Chapter XII: The Worst Treason of All

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. The policeman said that to you?

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

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

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

Q. And he looked at the ceiling?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. Did the police do anything at all?

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

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

Q. Who threw him out?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. Men voted under names that were not theirs?

A. I cannot go so far as that.

Q. Describe what you did see?

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

Q. Hand those names to the people?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then what occurred?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A. No, sir.

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

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

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

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