Thirty-seven were at once elected to the executive committee, and plans were made to give them one-half of the representation on the general committee.
Each of the twenty-three assembly districts is in turn divided into election districts of about 400 voters, each with a precinct captain who is acquainted with every voter in his precinct and keeps track, as far as possible, of his affairs.In every assembly district there are headquarters and a club house, where the voters can go in the evening and enjoy a smoke, a bottle, and a more or less quiet game.
This organization is never dormant.And this is the key to its vitality.There is no mystery about it.Tammany is as vigilant between elections as it is on election day.It has always been solicitous for the poor and the humble, who most need and best appreciate help and attention.Every poor immigrant is welcomed, introduced to the district headquarters, given work, or food, or shelter.Tammany is his practical friend; and in return he is merely to become naturalized as quickly as possible under the wardship of a Tammany captain and by the grace of a Tammany judge, and then to vote the Tammany ticket.The new citizen's lessons in political science are all flavored with highly practical notions.
Tammany's machinery enables a house-to-house canvass to be made in one day.But this machinery must be oiled.There are three sources of the necessary lubricant: offices, jobs, the sale of favors; these are dependent on winning the elections.From its very earliest days, fraud at the polls has been a Tammany practice.As long as property qualifications were required, money was furnished for buying houses which could harbor a whole settlement of voters.It was not, however, until the adoption of universal suffrage that wholesale frauds became possible or useful; for with a limited suffrage it was necessary to sway only a few score votes to carry an ordinary election.
Fernando Wood set a new pace in this race for votes.It has been estimated that in 1854 there "were about 40,000 shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others.The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating, and breaking up meetings." Wood also systematized naturalization.Acard bearing the following legend was the open sesame to American citizenship:
"Common Pleas:
Please naturalize the bearer.
N.Seagrist, Chairman."
Seagrist was one of the men charged by an aldermanic committee "with robbing the funeral pall of Henry Clay when his sacred person passed through this city."When Hoffman was first elected mayor, over 15,000 persons were registered who could not be found at the places indicated.The naturalization machinery was then running at high speed.In 1868, from 25,000 to 30,000 foreigners were naturalized in New York in six weeks.Of 156,288 votes cast in the city, 25,000 were afterwards shown to be fraudulent.It was about this time that an official whose duty it was to swear in the election inspectors, not finding a Bible at hand, used a volume of Ollendorf's "New Method of Learning to Read, Write, and Speak French." The courts sustained this substitution on the ground that it could not possibly have vitiated the election!
A new federal naturalization law and rigid election laws have made wholesale frauds impossible; and the genius of Tammany is now attempting to adjust itself to the new immigration, the new political spirit, and the new communal vigilance.Its power is believed by some optimistic observers to be waning.But the evidences are not wanting that its vitality and internal discipline are still persistent.
