NOW it was that in secret my ambition took a hearty start and would vine-like creep and clamber. My triumph over Jimmy the Blacksmith added vastly to my stature of politics. Moreover, the sly intrigue by which I conquered began to found for me a fame. I had been locally illustrious, if I may so set the term to work, for a granite fist and a courage as rooted as a tree. For these traits the roughs revered me, and I may say I found my uses and rewards. Following my conquest of that under-captaincy, however, certain upper circles began to take account of me; circles which, if no purer than those others of ruder feather, were wont to produce more bulging profits in the pockets of their membership. In brief, I came to be known for one capable and cunning of a plot, and who was not without a genius for the executive.
With Big Kennedy I took high position. His relations with Jimmy the Blacksmith never had been close; he had never unbuckled in any friendship and felt for him nothing nearer than distrust. But for me he held another pose. Big Kennedy, upon my elevation, fair made me his partner in the ward, a partnership wherein, to speak commercially, I might be said to have had an interest of one-fourth. This promotion brought me pleasure; and being only a boy when all was said, while I went outwardly quiet, my spirit in the privacy of my own bosom would on occasion spread moderately its tail and strut.
Now, as time passed, I became like the shadow of Big Kennedy's authority throughout the ward; my voice was listened to and my word obeyed. I should say, too, that I made it a first concern to carry the interest of Big Kennedy ever on the crest of my thought. This should be called the offspring neither of loyalty nor gratitude; I did it because it was demanded of my safety and to curry advantage for myself. For all that attitude of confident friendship, I was not put off my guard. Big Kennedy never let my conduct roam beyond his ken. A first sign of an interest outside his own would have meant my instant disappearance. He would have plucked me of my last plume. With a breath he could reduce me to be a beggarman where now I gave alms. Having, therefore, the measure of his fell abilities, I was not so blind as to draw their horns my way.
Still, while I went tamely to heel at a word from Big Kennedy, I had also resolved to advance. I meant before all was over to mount the last summit of Tammany Hall. I laid out my life as architects lay out a building; it would call for years, but I had years to give.
My work with Grocer Fogel had ended long ago. I now gave myself entirely to the party, and to deepen the foundations of its power. Inside our lines a mighty harmony prevailed. Big Kennedy and those headquarters enemies who once schemed for his defeat had healed their differences and the surface of events showed as serene as summer seas. About this time a great star was rising in the Tammany sky; a new chief was gaining evolution. Already, his name was first, and although he cloaked his dictatorship with prudence, the sophisticated knew how his will was even then as law and through his convenient glove of velvet felt his grip of steel.
For myself, I closely observed the unfolding of his genius. His methods as well as those of Big Kennedy were now my daily lesson. I had ever before me in that formative, plastic hour the examples of these past-masters of the art of domination.
It was well for me. A dictator is so much unlike a poet that he is made, not born. He must build himself; and when completed he must save himself from being torn to pieces. No one blunders into a dictatorship; one might as well look to blunder upon some mountain peak. Even blunders are amenable to natural law, and it can be taken as a truism that no one blunders up hill.
Wherefore, he who would be dictator and with his touch determine the day for pushing, struggling, rebelling thousands and mold their times for them, must study. And study hard I did.
My Red Jackets received my most jealous care. They deserved that much from me, since their existence offered measurably for my support. When the day arrived, I was given that twelve-hundred-dollar place with the docks, whereof Big Kennedy had spoken, and under his suggestion and to the limits of my strength made what employ of it I might for my own and my friends' behoof. But those twelve hundred dollars would not go far in the affairs of one who must for their franchises lead hither and yon divers scores of folk, all of whom had but the one notion of politics, that it was founded of free beer. There came, too, a procession of borrowers, and it was a dull day when, in sums from a dime to a dollar, I did not to these clients part with an aggregate that would have supported any family for any decent week. There existed no door of escape; these charges, and others of similar kidney, must be met and borne; it was the only way to keep one's hold of politics; and so Old Mike would tell me.
“But it's better,” said that deep one, “to lind people money than give it to'em. You kape thim bechune your finger longer by lindin'.”
It was on the Red Jackets I leaned most for personal revenue. They were my bread-winners. No Tammany organization, great or small, keeps books. No man may say what is received, or what is disbursed, or name him who gave or got; and that is as it should be. If it were otherwise, one's troubles would never earn an end. For the Red Jackets I was—to steal a title from the general organization—not alone the treasurer, but the wiskinskie. In this latter rôle I collected the money that came in. Thus the interests, financial, of the Red Jackets were wholly within my hands, and recalling what Big Kennedy had said anent a good cook, I failed not to lick my fingers.
Money was in no wise difficult to get. The Red Jackets were formidable both for numbers and influence, and their favor or resentment meant a round one thousand votes. Besides, there stood the memorable Tin Whistles, reckless, militant, ready for any midnight thing, and their dim outlines, like a challenge or a threat, filled up the cloudy background. Those with hopes or fears of office, and others who as merchants or saloonkeepers, or who gambled, or did worse, to say naught of builders who found the streets and pavements a convenient even though an illegal resting place for their materials of bricks and lime and lumber, never failed of response to a suggestion that the good Red Jackets stood in need of help. Every man of these contributing gentry, at their trades of dollar-getting, was violating law or ordinance, and I who had the police at my beck could instantly contract their liberties to a point that pinched. When such were the conditions, anyone with an imagination above a shoemaker's will see that to produce what funds my wants demanded would be the lightest of tasks. It was like grinding sugar canes, and as easily sure of steady sweet returns.
True, as an exception to a rule, one met now and again with him who for some native bull-necked obstinacy would refuse a contribution. In such event the secret of his frugality was certain to leak forth and spread itself among my followers. It would not be required that one offer even a hint. Soon as ever the tale of that parsimony reached the ear of a Tin Whistle, disasters like a flock of buzzards collected about the saving man. His windows were darkly broken like Gaffney's. Or if he were a grocer his wares would upset themselves about the pavements, his carts of delivery break down, his harnesses part and fall in pieces, and he beset to dine off sorrow in many a different dish.
And then and always there were the police to call his violative eye to this ordinance, or hale him before a magistrate for that one. And there were Health Boards, and Street Departments, who at a wink of Red Jacket disfavor would descend upon a recalcitrant and provide burdens for his life. With twenty methods of compulsion against him, and each according to law, there arose no man strong enough to refuse those duties of donation. He must support the fortunes of my Red Jackets or see his own decline, and no one with a heart for commerce was long to learn the lesson.
The great credit, however, in such coils was due the police. With them to be his allies, one might not only finance his policies, but control and count a vote; and no such name as failure.
“They're the foot-stones of politics,” said Old Mike. “Kape th' p'lice, an' you kape yourself on top.”
Nor was this the task complex. It was but to threaten them with the powers above on the one hand, or on the other toss them individually an occasional small bone of profit to gnaw, and they would stand to you like dogs. I soon had these ins and outs of money-getting at the tips of my tongue and my fingers, for I went to school to Big Kennedy and Old Mike in the accomplishment, and I may tell you it was a branch of learning they were qualified to teach.
Blackmail! cry you? Now there goes a word to that. These folk were violating the law. What would you have?—their arrest? Let me inform you that were the laws of the State and the town enforced to syllable and letter, it would drive into banishment one-half the population. They would do business at a loss; it would put up the shutters for over half the town. Wherefore, it would be against the common interest to arrest them.
And still you would have the law enforced? And if it were, what, let me ask, would be the immediate response? These delinquents would be fined. You would then be satisfied. What should be the corrective difference between a fine paid to a court, and a donation paid to my Red Jackets? The corrective influence in both should be the same, since in either instance it is but a taking of dollars from the purses of the lawless. And yet, you clamor, “One is blackmail and the other is justice!” The separation I should say was academic rather than practical; and as for a name: why then, I care nothing for a name.
I will, however, go this farther journey for my own defense. I have not been for over twoscore years with Tammany and sixteen years its head, without being driven to some intimate knowledge of my times, and those principles of individual as well as communal action which underlie them to make a motive. And now I say, that I have yet to meet that man, or that corporation, and though the latter were a church, who wouldn't follow interest across a prostrate law, and in the chase of dollars break through ordinance and statute as a cow walks through a cobweb. And each and all they come most willingly to pay the prices of their outlawry, and receivers are as bad as thieves—your price-payer as black as your price-taker. Practically, the New York definition of an honest man has ever gone that he is one who denounces any robbery in the proceeds whereof he is not personally interested, and with that definition my life has never failed to comply. If Tammany and Tammany men have been guilty of receiving money from violators of law, they had among their accomplices the town's most reputable names and influences. Why then should you pursue the one while you excuse the other? And are you not, when you do so, quite as much the criminal as either?
When I was in the first year of my majority we went into a campaign for the ownership of the town. Standing on the threshold of my earliest vote, I was strung like a bow to win. My fervor might have gained a more than common heat, because by decision of Big Kennedy I, myself, was put down to make the run for alderman. There was a world of money against us, since we had the respectable element, which means ever the rich, to be our enemies.
Big Kennedy and I, after a session in his sanctum, resolved that not one meeting should be held by our opponents within our boundaries. It was not that we feared for the vote; rather it swung on a point of pride; and then it would hearten our tribesmen should we suppress the least signal of the enemy's campaign.
Having limitless money, the foe decided for sundry gatherings. They also outlined processions, hired music by the band, and bought beer by the barrel. They would have their speakers to address the commons in halls and from trucks.
On each attempt they were encountered and dispersed. More than once the Red Jackets, backed by the faithful Tin Whistles, took possession of a meeting, put up their own orators and adopted their own resolutions. If the police were called, they invariably arrested our enemies, being sapient of their own safety and equal to the work of locating the butter on their personal bread. If the enemy through their henchmen or managers made physical resistance, the Tin Whistles put them outside the hall, and whether through door or window came to be no mighty matter.
At times the Red Jackets and their reserves of Tin Whistles would permit the opposition to open a meeting. When the first orator had been eloquent for perhaps five minutes, a phalanx of Tin Whistles would arise in their places, and a hailstorm of sponges, soaking wet and each the size of one's head, would descend upon the rostrum. It was a never-failing remedy; there lived never chairman nor orator who would face that fusillade. Sometimes the lights were turned out; and again, when it was an open-air meeting and the speakers to talk from a truck, a bunch of crackers would be exploded under the horses and a runaway occur. That simple device was sure to cut the meeting short by carrying off the orators. The foe arranged but one procession; that was disposed of on the fringe of our territory by an unerring, even if improper, volley of eggs and vegetables and similar trumpery. The artillery used would have beaten back a charge by cavalry.
Still the enemy had the money, and on that important point could overpower us like ten for one, and did. Here and there went their agents, sowing sly riches in the hope of a harvest of votes. To counteract this still-hunt where the argument was cash, I sent the word abroad that our people were to take the money and promise votes. Then they were to break the promise.
“Bunco the foe!” was the watchword; “take their money and 'con' them!”
This instruction was deemed necessary for our safety. I educated our men to the thought that the more money they got by these methods, the higher they would stand with Big Kennedy and me. If it were not for this, hundreds would have taken a price, and then, afraid to come back to us, might have gone with the banners of the enemy for that campaign at least. Now they would get what they could, and wear it for a feather in their caps. They exulted in such enterprise; it was spoiling the Egyptian; having filled their pockets they would return and make a brag of the fact. By these schemes we kept our strength. The enemy parted with money by the thousands, yet never the vote did they obtain. The goods failed of delivery.
Sheeny Joe was a handy man to Big Kennedy. He owned no rank; but voluble, active, well dressed, and ready with his money across a barroom counter, he grew to have a value. Not once in those years which fell in between our encounter on the dock and this time I have in memory, did Sheeny Joe express aught save friendship for me. His nose was queer of contour as the result of my handiwork, but he met the blemish in a spirit of philosophy and displayed no rancors against me as the author thereof. On the contrary, he was friendly to the verge of fulsome.
Sheeny Joe sold himself to the opposition, hoof and hide and horn. Nor was this a mock disposal of himself, although he gave Big Kennedy and myself to suppose he still held by us in his heart. No, it wasn't the money that changed him; rather I should say that for all his pretenses, his hankerings of revenge against me had never slept. It was now he believed his day to compass it had come. The business was no more no less than a sheer bald plot to take my life, with Sheeny Joe to lie behind it—the bug of evil under the dark chip.
It was in the early evening at my own home. Sheeny Joe came and called me to the door, and all in a hustle of hurry.
“Big Kennedy wants you to come at once to the Tub of Blood,” said Sheeny Joe.
The Tub of Blood was a hang-out for certain bludgeon-wielding thugs who lived by the coarser crimes of burglary and highway robbery. It was suspected by Big Kennedy and myself as a camping spot for “repeaters” whom the enemy had been at pains to import against us. We had it then in plan to set the Tin Whistles to the sacking of it three days before the vote.
On this word from Sheeny Joe, and thinking that some new programme was afoot, I set forth for the Tub of Blood. As I came through the door, a murderous creature known as Strong-Arm Dan was busy polishing glasses behind the bar. He looked up, and giving a nod toward a door in the rear, said:
“They want you inside.”
The moment I set foot within that rear door, I saw how it was a trap. There were a round dozen waiting, and each the flower of a desperate flock.
In the first surprise of it I did not speak, but instinctively got the wall to my back. As I faced them they moved uneasily, half rising from their chairs, growling, but speaking no word. Their purpose was to attack me; yet they hung upon the edge of the enterprise, apparently in want of a leader. I was not a yard from the door, and having advantage of their slowness began making my way in that direction. They saw that I would escape, and yet they couldn't spur their courage to the leap. It was my perilous repute as a hitter from the shoulder that stood my friend that night.
At last I reached the door. Opening it with my hand behind me, my eyes still on the glaring hesitating roughs, I stepped backward into the main room.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” was all I said.
“You'll set up the gin, won't you?” cried one, finding his voice.
“Sure!” I returned, and I tossed Strong-Arm Dan a gold piece as I passed the bar. “Give'em what they want while it lasts,” said I.
That demand for gin mashed into the teeth of my thoughts like the cogs of a wheel. It would hold that precious coterie for twenty minutes. When I got into the street, I caught the shadow of Sheeny Joe as he twisted around the corner.
It was a half-dozen blocks from the Tub of Blood that I blew the gathering call of the Tin Whistles. They came running like hounds to huntsman. Ten minutes later the Tub of Blood lay a pile of ruins, while Strong-Arm Dan and those others, surprised in the midst of that guzzling I had paid for, with heads and faces a hash of wounds and blood and the fear of death upon them, were running or staggering or crawling for shelter, according to what strength remained with them.
“It's plain,” said Big Kennedy, when I told of the net that Sheeny Joe had spread for me, “it's plain that you haven't shed your milk-teeth yet. However, you'll be older by an' by, an' then you won't follow off every band of music that comes playin' down the street. No, I don't blame Sheeny Joe; politics is like draw-poker, an' everybody's got a right to fill his hand if he can. Still, while I don't blame him, it's up to us to get hunk an' even on th' play.” Here Big Kennedy pondered for the space of a minute. Then he continued: “I think we'd better make it up-the-river—better railroad the duffer. Discipline's been gettin' slack of late, an' an example will work in hot an' handy. The next crook won't pass us out the double-cross when he sees what comes off in th' case of Sheeny Joe.”
BIG KENNEDY'S suggestion of Sing Sing for Sheeny Joe did not fit with my fancy. Not that a cropped head and a suit of stripes would have been misplaced in the instance of Sheeny Joe, but I had my reputation to consider. It would never do for a first bruiser of his day to fall back on the law for protection. Such coward courses would shake my standing beyond recovery. It would have disgraced the Tin Whistles; thereafter, in that vigorous brotherhood, my commands would have earned naught save laughter. To arrest Sheeny Joe would be to fly in the face of the Tin Whistles and their dearest ethics. When to this I called Big Kennedy's attention, he laughed as one amused.
“You don't twig!” said he, recovering a partial gravity. “I'm goin' to send him over th' road for robbery.”
“But he hasn't robbed anybody!”
Big Kennedy made a gesture of impatience, mixed with despair.
“Here!” said he at last, “I'll give you a flash of what I'm out to do an' why I'm out to do it. I'm goin' to put Sheeny Joe away to stiffen discipline. He's sold himself, an' th' whole ward knows it. Now I'm goin' to show'em what happens to a turncoat, as a hunch to keep their coats on right side out, d'ye see.”
“But you spoke of a robbery!” I interjected; “Sheeny Joe has robbed no one.”
“I'm gettin' to that,” returned Big Kennedy, with a repressive wave of his broad palm, “an' I can see that you yourself have a lot to learn. Listen: If I knew of any robbery Sheeny Joe had pulled off, I wouldn't have him lagged for that; no, not if he'd taken a jimmy an' cracked a dozen bins. There'd be no lesson in sendin' a duck over th' road in that. Any old woman could have him pinched for a crime he's really pulled off. To leave an impression on these people, you must send a party up for what he hasn't done. Then they understand.”
For all Big Kennedy's explanation, I still lived in the dark. I made no return, however, either of comment or question; I considered that I had only to look on, and Big Kennedy's purpose would elucidate itself. Big Kennedy and I were in the sanctum that opened off his barroom. He called one of his barmen.
“Billy, you know where to find the Rat?” Then, when the other nodded: “Go an' tell the Rat I want him.”
“Who is the Rat?” I queried. I had never heard of the Rat.
“He's a pickpocket,” responded Big Kennedy, “an' as fly a dip as ever nipped a watch or copped a leather.”
The Rat belonged on the west side of the town, which accounted for my having failed of his acquaintance. Big Kennedy was sure his man would find him.
“For he grafts nights,” said Big Kennedy, “an' at this time of day it's a cinch he's takin' a snooze. A pickpocket has to have plenty of sleep to keep his hooks from shakin'.”
While we were waiting the coming of the Rat, one of the barmen entered to announce a caller. He whispered a word in Big Kennedy's ear.
“Sure!” said he. “Tell him to come along.”
The gentleman whom the barman had announced, and who was a young clergyman, came into the room. Big Kennedy gave him a hearty handshake, while his red face radiated a welcome.
“What is it, Mr. Bronson?” asked Big Kennedy pleasantly; “what can I do for you?”
The young clergyman's purpose was to ask assistance for a mission which he proposed to start near the Five Points.
“Certainly,” said Big Kennedy, “an' not a moment to wait!” With that he gave the young clergyman one hundred dollars.
When that gentleman, after expressing his thanks, had departed, Big Kennedy sighed.
“I've got no great use for a church,” he said. “I never bought a gold brick yet that wasn't wrapped in a tract. But it's no fun to get a preacher down on you. One of'em can throw stones enough to smash every window in Tammany Hall. Your only show with the preachers is to flatter 'em;—pass'em out the flowers. Most of 'em's as pleased with flattery as a girl. Yes indeed,” he concluded, “I can paste bills on 'em so long as I do it with soft soap.”
The Rat was a slight, quiet individual and looked the young physician rather than the pickpocket. His hands were delicate, and he wore gloves the better to keep them in condition. His step and air were as quiet as those of a cat.
“I want a favor,” said Big Kennedy, addressing the Rat, “an' I've got to go to one of the swell mob to get it. That's why I sent for you, d'ye see! It takes someone finer than a bricklayer to do th' work.”
The Rat was uneasily questioning my presence with his eye. Big Kennedy paused to reassure him.
“He's th' straight goods,” said Big Kennedy, speaking in a tone wherein were mingled resentment and reproach. “You don't s'ppose I'd steer you ag'inst a brace?”
The Rat said never a word, but his glance left me and he gave entire heed to Big Kennedy.
“This is the proposition,” resumed Big Kennedy. “You know Sheeny Joe. Shadow him; swing and rattle with him no matter where he goes. The moment you see a chance, get a pocketbook an' put it away in his clothes. When th' roar goes up, tell th' loser where to look. Are you on? Sheeny Joe must get th' collar, an' I want him caught with th' goods, d'ye see.”
“I don't have to go to court ag'inst him?” said the Rat interrogatively.
“No,” retorted Big Kennedy, a bit explosively. “You'd look about as well in th' witness box as I would in a pulpit. No, you shift th' leather. Then give th' party who's been touched th' office to go after Sheeny Joe. After that you can screw out; that's as far as you go.”
It was the next evening at the ferry. Suddenly a cry went up.
“Thief! Thief! My pocketbook is gone!”
The shouts found source in a broad man. He was top-heavy with too much beer, but clear enough to realize that his money had disappeared. The Rat, sly, small, clean, inconspicuous, was at his shoulder.
“There's your man!” whispered the Rat, pointing to Sheeny Joe, whose footsteps he had been dogging the livelong day; “there's your man!”
In a moment the broad man had thrown himself upon Sheeny Joe.
“Call the police!” he yelled. “He's got my pocket-book!”
The officer pulled him off Sheeny Joe, whom he had thrown to the ground and now clung to with the desperation of the robbed.
“Give me a look in!” said the officer, thrusting the broad man aside. “If he's got your leather we'll find it.”
Sheeny Joe was breathless with the surprise and fury of the broad man's descent upon him. The officer ran his hand over the outside of Sheeny Joe's coat, holding him meanwhile fast by the collar. Then he slipped his hand inside, and drew forth a chubby pocketbook.
“That's it!” screamed the broad man, “that's my wallet with over six hundred dollars in it! The fellow stole it!”
“It's a plant!” gasped Sheeny Joe, his face like ashes. Then to the crowd: “Will somebody go fetch Big John Kennedy? He knows me; he'll say I'm square!”
Big Kennedy arrived at the station as the officer, whose journey was slow because of the throng, came in with Sheeny Joe. Big Kennedy heard the stories of the officer and the broad man with all imaginable patience. Then a deep frown began to knot his brow. He waved Sheeny Joe aside with a gesture that told of virtuous indignation.
“Lock him up!” cried Big Kennedy. “If he'd slugged somebody, even if he'd croaked him, I'd have stuck to him till th' pen'tentiary doors pinched my fingers. But I've no use for a crook. Sing Sing's th' place for him! It's just such fine workers as him who disgrace th' name of Tammany Hall. They lift a leather, an' they make Tammany a cover for th' play.”
“Are you goin' back on me?” wailed Sheeny Joe.
“Put him inside!” said Big Kennedy to the officer in charge of the station. Then, to Sheeny Joe, with the flicker of a leer: “Why don't you send to the Tub of Blood?”
“Shall I take bail for him, Mr. Kennedy, if any shows up?” asked the officer in charge.
“No; no bail!” replied Big Kennedy. “If anyone offers, tell him I don't want it done.”
It was three weeks later when Sheeny Joe was found guilty, and sentenced to prison for four years. The broad man, the police officer, and divers who at the time of his arrest were looking on, come forward as witnesses against Sheeny Joe, and twelve honest dullards who called themselves a jury, despite his protestations that he was “being jobbed,” instantly declared him guilty. Sheeny Joe, following his sentence, was dragged from the courtroom, crying and cursing the judge, the jury, the witnesses, but most of all Big Kennedy.
Nor do I think Big Kennedy's agency in drawing down this fate upon Sheeny Joe was misunderstood by ones with whom it was meant to pass for warning. I argue this from what was overheard by me as we left the courtroom where Sheeny Joe was sentenced. The two in conversation were walking a pace in advance of me.
“He got four spaces!” said one in an awed whisper.
“He's dead lucky not to go for life!” exclaimed the other. “How much of the double-cross do you guess now Big Kennedy will stand? I've seen a bloke take a slab in th' morgue for less. It was Benny the Bite; he gets a knife between his slats.”
“What's it all about, Jawn?” asked Old Mike, who later sat in private review of the case of Sheeny Joe. “Why are you puttin' a four-year smother on that laad?”
“It's gettin' so,” explained Big Kennedy, “that these people of ours look on politics as a kind of Virginny reel. It's first dance on one side an' then cross to th' other. There's a bundle of money ag'inst us, big enough to trip a dog, an' discipline was givin' way. Our men could smell th' burnin' money an' it made 'em crazy. Somethin' had to come off to sober 'em, an' teach 'em discipline, an' make 'em sing 'Home, Sweet Home'!”
“It's all right, then!” declared Old Mike decisively.
“The main thing is to kape up th' organization! Better twinty like that Sheeny Joe should learn th' lockstep than weaken Tammany Hall. Besides, I'm not like th' law. I belave in sindin' folks to prison, not for what they do, but for what they are. An' this la-ad was a har-rd crackther.”
The day upon which Sheeny Joe went to his prison was election day. Tammany Hall took possession of the town; and for myself, I was made an alderman by a majority that counted into the skies.
BEFORE I abandon the late election in its history to the keeping of time past, there is an episode, or, if you will, an accident, which should find relation. Of itself it would have come and gone, and been of brief importance, save for an incident to make one of its elements, which in a later pinch to come of politics brought me within the shadow of a gibbet.
Busy with my vote-getting, I had gone to the docks to confer with the head of a certain gang of stevedores. These latter were hustling up and down the gangplanks, taking the cargo out of a West India coffee boat. The one I had come seeking was aboard the vessel.
I pushed towards the after gangplank, and as I reached it I stepped aside to avoid one coming ashore with a huge sack of coffee on his shoulders. Not having my eyes about me, I caught my toe in a ringbolt and stumbled with a mighty bump against a sailor who was standing on the string-piece of the wharf. With nothing to save him, and a six-foot space opening between the wharf and the ship, the man fell into the river with a cry and a splash. He went to the bottom like so much pig-iron, for he could not swim.
It was the work of a moment to throw off my coat and go after him. I was as much at ease in the water as a spaniel, and there would be nothing more dangerous than a ducking in the experiment. I dived and came up with the drowning man in my grip. For all his peril, he took it coolly enough, and beyond spluttering, and puffing, and cracking off a jargon of oaths, added no difficulties to the task of saving his life. We gained help from the dock, and it wasn't five minutes before we found the safe planks beneath our feet again.
The man who had gone overboard so unexpectedly was a keen small dark creature of a Sicilian, and to be noticed for his black eyes, a red handkerchief over his head, and ears looped with golden earrings.
“No harm done, I think?” said I, when we were both ashore again.
“I lose-a my knife,” said he with a grin, the water dripping from his hair. He was pointing to the empty scabbard at his belt where he had carried a sheath-knife.
“It was my blunder,” said I, “and if you'll hunt me up at Big Kennedy's this evening I'll have another for you.”
That afternoon, at a pawnshop in the Bowery, I bought a strange-looking weapon, that was more like a single-edged dagger than anything else. It had a buck-horn haft, and was heavy and long, with a blade of full nine inches.
My Sicilian came, as I had told him, and I gave him the knife. He was extravagant in his gratitude.
“You owe me nothing!” he cried. “It is I who owe for my life that you save. But I shall take-a the knife to remember how you pull me out. You good-a man; some day I pull you out—mebby so! who knows?”
With that he was off for the docks again, leaving me neither to hear nor to think of him thereafter for a stirring handful of years.
It occurred to me as strange, even in a day when I gave less time to thought than I do now, that my first impulse as an alderman should be one of revenge. There was that police captain, who, in the long ago, offered insult to Anne, when she came to beg for my liberty. “Better get back to your window,” said he, “or all the men will have left the street!” The memory of that evil gibe had never ceased to burn me with the hot anger of a coal of fire, and now I resolved for his destruction.
When I told Big Kennedy, he turned the idea on his wheel of thought for full two minutes.
“It's your right,” said he at last. “You've got the ax; you're entitled to his head. But say! pick him up on proper charges; get him dead to rights! That aint hard, d'ye see, for he's as crooked as a dog's hind leg. To throw him for some trick he's really turned will bunco these reform guys into thinkin' that we're on th' level.”
The enterprise offered no complexities. A man paid that captain money to save from suppression a resort of flagrant immorality. The bribery was laid bare; he was overtaken in this plain corruption; and next, my combinations being perfect, I broke him as I might break a stick across my knee. He came to me in private the following day.
“What have I done?” said he. “Can I square it?”
“Never!” I retorted; “there's some things one can't square.” Then I told him of Anne, and his insult.
“That's enough,” he replied, tossing his hand resignedly. “I can take my medicine when it's come my turn.”
For all that captain's stoicism, despair rang in his tones, and as he left me, the look in his eye was one to warm the cockles of my heart and feed my soul with comfort.
“Speakin' for myself,” said Big Kennedy, in the course of comment, “I don't go much on revenge. Still when it costs nothin', I s'ppose you might as well take it in. Besides, it shows folks that there's a dead-line in th' game. The wise ones will figger that this captain held out on us, or handed us th' worst of it on th' quiet. The example of him gettin' done up will make others run true.”
Several years slipped by wherein as alderman I took my part in the town's affairs. I was never a talking member, and gained no glory for my eloquence. But what I lacked of rhetoric, I made up in stubborn loyalty to Tammany, and I never failed to dispose of my vote according to its mandates.
It was not alone my right, but my duty to do this. I had gone to the polls the avowed candidate of the machine. There was none to vote for me who did not know that my public courses would be shaped and guided by the organization. I was free to assume, therefore, being thus elected as a Tammany member by folk informed to a last expression of all that the phrase implied, that I was bound to carry out the Tammany programmes and execute the Tammany orders. Where a machine and its laws are known, the people when they lift to office one proposed of that machine, thereby direct such officer to submit himself to its direction and conform to its demands.
There will be ones to deny this. And these gentry of denials will be plausible, and furnish the thought of an invincible purity for their assumptions. They should not, however, be too sure for their theories. They themselves may be the ones in error. They should reflect that wherever there dwells a Yes there lives also a No. These contradictionists should emulate my own forbearance.
I no more claim to be wholly right for my attitude of implicit obedience to the machine, than I condemn as wholly wrong their own position of boundless denunciation. There is no man so bad he may not be defended; there lives none so good he does not need defense; and what I say of a man might with equal justice be said of any dogma of politics. As I set forth in my preface, the true and the false, the black and the white in politics will rest ever with the point of view.
During my years as an alderman I might have made myself a wealthy man. And that I did not do so, was not because I had no profit of the place. As the partner, unnamed, in sundry city contracts, riches came often within my clutch. But I could not keep them; I was born with both hands open and had the hold of money that a riddle has of water.
This want of a money wit is a defect of my nature. A great merchant late in my life once said to me:
“Commerce—money-getting—is like a sea, and every man, in large or little sort, is a mariner. Some are buccaneers, while others are sober merchantmen. One lives by taking prizes, the other by the proper gains of trade. You belong to the buccaneers by your birth. You are not a business man, but a business wolf. Being a wolf, you will waste and never save. Your instinct is to pull down each day's beef each day. You should never buy nor sell nor seek to make money with money. Your knowledge of money is too narrow. Up to fifty dollars you are wise. Beyond that point you are the greatest dunce I ever met.”
Thus lectured the man of markets, measuring sticks, and scales; and while I do not think him altogether exact, there has been much in my story to bear out what he said. It was not that I wasted my money in riot, or in vicious courses. My morals were good, and I had no vices. This was not much to my credit; my morals were instinctive, like the morals of an animal. My one passion was for politics, and my one ambition the ambition to lead men. Nor was I eager to hold office; my hope went rather to a day when I should rule Tammany as its Chief. My genius was not for the show ring; I cared nothing for a gilded place. That dream of my heart's wish was to be the power behind the screen, and to put men up and take men down, place them and move them about, and play at government as one might play at chess. Still, while I dreamed of an unbridled day to come, I was for that the more sedulous to execute the orders of Big Kennedy. I had not then to learn that the art of command is best studied in the art of obedience.
To be entirely frank, I ought to name the one weakness that beset me, and which more than any spendthrift tendency lost me my fortune as fast as it flowed in. I came never to be a gambler in the card or gaming table sense, but I was inveterate to wager money on a horse. While money lasted, I would bet on the issue of every race that was run, and I was made frequently bankrupt thereby. However, I have said enough of my want of capacity to hoard. I was young and careless; moreover, with my place as alderman, and that sovereignty I still held among the Red Jackets, when my hand was empty I had but to stretch it forth to have it filled again.
In my boyhood I went garbed of rags and patches. Now when money came, I sought the first tailor of the town. I went to him drawn of his high prices; for I argued, and I think sagaciously, that where one pays the most one gets the best.
Nor, when I found that tailor, did I seek to direct him in his labors. I put myself in his hands, and was guided to quiet blacks and grays, and at his hint gave up thoughts of those plaids and glaring checks to which my tastes went hungering. That tailor dressed me like a gentleman and did me a deal of good. I am not one to say that raiment makes the man, and yet I hold that it has much to do with the man's behavior. I can say in my own case that when I was thus garbed like a gentleman, my conduct was at once controlled in favor of the moderate. I was instantly ironed of those rougher wrinkles of my nature, which last, while neither noisy nor gratuitously violent, was never one of peace.
The important thing was that these clothes of gentility gave me multiplied vogue with ones who were peculiarly my personal followers. They earned me emphasis with my Red Jackets, who still bore me aloft as their leader, and whose favor I must not let drift. The Tin Whistles, too, drew an awe from this rich yet civil uniform which strengthened my authority in that muscular quarter. I had grown, as an alderman and that one next in ward power to Big Kennedy, to a place which exempted me from those harsher labors of fist and bludgeon in which, whenever the exigencies of a campaign demanded, the Tin Whistles were still employed. But I claimed my old mastery over them. I would not permit so hardy a force to go to another's hands, and while I no longer led their war parties, I was always in the background, giving them direction and stopping them when they went too far.
It was demanded of my safety that I retain my hold upon both the Tin Whistles and the Red Jackets. However eminent I might be, I was by no means out of the ruck, and my situation was to be sustained only by the strong hand. The Tin Whistles and the Red Jackets were the sources of my importance, and if my voice were heeded or my word owned weight it was because they stood ever ready to my call. Wherefore, I cultivated their favor, secured my place among them, while at the same time I forced them to obey to the end that they as well as I be preserved.
Those clothes of a gentleman not only augmented, but declared my strength. In that time a fine coat was an offense to ones more coarsely clothed. A well-dressed stranger could not have walked three blocks on the East Side without being driven to do battle for his life. Fine linen was esteemed a challenge, and that I should be so arrayed and go unscathed, proved not alone my popularity, but my dangerous repute. Secretly, it pleased my shoulder-hitters to see their captain so garbed; and since I could defend my feathers, they made of themselves another reason of leadership. I was growing adept of men, and I counted on this effect when I spent my money with that tailor.
While I thus lay aside for the moment the running history of events that were as the stepping stones by which I crossed from obscurity and poverty to power and wealth, to have a glance at myself in my more personal attitudes, I should also relate my marriage and how I took a wife. It was Anne who had charge of the business, and brought me this soft victory. Had it not been for Anne, I more than half believe I would have had no wife at all; for I was eaten of an uneasy awkwardness whenever my fate delivered me into the presence of a girl. However earnestly Anne might counsel, I had no more of parlor wisdom than a savage, Anne, while sighing over my crudities and the hopeless thickness of my wits, established herself as a bearward to supervise my conduct. She picked out my wife for me, and in days when I should have been a lover, but was a graven image and as stolid, carried forward the courting in my stead.
It was none other than Apple Cheek upon whom Anne pitched—Apple Cheek, grown rounder and more fair, with locks like cornsilk, and eyes of even a deeper blue than on that day of the docks. Anne had struck out a friendship for Apple Cheek from the beginning, and the two were much in one another's company. And so one day, by ways and means I was too much confused to understand, Anne had us before the priest. We were made husband and wife; Apple Cheek brave and sweet, I looking like a fool in need of keepers.
Anne, the architect of this bliss, was in tears; and yet she must have kept her head, for I remember how she recalled me to the proprieties of my new station.
“Why don't you kiss your bride!” cried Anne, at the heel of the ceremony.
Anne snapped out the words, and they rang in my delinquent ears like a storm bell. Apple Cheek, eyes wet to be a match for Anne's, put up her lips with all the courage in the world. I kissed her, much as one might salute a hot flatiron. Still I kissed her; and I think to the satisfaction of a church-full looking on; but I knew what men condemned have felt on that journey to block and ax.
Apple Cheek and her choice of me made up the sweetest fortune of my life, and now when I think of her it is as if I stood in a flood of sunshine. So far as I was able, I housed her and robed her as though she were the daughter of a king, and while I have met treason in others and desertion where I looked for loyalty, I held her heart-fast, love-fast, faith-fast, ever my own. She was my treasure, and when she died it was as though my own end had come.
Big Kennedy and the then Chief of Tammany, during my earlier years as alderman, were as Jonathan and David. They were ever together, and their plans and their interests ran side by side. At last they began to fall apart. Big Kennedy saw a peril in this too-close a partnership, and was for putting distance between them. It was Old Mike who thus counseled him. The aged one became alarmed by the raw and insolent extravagance of the Chief's methods.
“Th' public,” said Old Mike, “is a sheep, while ye do no more than just rob it. But if ye insult it, it's a wolf. Now this man insults th' people. Better cut loose from him, Jawn; he'll get ye all tor-rn to pieces.”
The split came when, by suggestion of Old Mike and
Big Kennedy, I refused to give my vote as alderman to a railway company asking a terminal. There were millions of dollars in the balance, and without my vote the machine and the railway company were powerless. The stress was such that the mighty Chief himself came down to Big Kennedy's saloon—a sight to make men stare!
The two, for a full hour, were locked in Big Kennedy's sanctum; when they appeared I could read in the black anger that rode on the brow of the Chief how Big Kennedy had declined his orders, and now stood ready to abide the worst. Big Kennedy, for his side, wore an air of confident serenity, and as I looked at the pair and compared them, one black, the other beaming, I was surprised into the conviction that Big Kennedy of the two was the superior natural force. As the Chief reached the curb he said:
“You know the meaning of this. I shall tear you in two in the middle an' leave you on both sides of the street!”
“If you do, I'll never squeal,” returned Big Kennedy carelessly. “But you can't; I've got you counted. I can hold the ward ag'inst all you'll send. An' you look out for yourself! I'll throw a switch on you yet that'll send you to th' scrapheap.”
“I s'ppose you think you know what you're doin'?” said the other angrily.
“You can put a bet on it that I do,” retorted Big Kennedy. “I wasn't born last week.”
That evening as we sat silent and thoughtful, Big Kennedy broke forth with a word.
“I've got it! You're on speakin' terms with that old duffer, Morton, who's forever talkin' about bein' a taxpayer. He likes you, since you laid out Jimmy the Blacksmith that time. See him, an' fill him up with th' notion that he ought to go to Congress. It won't be hard; he's sure he ought to go somewhere, an' Congress will fit him to a finish. In two days he'll think he's on his way to be a second Marcy. Tell him that if his people will put him up, we'll join dogs with 'em an' pull down th' place. You can say that we can't stand th' dishonesty an' corruption at th' head of Tammany Hall, an' are goin' to make a bolt for better government. We'll send the old sport to Congress. He'll give us a bundle big enough to fight the machine, an' plank dollar for dollar with it. An' it'll put us in line for a hook-up with th' reform bunch in th' fight for th' town next year. It's the play to make; we're goin' to see stormy weather, you an' me, an' it's our turn to make for cover. We'll put up this old party, Morton, an' give th' machine a jolt. Th' Chief'll leave me on both sides of th' street, will he? I'll make him think, before he's through, that he's run ag'inst th' pole of a dray.”