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CHAPTER VI – THE RED JACKET ASSOCIATION
BIG KENNEDY’S success at the election served to tighten the rivets of his rule. It was now I looked to see him ferret forth and punish those renegades who had wrought against him in the dark. To my amazement he engaged himself in no such retaliatory labor. On the contrary he smiled on all about him like the sun at noon. Was it folly or want of heart that tied his hands? Assuredly it was error, and this I submitted to Old Mike. That veteran of policy disagreed with this, meanwhile beaming upon me in a way of fatherly cunning.
“Jawn knows his business,” said Old Mike. “Thim people didn’t rebel, they sold out. That’s over with an’ gone by. Everybody’ll sell ye out if he gets enough; that’s a rishk ye have to take. There’s that Limerick man, Gaffney, however; ye’ll see something happen to Gaffney. He’s one of thim patent-leather Micks an’ puts on airs. He’s schemin’ to tur-rn Jawn down an’ take th’ wa-ard. Ye’ll see something happen to that Limerick man, Gaffney.”
Gaffney made his money with flour and horse feed and hay and similar goods. Also, as Old Mike said, Gaffney was ambitious. It was within the week, when a midnight shower of stones smashed sash and glass and laid waste that offensive merchant’s place of business. Gaffney restored his sash and glass only to invite a second midnight storm of stones. Three times were Gaffney’s windows smashed by hands unknown; and no police officer would go within two blocks of Gaffney’s. In the end, Gaffney came to Big Kennedy. The latter met him with a hectoring laugh.
“Why do you come to me?” asked Big Kennedy. “Somebody’s been trying to smash the windows of my leadership for over a year, but I never went howling about it to you.”
Gaffney showed not a little shaken. He asked, in a manner sullen yet beaten, what he should do.
“I’d get out of th’ ward,” replied Big Kennedy as cool as ice. “Somebody’s got it in for you. Now a man that’ll throw a brick will light a match, d’ye see, an’ a feed store would burn like a tar barrel.”
“If I could sell out, I’d quit,” said Gaffney.
“Well,” responded Big Kennedy, “I always like to help a friend.”
Grocer Fogel bought Gaffney’s store, making a bargain.
This iron-bound lesson in practical politics I dwell on in full. I drew from it some notion of the stern character of that science. Old Mike, from the pinnacles of his hard experience, looked down to justify it.
“Gaffney would do th’ same,” said Old Mike, “if his ar-rm was long enough. Politics is a game where losers lose all; it’s like war, shure, only no one’s kilt – at any rate, not so many.”
As the days drew on, I grew in favor with Big Kennedy, and the blossom thereof took this color.
“Why don’t you start a club?” he asked one afternoon, as we sat in his sanctum. “You could bring two hundred young fellows together, couldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied. I spoke doubtfully; the suggestion was of the sharpest, and gave me no space to think. It was one, too, which asked questions of the kind that don’t answer themselves. “But where would they meet?” I put this after a pause.
“There’s the big lodgeroom over my saloon,” and Big Kennedy tossed his stubby thumb towards the ceiling. “You could meet there. There’s a dumb waiter from the bar to send up beer and smokes.”
“How about the Tin Whistles?” I hinted. “Would they do to build on?”
“Leave the Tin Whistles out. They’re all right as shoulder-hitters, an’ a swifter gang to help at the polls, or break up the opposition’s meetin’s, never walked the streets. But for a play of this kind, they’re a little off color. Your Tin Whistles can join, man by man, but if they do they must sing low. They mustn’t try to give the show; it’s the back seat for them. What you’re out for now is the respectable young workin’-man racket; that’s the lay.”
“But where’s the money?” said I. “These people I have in mind haven’t much money.”
“Of course not,” retorted Big Kennedy confidently, “an’ what little they have they want for beer. But listen: You get the room free. Then once a year your club gives an excursion on the river; it ought to sell hundreds of tickets because there’ll be hundreds of officeholders, an’ breweries, an’ saloon keepers, an’ that sort who’ll be crazy to buy’em. If they aint crazy to start with, you ought to be able to make’em crazy th’ first election that comes ‘round. The excursion should bring three thousand dollars over an’ above expenses, d’ye see. Then you can give balls in the winter an’ sell tickets. Then there’s subscriptions an’ hon’ry memberships. You’ll ketch on; there’s lots of ways to skin th’ cat. You can keep th’ club in clover an’ have some of the long green left. That’s settled then; you organize a young men’s club. You be president an’ treasurer; see to that. An’ now,” here Big Kennedy took me by the shoulder and looked me instructively in the eye, “it’s time for you to be clinchin’ onto some stuff for yourself. This club’s goin’ to take a lot of your time. It’ll make you do plenty of work. You’re no treetoad; you can’t live on air an’ scenery.” Big Kennedy’s look deepened, and he shook me as one who demands attention. “You’ll be president and treasurer, particularly treasurer; and I’ll chip you in this piece of advice. A good cook always licks his fingers.” Here he winked deeply.
This long speech was not thrown away. Big Kennedy, having delivered himself, lapsed into silence, while I sat ruminating ways and means and what initiatory steps I should take.
“What shall we call it?” I asked, as I arose to go.
“Give it an Indian name,” said Big Kennedy. “S’p-pose you call it the Red Jacket Association.”
Within the fortnight the Red Jackets held their maiden meeting. It was an hour rife of jubilation, fellowship, and cheer. While abstinence from drink was my guiding phrase, I made no point of that kind in the conduct of others, and a nearby brewery having contributed unlimited beer those whom it pleased lacked no reason for a light heart.
As Big Kennedy had advised, I was chosen for the double responsibilities of president and treasurer. I may say in my own compliment, however, that these honors came drifting to my feet. There were reasons for this aside from any stiffness of heart or fist-virtues which might be mine. I have said that I was by disposition as taciturn as a tree, and this wondrous gift of silence earned me the name of wisdom, I was looked upon as one whose depth was rival to the ocean’s. Stronger still, as the argument by which I rose, was my sobriety. The man who drinks, and whether it be little or much, never fails to save his great respect for him who sets whisky aside.
“An’ now,” remarked Big Kennedy, when the club had found fortunate birth, “with these Red Jackets to make the decent front, th’ Tin Whistles to fall back on for the rough work, and Gaffney out of th’ way, I call th’ ward cleaned up. I’ll tell you this, my son: after th’ next election you shall have an office, or there’s no such man as Big John Kennedy.” He smote the table with his heavy hand until the glasses danced.
“But I won’t be of age,” I suggested.
“What’s the difference?” said Big Kennedy. “We’ll play that you are, d’ye see. There’ll be no one fool enough to talk about your age if I’m at your side. We’ll make it a place in the dock department; that’ll be about your size. S’ppose we say a perch where there’s twelve hundred dollars a year, an’ nothin’ to do but draw th’ scads an’ help your friends.”
Jimmy the Blacksmith was an under-captain of Big Kennedy’s and prevailed as vote-master in the northern end of the ward. Within certain fixed frontiers, which ran on one side within a block of my home, it was the business of Jimmy the Blacksmith to have watch and ward. He had charge of what meetings were held, and under the thumb of Big Kennedy carried forward the campaign, and on election day got out the vote.
Having given the question its share of thought, I determined for myself on a forward, upward step. My determination – heart and soul – became agate-hard to drive Jimmy the Blacksmith from his place, and set up my own rule over that slender kingdom.
Nor would I say aught to Big Kennedy of this private war which I meditated. Not that he would have interfered either to thwart or aid me, but by the ethics of the situation, to give him such notice was neither proper nor expected. To fight Jimmy the Blacksmith for his crown was not only right by every rule of ward justice, but it was the thing encouraged as a plan best likely to bring the strongest to the fore. Take what you may, keep what you can! was a Tammany statute; I would be right enough in that overthrow of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was bent upon, if only I proved strong enough to bring it about. No, I was not to give word of my campaign to Big Kennedy, it was none of his affair, and he would prefer to be ignorant since he was bound to stand neutral. It is policy thus to let the younger cocks try beak and spur among themselves; it develops leadership, and is the one sure way of safety in picking out your captains.
There was one drawback; I didn’t live within the region of which I would make prize. However, ambition edged my wits and I bethought me of a plan whereby I might plow around that stump.
It was my own good fortune that I had no love, but only hate, for Jimmy the Blacksmith. I was yet so softened of a want of years, that had we been friends I would have withheld myself from attacking him. Youth is generous, wherefore youth is weak. It is not until age has stopped these leaks in one’s nature, and one ceases to give and only lives to take and keep, that one’s estate begins to take on fat. Have the word, therefore, of him whose scars speak for his experience: that one will be wise who regards generosity as a malady, a mere disease, and sets to cure it with every sullen, cruel drug the case demands. I say it was my good luck to hate Jimmy the Blacksmith. He had never condoned that election-day blow, and I must confess there was reason for this hardness. His jaw had been broken, and, though mended, it was still all of one side and made of him a most forbidding spectacle. And he nursed a thought of revenge in his breast; there came a light to his eye when we met that belongs with none save him whose merest wish is murder. I would have had more than black looks, but his heart was of a pale and treacherous family that can strike no blow in front, and thus far the pathway of chance had not opened for him to come upon me unaware. For all of which, not alone my ambition, but my safety and my pleasure urged me about the destruction of Jimmy the Blacksmith.
That epithet of the Blacksmith was born of no labors of the forge. Jimmy the Blacksmith was no more a blacksmith than a bishop. If he ever did a day’s work, then the fact was already so far astern upon the tides of time that no eye of memory might discern it. The title was won in a brawl wherein he slew a man. True to his nature, Jimmy slunk away from his adversary and would not face him. He returned, carrying a blacksmith’s fore-hammer. Creeping behind the other, Jimmy suddenly cried, with an oath:
“I’ll clink your anvil for you!”
With that word, the hammer descended and the victim fell, skull crushed like an eggshell. It required a deal of perjury to save the murderer from noose and trap. I should not say he was set backward by this bloodshed, since most men feared him for it and stepped out of his way, giving him what he asked for in the name of their own safety. It was for this work he was called the Blacksmith, and he carried the word as though it were a decoration.
Such was the man on whose downfall I stood resolved and whose place I meant to make my own. The thing was simple of performance too; all it asked were secrecy and a little wit. There was a Tammany club, one of regular sort and not like my Red Jacket Association, which was volunteer in its character. It met in that kingdom of the Blacksmith’s as a little parliament of politics. This club was privileged each year to name for Big Kennedy’s approval a man for that post of undercaptain. The annual selection was at hand. For four years the club had named Jimmy the Blacksmith; there came never the hint for believing he would not be pitched upon again.
Now be it known that scores of my Red Jackets were residents of the district over which Jimmy the Blacksmith held sway. Some there were who already belonged to his club. I gave those others word to join at once. Also I told them, as they regarded their standing as Red Jackets, to be present at that annual meeting.
The night arrived; the room was small and the attendance – except for my Red Jackets – being sparse, my people counted for three-quarters of those present. With the earliest move I took possession of the meeting, and selected its chairman. Then, by resolution, I added the block in which I resided to the public domain of the club. That question of residence replied to, instead of Jimmy the Blacksmith, I was named ballot-captain for the year. It was no more complex as a transaction than counting ten. The fact was accomplished like scratching a match; I had set the foot of my climbing on Jimmy the Blacksmith’s neck.
That unworthy was present; and to say he was made mad with the fury of it would be to write with snow the color of his feelings.
“It’s a steal!” he cried, springing to his feet. The little bandbox of a hall rang with his roarings. Then, to me: “I’ll fight you for it! You don’t dare meet me in the Peach Orchard to-morrow at three!”
“Bring your sledge, Jimmy,” shouted some humorist; “you’ll need it.”
The Peach Orchard might have been a peach orchard in the days of Peter Stuyvesant. All formal battles took place in the Peach Orchard. Wherefore, and because the challenge for its propriety was not without precedent, to the Peach Orchard at the hour named I repaired.
Jimmy the Blacksmith, however, came not. Someone brought the word that he was sick; whereat those present, being fifty gentlemen with a curiosity to look on carnage, and ones whose own robust health led them to regard the term “sickness” as a synonym for the preposterous, jeered the name of Jimmy the Blacksmith from their hearts.
“Jimmy the Cur! it ought to be,” growled one, whose disappointment over a fight deferred was sore in the extreme.
Perhaps you will argue that it smacked of the underhand to thus steal upon Jimmy the Blacksmith and take his place from him without due warning given. I confess it would have been more like chivalry if I had sent him, so to say, a glove and told my intentions against him. Also it would have augmented labor and multiplied risk. The great thing is to win and win cheaply; a victory that costs more than it comes to is nothing but a mask for defeat.
“You’re down and out,” said Big Kennedy, when Jimmy the Blacksmith brought his injuries to that chieftain. “Your reputation is gone too; you were a fool to say ‘Peach Orchard’ when you lacked the nerve to make it good. You’ll never hold up your head ag’in in th’ ward, an’ if I was you I’d line out after Gaffney. This is a bad ward for a mongrel, Jimmy, an’ I’d skin out.”
Jimmy the Blacksmith followed Gaffney and disappeared from the country of Big Kennedy. He was to occur again in my career, however, as he who reads on shall see, and under conditions which struck the color from my cheek and set my heart to a trot with the terrors they loosed at its heels.
CHAPTER VII – HOW THE BOSS WAS NAMED FOR ALDERMAN
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.
