The New York Tombs Inside and Out! / Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

We have had our stone age, our iron age and our steel age, now we have our graft age. This is the age of the political highwayman who makes the city and her people pay him tribute. This graft comes in the nature of perquisites, commissions and assessments for the good of the machine and those that run it. The graft disease first attacked the men in Congress. The government paid good salaries to all of its servants and even their mileage. But the railroads wishing large slices of the public domain sent the members of both houses free passes. After this other big corporations desiring special privileges were compelled to graft the legislators or receive no favors. Then the disease attacked our State law-makers, which in turn made everybody pay tribute to them, especially rich corporations. To-day, graft is the bane of our Municipal Government. And Tammany Hall has become the horse leach that cries, “Give, Give,” and is never Satisfied! Nor is there any need of denying the fact that we are reaching a period in American history greatly to be deplored. Whatever may be said of our extravagance and high living, it cannot be denied that New York is drifting on the Rocks of Municipal bankruptcy. And the cause of it all is an insatiable desire for money, for which honest labor is not given.

With New York’s phenomenal increase in population and material prosperity, since the close of the Civil War, the temptations for money making have become so numerous, that a Tammany contractor can find more wealth in paving one of the streets of the city than in a Klondyke gold mine. As a result the city Government is now in the hands of a gang of political-grafters, who are able to systematize the business affairs in the interest of the House of Grafters on Fourteenth Street, and are able to cover their tracks and “hoodwink” the people.

The amount of money appropriated by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment as the running expense of the city for the year 1909 is $156,545,148.14, which is $13,722,089.91 more than was spent last year. It may be fairly estimated that one-half of this amount is used to pay salaries of all city employees and the other half the yearly supplies, such as coal, books, stationery, printing, wagons, fire engines, rents, etc., etc. From all of the supplies furnished to the various departments, a commission of from twenty per cent. to twenty-five per cent. reaches the men higher up, taking a circuitous route to do so, but it gets there beyond the shadow of a doubt. This money is never given as a commission, but as a gift to the organization, so as to keep within the law. In round numbers these commissions will amount to not less than $12,000,000 a year. No one will deny that nearly all the Tammany employees of the city government pay into the organization yearly not less than twenty per cent. of their salaries. Sometimes they are assessed from five dollars and five thousand dollars, and if they refuse to pay, they are black-listed and afterwards “bounced.” Twenty per cent. of graft from the wages of city employees would amount to not far from $12,000,000 a year.

Then there is enormous graft from the purchase of real estate, school houses and other buildings for the city, bridges, paving of streets, sewers, public improvements, etc, etc., $12,000,000 of which will eventually reach the house of grafters on Fourteenth Street.

We have said nothing about the police graft, which, to use the most conservative figures, will amount to at least $20,000,000 a year. The larger part of this reaches the house of grafters and is used for the purpose of buying elections and paying idle retainers who work for the organization around a November election. In the collection of this graft, brewers, malsters, saloon keepers, merchants, builders, contractors, the great shipping interests of the city, dives, pool-rooms and baudy-houses all pay tribute. Even bootblacks, cabmen and push cart men have all to contribute to save themselves from petty annoyances. Using the most careful figures, from sixty to seventy million dollars a year is spent in graft.

Gen. Bingham, in a newspaper article, estimates the city graft at a $100,000,000 a year. Our figures are less as we wish to keep on the safe side!

Everybody knows that street railroads, gas companies and big corporations of every name can tear up our streets and leave them in a dangerous condition for months, but that could not be done without paying “graft” to some persons!

Nearly forty years ago Boss Tweed got away with something like four million dollars from the city of New York. This startled the entire country. But when Mr. Croker went to Europe a few years ago, he is said by the “Boys” to have taken with him a fortune of fifteen millions cash! Tweed’s roll looks more like thirty cents alongside of Croker’s, and his successor, Charley Murphy, shows no signs of poverty thus far. If there is a bigger grafting institution in the country than this place on Fourteenth Street, we would like to know where it is.

There are many ways whereby money can be used to advantage in enriching and bribing city officials in return for favors that the temptations to use graft are very great. Ordinarily, when we speak of graft, we mean the payment of money or its equivalent, to some public official or even a member of his family who is willing in return to perform a dishonest act or wink at the violation of law. A considerable amount of graft is received in the form of gifts and tips for favors given indirectly in one way or another, that cannot be considered criminal. Still no business man is willing to tip an employee of the city government without expecting some favors in return.

What the average city official receives as gifts and gratuities are insignificant compared to what the “big grafters” receive who are the leaders of our political organizations, from rich corporations and railroads and for fat contracts, franchises and special privileges which are worth millions of dollars.

A few years ago the Lexow and Mazet investigators, who exposed this graft plague in the city government, showed that many persons in the police department, from the highest officials down to patrolmen, were in the business for “Graft” and all favors and promotions cost money. It also became known that a captaincy cost as high as $17,000 to $20,000, and sometimes much higher. But the bi-partisan political character of the Board was mainly responsible for this shameful corruption. Under Gen. Bingham all this was done away, and merit ruled the department.

For several years police officials have been involved in “Graft Scandals,” and after their retirement from the department were found to be immensely rich, besides having large real estate interests. This condition of affairs has gone on so many years that the rank and file of the force are not satisfied now with their regular salary, and demand graft for protecting the “gin mill,” the “immoral house,” the pool room and the “gambling hell,” all of which brings an enormous revenue. In some cases everybody in the block is called upon to pay tribute, and woe be to the one that refuses.

A man named G........, from Chicago, who was arrested in the lower part of the city for intoxication, told me, when he was in the station house, he could remember distinctly the cop going through his pockets; when he came to himself next morning he found he was minus a diamond ring and some bills. The police had relieved him of all his money. When he called for his money he had his face punched.

There have been times when by the free use of graft, inside information including secrets that are supposed to be carefully guarded by the officials in the controller’s office, tax office, corporation counsel’s office, board of education, office of the coroner and other departments, have been given away by grafters to men who reaped thousands of dollars thereby.

A grafting contractor can afford to pay a dishonest municipal employe a thousand dollars, or even five thousand dollars, for the information that will enable him to secure the job to build sewers or pave streets, erect a school house or build a bridge or a reservoir. Often “fake” bids are made so as to secure the work to a ring of speculators who in the end reap millions.

The new water works for this city will cost at least $250,000,000. Tammany Commissioners make fifty dollars a day. If they work twenty-four days in a month they get $1,200. That is big money to men who are only laborers in intellect!