William Dean Howells summed up Mr. Godkin’s career, he wrote that, influential as were his discussions of national and international issues, his greatest reputation was won by his assaults upon the indecent corruption of the government of New York city. “For a long series of years he cried aloud and spared not; his burning wit, his crushing invective, his biting sarcasm, his amusing irony, his pitiless logic, were all devoted to the extermination of the rascality by nature and rascals by name who misruled that hapless city, where they indeed afterwards changed their name but not their nature.” In this contest, Howells believed, he became “not only a great New York journalist, but distinctively the greatest, since he was more singly devoted to civic affairs than any other great New York journalist ever was.” The only contemporary editor whose prominence equaled his own, Charles A. Dana, aligned himself for the most part upon the Tammany side.
Howells thought that the editor wore himself out while apparently accomplishing little, because the people tired of the contest before he did. But Mr. Godkin had the pleasure in 1895 of writing the preface to a volume called “The Triumph of Reform,” which really chronicled a temporary triumph—that following the Lexow investigation; while he powerfully aided in the slow arousal of the public conscience which has made each renewal of the city’s misgovernment a little less bad. He enjoyed the struggle, as he enjoyed all hot fighting, an unusual number of amusing episodes gave zest to it, and there is no evidence that he felt discouraged at the end.
When in 1884 Godkin first began treating municipal affairs in the Evening Post with his usual aggressive style,477 the city had biennial elections and the certainty that a Democratic Mayor would always be chosen. None but a Democrat had been elected since 1872, and none was to be elected until 1894, a state of things which a number of Republican bosslets—“Johnny” O’Brien, “Mike” Cregan, “Barney” Biglin, “Jake” Hess, and “Steve” French—regarded with complacency because they shared the Tammany pickings. The essential question was always whether the Mayor should be a Tammany Democrat or a Democrat representing the reform wing (the County Democracy), and in the determination of this the willingness or unwillingness of the Republican rank and file to join hands with the reform Democrats was always a leading factor. In every election in the eighties the Republican bosslets put their own ticket into the field, thus drawing the fire of non-partisan reformers like Mr. Godkin, but sometimes the majority of Republicans could be brought behind what was really a coalition nomination.
At the outset, in 1884, occurred one of the most gratifying surprises in the whole history of New York politics—the election of William R. Grace, a reform Democrat, over the Tammany candidate, a disreputable politician named Hugh J. Grant. The victory was the more unexpected because it was generally believed that John Kelly, the Tammany Chieftain who had succeeded Tweed, had made an infamous compact with the Blaine Republicans, by which they were to trade votes and give the State to Blaine and the city to Grant. Kelly had always disliked Cleveland. Just before the election Thomas A. Hendricks, who was running for the Vice-Presidency with Cleveland, made a thousand-mile journey from Indiana to hold a protracted night conference with Kelly, and many have held that he succeeded in winning him over to support the national ticket. But Godkin refused to accept this explanation of the result. Kelly had failed to deliver the vote, he wrote, because Grace was an honored Catholic who drew many Irish Democrats away from Grant, while Republicans by thousands had voted for Blaine and Grace when they were expected to vote for478 Blaine and Grant. Kelly, though the most stolid of men, was confined to his house for weeks by nervous depression, and soon retired. His downfall inspired Godkin to utter a prophecy which time, bringing Richard Croker to the front, partly belied:
We doubt if the city will ever again be afflicted with a boss who will be Kelly’s equal in ability and power. There will, of course, be other bosses, but they will be of a different kind. They must possess qualities which will enable them to rule under the new conditions which will prevail after Jan. 1 next. Kelly succeeded Tweed, and for a time was almost his equal in power, but he was a different boss from Tweed. He was never personally corrupt. He arranged “fat things for the boys,” and put into our local offices and into the Legislature about the worst succession of political speculators and strikers that the city has ever been called upon to endure. He stole nothing himself, but he enabled others to steal with great freedom. His power rested mainly upon his standing as a good Catholic. Connected by marriage with the very head of the church in this country, he was able to command that blind obedience of his followers which exists only within the pale of the church.... He had a lecture upon some topic of church interest which he delivered in aid of all kinds of the Church’s charities....
Two years later another happy ending crowned the famous three-cornered campaign between Theodore Roosevelt (Rep.), Henry George (Labor), and Abram S. Hewitt (United Democrat)—the choice of Hewitt. The Evening Post was surprised when Tammany joined with the County Democracy behind Hewitt, a man of the highest reputation. The Times and Tribune supported Roosevelt, but Mr. Godkin contended that he could not be elected, and that every vote for him simply gave a larger chance of victory to Henry George. He was justified by the result, Hewitt polling 90,552 votes, George 68,110, and Roosevelt only 60,435. In 1884 the Post had first published a “Voters’ Directory,” short biographical sketches of the candidates, and its characterizations of the three party leaders this autumn are still of interest:
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ABRAM S. HEWITT (United Dem.)—Has served continuously in Congress, with the exception of one term, since 1874; is a large iron manufacturer, and is distinguished for his generous dealing with his employees; is a high authority upon politico-economic subjects, and a thoroughly trained public man in all respects; declares that he was nominated without pledges....
THEODORE ROOSEVELT (Rep.)—Is twenty-eight years of age; served three terms in the Assembly, where he was of great service in securing reform legislation for this city; it was through his labors at the head of a committee of investigation that the “fee system” was abolished and other evils exposed and corrected; he went to the Chicago Convention openly and strongly opposed to Mr. Blaine’s nomination because of his bad personal record, but subsequently consented to support him.
HENRY GEORGE (Labor.)—Is best known as the author of “Progress and Poverty,” of which the leading idea is that all property should be confiscated by the State through the taxing power, without compensation to the owners; is the candidate of Socialists, boycotters, etc.; has declared since his nomination that if he were elected “there would be no more policemen acting as censors,” that he “will loosen the bonds of the police and make them servants of the people”; that the horse cars “ought to be as free as air” to the public; and that the “French Revolution is about to repeat itself here.”
Unfortunately, in 1888 Hewitt was defeated by the old Tammany favorite, “Hughie” Grant, and the corruptionists returned to their former power and spoils. Worst of all, Grant’s election was accepted without alarm, and even with satisfaction, by the educated classes. The new Mayor, an ignorant and unprincipled son of a saloonkeeper, was given “social recognition,” asked to dinner in the best circles, and opened a ball with Mrs. Astor. When he said, “If I don’t prove a good Mayor, it will be because I don’t know how,” this remark was repeated as if it were a gem of aphoristic wisdom. Harper’s Weekly, which with the help of the cartoonist Nast had done so much to drive Tweed from power, yielded to this folly, and (July 13, 1889) published a long article extolling a “New Tammany,” with high aims, which it said was governed by a “big four” consisting of Richard480 Croker, Mayor Grant, Thomas F. Gilroy, and Bourke Cockran. The article declared that Croker was pre-eminent for “his political sagacity, political honesty, great knowledge of individuals, and spotless personal integrity.” It described Grant as “well-educated,” “shrewd and far-seeing,” remarkable for “personal honesty and trustworthiness,” and “entirely fearless.” Gilroy was praised as “a genial, pleasant, obliging man,” who was “remarkably gifted with business ability.” In short, the brilliancy and integrity of Tammany were pictured as startling.
Every one at the time was thinking of the projected World Columbian Exposition, and many New Yorkers were bent upon making Central Park or some other part of the city its site. Mayor Grant lost no opportunity to increase his prestige by frequent conferences upon the subject with admiring business men.
Watching this madness with disgust, as the year 1890—that of another city election—opened, the Evening Post resolved to make a stand against it even if it had to do so single-handed. It had never ceased to maintain that Mayor Grant was illiterate, that all his associations from youth up had been low, that his administration as sheriff had been so loose and corrupt that a grand jury had rebuked it by a scathing presentment, and that his appointments had been wretched. The men he put in office were of the worst Tammany type. Moreover, it ridiculed the idea that there could be a “New Tammany,” arguing that the character of the organization made it impossible for it to change without committing suicide; that it necessarily drew its support from the criminal and semi-criminal population of the city, and from levies upon vice, so that if this were cut off it would wither. “The society,” wrote Godkin, “is simply an organization of clever adventurers, most of them in some degree criminal, for the control of the ignorant and vicious vote of the city in an attack upon the property of the taxpayers. There is not a particle of politics in the concern any more than in any combination of Western brigands to ‘hold up’ a railroad481 train and get the express packages. Its sole object is plunder in any form which will not attract immediate notice from the police.”
How could this fact be pressed home to the consciousness of the citizens? Mr. Godkin, Horace White, Joseph Bucklin Bishop, and the managing editor resolved upon a thorough-going biographical exposure of the real character of the men who constituted Tammany. They felt that while decent New Yorkers knew in a general way that some of the district leaders and their henchmen were low in character and morals, they did not appreciate just how noisome was the gulf of boodle, vice, ignorance, and crime out of which these men emerged. They determined to probe that gulf, to give the city a whiff of its fumes, and to show how the Tammany organizers reeked with its slime.
On April 3, 1890, therefore, the Evening Post published in nine columns of close print biographical sketches of the twenty-seven members of the Tammany Executive Committee, including the “big four” of the “New Tammany.” This document, which in ensuing months sold in tens of thousands of copies as a pamphlet, is a permanently valuable contribution to New York’s political and social history. It abounds in a miscellany of roguery rich enough to outfit a picaresque novelist. At the head of the list came Mayor Grant, whom the Post accused of dividing, while sheriff, illegal fees with an auctioneer aggregating $42,497, and of taking illegal “extra compensation” fees. Under the name of John Scannell, the Post printed details of the murder which this district leader had committed in a basement poolroom, and showed how he had planned it for two years, though he was acquitted on the ground of “emotional insanity.” Another district leader was shown to be an accused murderer, and several more to have committed notoriously brutal assaults. A scandal in certain asphalt contracts let by Thomas F. Gilroy, now the Commissioner of Public Works, had already been exposed by the Post, and the facts were repeated. Several committeemen were declared at one time482 to have received stolen goods, and several more to have kept disorderly houses. The newspaper described a saloon once kept by “Barney” Martin, one of Grant’s appointees, as the resort for the most distinguished professors of the art of acquiring other people’s property in the country.
Written with sparkle and gusto, these biographical sketches abound in interesting anecdotes. The biography of “Georgie” Plunkett tells us that a friend remarked: “You say Georgie is rich? He ought to be; he never missed an opportunity.” We are told that H. D. Purroy’s secessionist element in Tammany was known as the Hoy Purroy. The sketch of John Reilly states that he had been nominated for Assistant Alderman while still living in Ireland, through the efforts of “me brother Barney,” a Manhattan saloonkeeper. It was recalled that when a protest had been made to Sheriff Grant by his friends against the appointment of “Barney” Martin to some post, Grant had made an indignant reply: “What do youse fellows want? Do yez want to break up the organization?” Summing up, the Evening Post listed the Executive Committee as follows:
Professional politicians, 27; convicted murderer, 1; acquitted of murder, 1; convicted of felonious assault, 1; professional gamblers, 4; former dive-keepers, 5; liquor dealers, 4; former liquor-dealers, 5; sons of liquor-dealers, 3; former pugilists, 3; former toughs, 4; members of Tweed gang, 6; officeholders, 17.
The sensation produced by this publication was profound. Within a few days the Evening Post reprinted delighted comments from half of the important newspapers of the East. As for Tammany, its disturbance and outcry led Godkin to compare the inquiry by the newspaper with the introduction of a ferret into a cellar. You knew the rats were there, but until the ferret appeared you didn’t know where. “When they become aware of his presence out they scuttle, from the coal hole, the ash barrel, the garbage can, the woodpile, brown and black, big and little, squealing and showing their teeth.” The483 three things a Tammany leader most dreaded, he concluded, were, in the ascending order of repulsiveness, the penitentiary, honest industry, and biography.
Immediately two of the men favored with biographies began suits for criminal libel. One was “Barney” Martin, the other Judge “Pete” Mitchel, who had been described by the Evening Post as a “nominal” lawyer, a “thug,” a “tough,” and a one-time adviser in a keno game. Bourke Cockran, their voluble attorney, known for his eloquence as the Tammany Chrysostom, began what Godkin called “a minatory flux like the rush of Croton through a water-gate.” The Evening Post’s answer to the libel suits was to add two more counts to its charges against “Pete” Mitchel, saying that at one time he had received stolen goods and at another had been a partner in a rumshop with a murderer named Sharkey. Within a week (April 29) the grand jury dismissed the two suits against the Post, evidence of the unassailable solidity of its charges. Once more there was an outburst of congratulation from the press of the country, the paper in one issue reprinting editorials from other journals in Boston, Pittsfield, Springfield, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Portland, Me., and Milwaukee.
While these suits were pending (one was soon after revived, and four in all were vainly brought) Tammany did its utmost to make them an annoyance to Mr. Godkin, serving summons after summons at the most inconvenient hours possible. He was arrested three times in one day, to the great delight of Dana. But only once did his persecutors really succeed in vexing him. A policeman came with a summons at an early hour one Sunday morning, when Mr. Godkin was looking after the welfare of some guests. With characteristic impulsiveness, he gave the officer $5 to leave and come back a little later. His enemies at once saw their opportunity. Godkin the reformer bribing an officer of the law to evade arrest! Next morning, when he came down to work and found his associates somewhat staggered by the printed reports, he was puzzled, and did not really understand the situation484 until he lunched with some other reform workers at noon. But of course an explanation was easily given the public.
The Evening Post hastened to follow up its first biographies with an exposure of the Tammany Committee on Organization, numbering 1,070 members, of whom it found 161 to be rumsellers, 133 criminal rumsellers (that is, open after hours or on Sundays), and 235 without specified occupation or not in the city directory, a suspicious circumstance, since professional gamblers never had an assigned occupation. In the weeks just before election there was published a searching examination of the Tammany General Committee, numbering 4,564 men, of whom no fewer than 654 were rumsellers, 565 criminal rumsellers, and 1,266 not in the directory, most of them for good reasons. Detailed biographies of the most despicable committeemen were printed, of which one of the shortest may be extracted:
ELEVENTH DISTRICT.—Classed among the rumsellers of this district is August Heckler, familiarly known as “Gus.” While the nominal proprietor of the rumshop called “The Bohemia” at No. 1257 Broadway, he recently obtained much notoriety by turning the upper stories of the building into what for the sake of decency is called by him a hotel. For this his liquor license was taken away, and so far as can be learned there are now no intoxicating liquors sold on the premises. The hotel, which is a most disorderly house, still flourishes, however, while Heckler is “on the road” selling a brand of champagne. Technically, Heckler cannot be classed among the criminal rumsellers; yet he is a good deal worse than most of them.
Heckler made a personal call upon Mr. Godkin, and assured him that his hotel was respectable, whereupon the editor called in the efficient reporters who gathered material for the biographies, and proved that it was not.
So far as that fall’s election went, the Evening Post’s labors were in vain. Because 30,000 registered Republicans, jealous of the reform Democrats, stayed from the polls, Mayor Grant beat the anti-Tammany nominee, Francis M. Scott, by a vote of 116,000 to 94,000. Not only that, but two years later, in 1892, Thomas F. Gilroy,485 called “a business candidate,” was easily elected to succeed Grant. Before his term was well advanced it was generally admitted that Tammany had become so well entrenched behind the offices that it would be useless to elect a reform Mayor without legislation which would enable him to dismiss nearly all the city officials.
Nevertheless, the spade-work of Mr. Godkin had been so well done that the idea of a “New Tammany” was now laughed at, and the organization was regarded with thorough suspicion by decent elements. His campaign in 1890 brought him letters from Eastman Johnson, Bishop Potter, S. G. Ward, Charles Loring Brace, Gen. Wm. F. Smith, and other public-spirited men. The city began to awake. Other newspapers, notably the World early in 1894, imitated the Post by publishing Tammany biographies which stung the grafters to the quick. On April 4, 1892, the City Club was organized with a Board of Trustees which included men deeply interested in the reformation of the city government, the most prominent being James C. Carter, R. Fulton Cutting, W. Bayard Cutting, August Belmont, and William J. Schieffelin. With the special encouragement of the City Club, more than two-score local Good Government Clubs were shortly founded (Carl Schurz helped establish one among the German-Americans) and although Dana of the Sun contemptuously nicknamed them “Goo-Goos,” they exerted an important educational influence. There was ample basis for suspicion of the city rulers under both Grant and Gilroy. Mayor Grant had sworn in 1888 that two years earlier Croker was “very poor indeed.” But by the end of 1893 he had invested $250,000 in a stock-farm, $103,000 in race-horses, $80,000 in a Fifth Avenue mansion, and drove about in carriages costing $1,700. The Post further stated that Croker paid $12,000 a year to a jockey, and $5,000 to the manager of his stock farm, and that on a trip to the Pacific Coast early in 1894 he made the journey in a private car costing $50 a day. Where did he get the money? Godkin harped continually upon the outrageous appointments made under both486 Mayors. Thus when in December, 1890, Patrick Divver was appointed a police justice at $8,000 a year, the Post reprinted his biography:
PATRICK DIVVER.—Commonly called “Paddy,” is the Tammany leader in the Second Assembly District. He is the keeper of a sailors’ boarding house, and is the proprietor, or has interests, in several liquor saloons. He is an ex-member of the Board of Aldermen, a race-track frequenter, and the friend and confidant of gamblers. He is on terms of intimacy with “Johnny” Matthews and “Jake” Shipsey, two members of the sporting and gambling fraternity, whose particular methods of gaining a livelihood are unknown to the frequenters of Paddy Divver’s and other rumshops on Park Row, where they are generally to be found.
Within three years, said the Post in 1894, Divver was reputed to be worth $200,000. Among the many other unfit appointments were those of “Barney” Martin, “Joe” Koch, and “Tom” Graham to the police courts, and of “Mike” Daly, John J. Scannell, and “Andy” White to important municipal offices. In 1892–93 the Evening Post, Times, and World repeatedly challenged the methods of conducting the public business in the Building Department, Dock Department, and Street Cleaning Bureau, and in the latter part of 1893 the City Club began collecting evidence of corruption from top to bottom in the Police Department. This corruption, indeed, was almost a matter of common knowledge, for repeated charges were made against police captains, and the bipartisan Police Commission of four shielded the men in the most audacious way. The insurrection of virtue, as Theodore Roosevelt called it, reached a head during 1892–1893 in the charges of Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, minister of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, that the police system was battening upon an extensive blackmail system. The response was immediate; business men and others came to Dr. Parkhurst with evidence that was incontestable; the City Club began demanding an investigation by the Legislature; and Harper’s Weekly, which had defended Tammany a few years earlier, published early in487 January, 1894, a cartoon which recalled Nast in the Tweed days. Entitled “Tammany’s Tax on Crime,” it showed a line of saloon-keepers, criminals and prostitutes passing before a cashier’s desk in which stood the dummy figure of a policeman, with Boss Croker crouching behind it and stretching forth his hand for the “contributions.” From the public uproar grew the Lexow Inquiry.
For Mr. Clarence Lexow, the Senator who offered at Albany the resolution for an investigating committee and became its chairman, the Evening Post had no respect. It called him “a young country lawyer of very moderate abilities residing at Nyack, N. Y., and dabbling more or less in politics under the guidance of the rather mediocre understanding of Mr. T. C. Platt,” and it believed his interest in the inquiry was as lukewarm as Platt’s own. But it earnestly supported the movement for the inquiry, was disappointed when the committee failed to secure Choate for counsel, and, when Gov. Flower vetoed the appropriation of $25,000 for its work on the ground that it was a partisan body, said that it knew no precedent for such a gross abuse of the executive power save Gov. Hill’s veto of the appropriation for the similar Fassett Committee. The State Chamber of Commerce came to the rescue by advancing $17,500 to cover the committee’s expenses, and John W. Goff, assisted by Frank Moss and Wm. Travers Jerome, proved an admirable counsel.
By the middle of June, 1894, the inquiry had driven one of the four Police Commissioners, John McClave, to resignation and flight. It had been disclosed that the police force had a well-determined tariff of charges for its protection of various criminal trades and practices within the city. Each disorderly house was expected to pay an “initiation fee” of $500 to every new police captain placed in charge of the district, and $50 a month thereafter, besides a contribution to the captain’s “Christmas present.” One keeper of such a house testified that he had been charged $750 within three months. Concert saloons, without a city license, had to pay $50 a month to the captain, while the regular tariff for saloons employing488 waitresses, and operating without a license, ran from $15 to $25 a month. It is not surprising that the fact was elicited that one captain had paid $15,000 for appointment to his post. For the privilege of selling on Sunday all saloons regularly paid the ward men—the name then given a petty officer—$5. Whenever the inspector of the excise department found a saloon without a city license, he got $5 for overlooking the fact. Tickets to Tammany “chowder parties,” usually distributed among disorderly houses and saloons in blocks of five, were $5 each, and it was gross bad manners to send any back. The push-cart men were expected to pay $3 a week from their pitiful earnings, and the ward-men had miscellaneous sources of tribute which made an appointment to the force worth $300.
Every steamship line landing cargoes at the port had to pay heavy blackmail charges at every stage of its business, and to every official—police, dock, and custom-house—connected with Tammany. The agent of the French Line displayed pitiable embarrassment when called upon to explain an item of $500 “payés a qui le droit.” All merchants who wished to use the sidewalks to display or handle goods paid $25 to $50 annually, it being customary to put this in an envelope and leave it somewhere to be called for. Men who rented their premises for polling booths had to divide the money with the police. But much worse than such grafting as this was the evidence that the police, instead of repressing pure criminality, were actually encouraging it as a source of revenue. Thus green-goods swindlers were allowed to do business on payment of $50 a month to the police captain, policy-gamblers had the same privilege, and receivers of stolen goods shared with the detectives. As a climax, to quote the Post, “Mr. Goff showed us a police justice sitting on the bench, and not merely shielding a regular practitioner of abortion from punishment, but conniving with him in his guilt.”
The news pages, following the inquiry closely, showed489 how the early bravado of the police force changed within a few weeks to panic:
That which has altered the feelings of the police [wrote a reporter June 16] is the fact that the committee has entered recesses of the corruption system which were believed to be unapproachable. So long as the despised lowest class of criminals was the one drawn upon for witnesses, there was felt little alarm. It was reasoned that the records of the persons sworn would crush the force of their testimony.... But when the “better class” women and the professional criminal, like George Appo, began to squeal, danger was foreseen. Women in the “tenderloin” and other more pretentious districts have been treated fairly from a police standpoint. Where they have paid for protection they got it, or, according to the blackmailers, are supposed to have received it. If there was any abuse of the police power it was not authorized, and must have been the indiscretion of the wardman or the individual patrolman. It was meant that the “ladies,” as they are uniformly called, should be justly and squarely dealt with. Anyway, it is a shock to the guilty to learn that women like “Eva Bell,” who has been protected for years in Thirty-sixth Street, should give the game away and peach as she did on Friday.
Worse than the fickleness of the women is the weakening of the criminal and the gambler to the men who watch such lines of defense give way. Appo, it is said, however, has been ill-treated, has a grievance, and these are taken in account as reasons for his having “thrown down” his fellows.
Mr. Godkin insisted that the source of the corruption was in the higher ranks of the Tammany hierarchy, and in the impracticable administration of the police by a bipartisan board of four instead of a single Commissioner. The reporters declared that the best elements of the force also held its heads to blame:
These men complain chiefly that the political phase of the matter is not more urgently bored into. They say that the conduct of the commissioners for years has been such as to poison a patrolman from the time he first applies for admission to the force. The payment for appointment, the reputation of the politicians in the Board, the uses made of him by his executive superiors in their private schemes, and by the Commissioners, directly and indirectly, for their partisan purposes, together with the general moral tone490 of the force and the work, all tend to teach him how he is to do for himself when he can. There ... is daily disappointment that the higher evils are not kept in view.
So far as immediate remedial legislation was concerned, the Lexow inquiry produced less effect than had been hoped. Boss Platt controlled the Republican Legislature, and had a strong influence upon Gov. Levi P. Morton, who succeeded Flower; and Platt declared that to put the police under a single Commissioner would be “revolution.” When the Committee made its report in January, 1895, the Evening Post joined with Dr. Parkhurst in ridiculing its recommendations, which included retention of the bipartisan, four-headed Police Commission. Godkin drew a scathing picture of Lexow as he “sneaked off to Platt’s express office, and engaged in a dirty little intrigue for the defeat of the reform movement, and tossed his little head in the air and sniffed at all the leading men in the city, and abused reformers in general, and went to work under Platt’s direction to concoct a few little bills to secure for Platt a few little offices.” The Legislature refused to put the police under a single head. It passed enactments making possible the reformation of the police court bench, and the reorganization of the public school system, but in other fields in which the reformers had expected changes it refused to act.
The real triumph of reform came in the municipal election in 1894. Tammany, trying to brazen out the Lexow revelations, first nominated Nathan Straus, one of the worst Park Commissioners the city ever had, the chief abettor in 1892 of a scheme to ruin Central Park by putting a race-track in it; but he declined, and the nomination was given “Hughie” Grant, who had begun the process of filling the city offices with the criminals and semi-criminals who adorned them. The reform Democrats and reform Republicans held a meeting in Madison Square Garden and selected a Committee of Seventy to conduct their campaign, this body nominating491 William M. Strong for Mayor and John W. Goff for Recorder. Its choice struck the Evening Post as admirable, not only because Strong was a man of high character, a successful citizen, and well known to the public, but because he was a Republican. The next Governor and Legislature, wrote Godkin, with accurate anticipation of the fact, would be Republican, and while a Republican administration in New York city might not be able to get from Gov. Morton and Boss Platt all that was desired, they would certainly get more than any Democrat. “A Democratic Mayor would probably not be allowed to make a single removal or appointment except such as came to him under the present Charter, and we should continue to wallow in our present quagmire until the next Presidential election, and then might well bid farewell to all thought of city reform.” Decent citizens this time were fully aroused. They went to the polls in such numbers that, although Tammany mustered 108,000 votes, Strong and Goff had a majority of over 45,000. It was an impressive demonstration, wrote Mr. Godkin, of the power of non-partisanship:
The Committee of Seventy have shown, more conspicuously than ever before, the power which, even in this city of many nationalities and creeds, lies in the union of good people. We believe the Good Government clubs are doing invaluable work in turning the lesson to account. They are spreading the non-partisan (not bi-partisan) view of city affairs. It is especially important that they should hammer it into the brains of the young, for the men who have conducted this campaign against Tammany will be gone from the stage in twenty years, as the men of 1871 are now, and in about twenty years Tammany regains its old strength. Tammany will surely come again, unless young and old get into the way of looking at the city as they look at their bank, and think no more about the Mayor’s politics than they think about the politics of the cashier who keeps their accounts. All the well-governed cities of the world are governed on this business plan, all the badly governed on the other.
The plan of going down among the rank and file of Tammany with books and pamphlets, and University Settlements, and popular lectures, we know has merit. It is a work of humanity and492 civilization which is always in order. But they deceive themselves who think the city can be saved by any such missionary work. What Tammany offers to the ignorant and poor is always something more palpable and succulent than enlightenment, or free reading rooms, or cheap coffee. It can never be met and vanquished except by union among the honest, industrious, and intelligent. These are now in a majority and have always been in a majority. A great commercial city like New York could not exist and prosper if they were not in a majority. Whenever they cease to be in a majority, capital and labor will both begin to move away from Manhattan Island.
The splendid achievements of Mayor Strong’s reform administration need not be rehearsed in detail. Col. George E. Waring was appointed head of the Street Cleaning Department, and before he had been at work a fortnight the Evening Post commented on the change he had wrought. When people saw gangs of able-bodied sweepers and shovelers working like Trojans under bosses, instead of groups of infirm and decrepit creatures leaning upon their implements and talking politics, they rubbed their eyes. Snow actually vanished over night; trucks were no longer stabled in the streets to shelter vice; and the accidents to horses from nails and rubbish strikingly diminished. Waring’s most competent predecessor had cleaned 53 miles of street daily in 1888, whereas Waring cleaned 433 miles from once to five times daily. Theodore Roosevelt was made President of the Police Commission, with results familiar to every one. A new Board of Education, after failing to procure President Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins, chose William H. Maxwell to be the energetic Superintendent of the Schools; while in Mayor Strong’s first year fourteen new school buildings were finished, and the salaries of teachers were materially raised. The police courts were reorganized, the Mayor taking pains to choose the best magistrates available. The City College, cramped into small quarters on Twenty-third Street, was given an adequate site on the heights overlooking Harlem, the493 Metropolitan Museum was enlarged, bridges were built over the Harlem, and the parks were much more carefully tended. The administration made blunders, but it was one of the best New York has ever had.
For this great revolt of 1894 and its fruits, Mr. Godkin gave equal credit to the foolish audacity of the Tammany yahoos and “the persistence and pluck with which Dr. Parkhurst stuck to the police. It was his splendid bulldog obstinacy in holding on to them which really made the first clear impression on the public mind.” Dr. Parkhurst will always remain the hero of the uprising. But many who were foremost in the struggle thought at the time that Godkin himself should be bracketed with the fighting pastor, and publicly or privately said so. Dr. Parkhurst just after the election expressed his warm gratitude to the editor. This was all very well, wrote Col. George E. Waring; “but Parkhurst don’t know, as do those who have watched your course during all the years of your work here, to what an extent you alone are to be credited with the maintaining, among the leaders of the community, of the spirit which at last made Parkhurst and his work possible. I have known in my short life no equal example of persistent, vigorous, aggressive virtue receiving the reward of such crowning success.” Frederick Keppel wrote in the same terms: “Both Dr. Parkhurst and Mr. Goff deserve the public honors that have been heaped upon them; but long before these gentlemen were ever publicly heard of (and unfalteringly ever since) your journal has fought against corruption and wrong with a power and vigor which certainly has done more than any other single influence to bring about the magnificent result of last election day.” Wayne MacVeagh and President Gilman expressed themselves with equal enthusiasm. Dr. W. R. Huntington suggested statues to Dr. Parkhurst and Mr. Godkin overlooking Tammany Hall.
The strength of this sentiment led a month after the election to the presentation to Mr. Godkin of a loving494 cup, the speech on the occasion being delivered by Bishop Henry C. Potter. The subscription was made by a list of women, and the cup testified to their “grateful recognition of fearless and unfaltering services to the city of New York.”
The two chief municipal issues in which Godkin was interested after 1894, the creation of Greater New York under a charter drafted in 1896, and the election of its first Mayor in 1897, both resulted in defeats for his views. He opposed consolidation as premature. His belief was that if the separate governments of New York and Brooklyn were both corrupt, as they had been with few intermissions for a long generation, their union would simply present a harder problem for reformers, and fatter jobs and more boodle for the bosses. Moreover, he knew that the guiding hand in the formation of a Charter Commission and the legislative approval of its work would be Platt’s. But the Platt and Croker machines agreed in supporting the consolidation programme, and many of the reform element stood behind it, so that it was easily made effective. The result of the ensuing mayoralty campaign of 1897 was not long in doubt. On the Tammany side there was one candidate, Robert Van Wyck, and opposing him there appeared three. The Citizens’ union was formed that spring, and its efforts led to the nomination of Seth Low, well known as successively Mayor of Brooklyn and President of Columbia University—an admirable choice; the Platt Republicans nominated Gen. B. F. Tracy; and the Bryan Democrats put forward Henry George. Van Wyck received 233,997 votes, while Low, his nearest rival, obtained only 151,540.
E. L. Godkin
Associate Editor 1881–1883, Editor-in-Chief 1883–1899.
This result seemed a stunning reaction from the great victory of 1894. Van Wyck made a clean sweep of Mayor Strong’s efficient departmental heads, and when Devery became chief of police the city ran “wide open.” Yet in the moment of defeat Godkin did not lose heart, pointing out that Van Wyck’s three antagonists combined495 had a larger vote than he. “Four years is a long time to wait, undoubtedly, for another attack on Tammany,” the Post said, “but in those four years Tammany will be furnishing us with plenty of ammunition, and Republicans will be seeing and thinking, and the Citizens’ union will be learning how to fight.”