USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 37
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The real wages of labor lagged well behind the rise in prices. The miseries of poverty, widespread before the war, became even worse. So bad did the conditions become in 1864 that the officers of the Russian fleet in New York harbor were moved to contribute $4,760 to buy fuel for the poor. Contractors in 1861 took advantage of the labor surplus in New York City to cut wages from the prewar level of about $1.25 a day to eighty-five cents. Hardly had the working class made its adapta- tion to the reduced wages when prices shot upward. In desperation, workingmen began to organize unions and to call strikes. By the fall of 1862 German cabinetmakers, painters, printers, and stage drivers were striking for higher wages. Limited successes led other workers to organ-
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ize. Streetcar drivers in New York City lost their bid for an eleven-hour day, but machinists won a 25-per-cent increase over the two dollars a day they had been getting, and bakers won a twelve-hour day in 1863. News- paper publishers, however, defeated the strong printers' union in a strike in 1864. The unions in Rochester and other centers also failed to win raises commensurate with the rise in living costs.
Working conditions for women grew progressively worse. Most em- ployed women on Manhattan worked an eleven-hour day or longer for clothing contractors at a wage of from one dollar to three dollars a week. Inexperienced women were often defrauded of the little they did earn.
Employers fought unions by various means. Usually they refused to agree to terms and tried to hire new workers. In order to keep ample supplies of labor on hand, they urged the government to encourage immigration. In 1864 Congress authorized agents to recruit labor abroad and exempted immigrants from conscription in the army. Mayor Gunther of New York City protested:
At a time when nearly 50,000 operatives in this city alone are contending against the oppression of capital, and the wages paid are inadequate for their support, is it just to them or to the European laborers to bring the latter into a conflict for existence with the former for the benefit of employers?
Easy money, war excitement, and disrupted family life upset the normal pattern of behavior for many citizens. Saloons and resorts were crowded by patrons eager to forget their troubles. Luxury shops catered to the new rich, who flaunted their finery in public places. This frivolity and extravagance evoked much censure. Some may have been amused, but few could approve of the masquerade ball where the hostess ap- peared in a corona of diamonds which was lit up with jets of gas fed by a "gasometer" attached to her hoop skirt.
Graft and corruption of all sorts flourished during the war, reaching a peak in the postwar era. Contractors earned a reputation for sharp practice if not downright thievery. The extent of corruption was partially revealed in the great libel case of George Opdyke against Thurlow Weed. Opdyke, a former mayor of New York City, had made a fortune by a secret partnership in various contracts with the government. Weed, smarting from attacks upon his own integrity, exposed some of these transactions and charged that damage claims in a certain gun factory were fraudulent. Opdyke failed to convince the jury that Weed was guilty of libel.
But New Yorkers were not without their capacity for generosity and self-sacrifice. Individuals from Buffalo to New York set up organizations to care for wounded veterans and needy dependents of soldiers. Women sponsored charitable fairs, bazaars, and concerts. The most important
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single organization was the United States Sanitary Commission, in which several New Yorkers held key positions. This civilian organization helped to tend the wounded soldiers and ministered to the comfort of soldiers. Counties, cities, and towns granted millions of dollars for the relief of indigent families and soldiers. The Common Council of New York City set aside a special fund which was distributed through ward committees. In addition, the legislature appropriated large sums to transport sick and wounded soldiers to their homes. The state also set up a temporary home for soldiers in 1865. Later the Grand Army of the Republic estab- lished a home for veterans at Bath which the state took over in 1878.
Older charities also needed more money to meet rising costs. High employment cut relief rolls in some communities, but the sharp increase in orphans and broken families created a financial as well as a social problem. Indeed the problem of child dependency became so acute that in 1867 the state set up the Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities.
Public authorities were much concerned over the distressing increase in crime. Children from broken families often became delinquent and some of them drifted into serious crime. Draft calls absorbed most of the young men in the state, who found in the army an outlet for their excess energies. One result was the decline in the number of male in- mates of penitentiaries and jails. On the other hand, the number of female convicts kept rising. Morals in general deteriorated with the in- crease in drunkenness, prostitution, and gambling.
Neither the outbreak of war nor the Emancipation Proclamation brought better times for the Negroes of New York. A free man in theory, the Negro was actually a social and economic outcast. Segregation was the rule in New York City, in the schools and elsewhere. The unskilled laborers, largely Irish, heaped upon the colored people and their aboli- tionist friends the blame for inflation, the draft, high taxes, and casual- ties. Prejudice against the Negroes was common among most citizens of New York. For example, in 1860 the voters turned down by a wide margin an amendment granting the Negro the right to vote without meeting property qualifications. Mayor Fernando Wood of New York openly attacked the Negroes as inferior, and representatives of New York City in both the state and national legislatures undoubtedly re- flected local opinion in opposing the passage of the Thirteenth Amend- ment.
Public schooling suffered from lack of funds, while the number of children of school age steadily increased. The caliber of teachers de- clined, too, as young men left for the army. The draft, naturally, brought about a decline in college enrollments. During the war years two New
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York philanthropists, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar, founded the colleges named after them.
The Civil War affected the religious, political, and economic life of New York in many ways, disorganizing many social institutions. In general, the humanitarian movement lost in scope as most reformers concentrated all their energies on the war and on emancipation of the slaves. Political parties regrouped as citizens quarreled over the conduct of the war and the objectives of Lincoln and Johnson. Inflation and un- even war prosperity widened the cleavage between rich and poor. Per- haps most significant of all was the fusing together of various nationality groups. The patriotism and courage of the immigrants helped to dimin- ish nativist prejudices against them. Conversely, the newcomers as well as the older native stock tended to identify their loyalties more closely with those of the nation.
BOOK II 1865-1956
Introduction
IN THE hundred years since the Civil War, New York was transformed from predominantly a land of agriculture into a rich industrial common- wealth. In the process, the farm was subordinated to the factory and the standards of an agrarian society were supplanted by the mores of an urban and industrial society. Even those who remained on the land did not escape the effects of this revolutionary transformation, for both the methods of farm production and the character of the farmer's market combined to make him a commercial specialist and agriculture a modern business enterprise. The self-sustaining farm community tended to dis- appear, and the farmer as an economic individualist ceased to exist.
The social and economic status of the workingman was also basically altered. The craftsman became an urban factory worker who had little control over his wages and working conditions. His special skills no longer enabled him as an individual to bargain effectively with his employer, and the hostility of both the government and the nonlaboring public to trade-unionism made it difficult for him to improve his lot by joining with his fellows in any collective effort. Not until after 1914 did he by means of strikes and political action make progress in im- proving his status.
Trade and transportation underwent a similar revolution. By the end of the nineteenth century New York had six thousand miles of railroad track; and the state's railroads played an indispensable part in the devel- opment of urban centers, the exploitation of mine, field, and forest, and the distribution of a wide variety of New York products to state, national, and world markets. With the coming of the automobile, the state was gridironed with improved highways that afforded an increased oppor- tunity for freight and passenger traffic and contributed to the decline of isolation and provincialism. More recently the growth in air traffic within the state and from the state to all parts of the world has provided still another chapter in the continuing history of New York transportation.
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The economic revolution has been paralleled by equally sweeping changes in the cultural life of New York's citizens. What were once re- garded as pursuits open only to the members of the upper and well-to-do classes have been made available to individuals from every walk of life. These pursuits, covering a wide range of activities, have attracted an ever- increasing number of the state's people who have time and inclination to develop artistic and other cultural interests.
Finally, New York's government has been altered beyond recognition during the past century. During the decades after the Civil War, politics in the state, as in the nation, declined in prestige. In the state and in its leading cities this was largely an era of boss domination, corruption, and favors for special interests. Here and there were voices of protest, but it was not until the opening of the twentieth century that New York undertook its pioneer reform programs and that outstanding statesmen such as Charles E. Hughes, Alfred E. Smith, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Thomas E. Dewey addressed themselves to issues pertaining to the education, health, security, and social and economic well-being of all the people that a new chapter was written in the political history of the state.
PART FOUR
Politics from the Gilded Age to the Present
Chapter 27
Boss Rule
Q. Was it common report around the State House, and in Albany generally, that certain men made it their special voca- tion to see members, and to control their votes by giving them money?
A. Yes, sir; and it was understood in the Lower House that there was an organization formed of men of both parties, Re- publicans and Democrats, called the Black Horse Cavalry, composed of twenty-eight or thirty persons, who would all be controlled by one man, and vote as he directed them. Some- times they would be paid for not voting against a bill, and sometimes they would not be desired, if their votes were not necessary .- WILLIAM M. TWEED, testimony before committee of New York City aldermen, 1878
AT THE conclusion of the Civil War, the state constitution, which had been adopted in 1846 and reflected Jacksonian democracy's distrust of both centralization and appointive offices, provided politicians with un- exampled opportunities for plunder and deprived the electorate of almost all the advantages of self-government. New York had a governor, a legislature, and numerous commissions and boards, but it did not have officials who could be held accountable by the voters. Governors at- tributed maladministration to the legislature; the members of the As- sembly and Senate reflected local rather than state interests; and civil servants or bureaucrats correctly assumed that their jobs were noth- ing more than rewards for the services that they had rendered to the party in power. At every level of government there were those willing to sell their influence to the highest bidder, and during the postwar years there was never a shortage of bidders.
The governor, while enjoying more prestige than any other state official, was in many respects little more than a figurehead. He served only a two-year term and was unable to control his most influential sub-
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ordinates, for the heads of all the executive departments were elected by the voters. As a consequence, such officials as the lieutenant governor, secretary of state, comptroller, attorney general, treasurer, state engineer, canal commissioner, and prison inspector were frequently members of the opposition party. To compound the confusion, most of these officials did not serve concurrent terms with the governor. The governor, more- over, had relatively little control over the legislature. It required only a two-thirds vote of those present in the Senate and Assembly to override his veto, and he was not permitted to veto separate items in appropria- tion bills.
The legislature was by far the most powerful branch of the govern- ment. The Senate, or upper house, consisted of thirty-two members who were elected for a two-year term from each of the state's thirty-two senatorial districts. The Assembly, whose members served for only one year, was made up of a representative from each of the 126 Assembly districts. A large part of each legislative session was devoted to the con- sideration of appropriation bills. Of the $12,000,000 in expenditures authorized by the legislature of 1865, $6,000,000 was for the war, $2,000,000 for the payment of the bonded debt, $1,000,000 for work on canals, and only $3,000,000 for current operating expenses. Most of the money spent by the state was provided by a general tax on real and personal property. Some money was also raised by taxes on banks and corporations. In 1885-1886 an inheritance tax and a tax on the organiza- tion of corporations were adopted, and with the passage of the Raines bill in 1896 a large amount of revenue was furnished by the state liquor tax.
Because the interests of the senators and assemblymen were largely confined to the localities that they represented, few members of the legislature were prepared to deal with broad issues and statewide prob- lems. Many of the bills passed in every session were concerned with private claims or local improvements. Such measures were invariably passed by logrolling, and they were usually designed to increase the political capital-and on occasion the financial resources-of their spon- sors. Little attempt was made to deal with the complex problems raised by the rapid growth of industrial and finance capitalism during the post- war years, and some legislators were more interested in blackmailing than in regulating the state's corporations. Several legislators received bribes for voting for bills favorable to certain business interests, while a bipartisan coalition known as the "Black Horse Cavalry" voted for "strike" bills which were ostensibly antibusiness in intent but were actu- ally brought forward because the "cavalry" knew that it would be bought off by the concerns at which the strike bills were directed.
The legislature was divided along geographical as well as party lines,
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and usually regional and party interests coincided. The Republicans attracted the bulk of their votes from the upstate rural areas, while Demo- cratic strength was concentrated in New York City and Brooklyn. Al- though the Democrats were able on occasion to win gubernatorial elec- tions, it was only under the most unusual circumstances that they could obtain control over both branches of the legislature. Republican suprem- acy in the Assembly and Senate was in part the result of gerrymandering and a system of apportionment that penalized urban voters. The basis of Republican strength in the legislature is illustrated by the fact that in 1879 one Kings County senatorial district had 292,000 inhabitants and a New York City district 235,000, while two upstate districts had populations of 89,000 and 90,000.
The Republican legislatures consistently refused to grant home rule to the state's cities. This policy not only reflected the prejudices of assembly- men and senators from farm districts, but it also enabled the Republicans in the state government to name city officials who otherwise would have been appointed by Democrats in New York City and Brooklyn. In 1857 the New York City and Brooklyn police departments were placed under state control, and in 1866 similar measures were adopted for the two cities' health and excise departments. Of the 808 acts adopted by the legislature in 1870, 212 applied to villages and cities. Of the 212, thirty-four concerned New York and an even larger number referred to Brooklyn.
Partisan control and a relatively rapid turnover in personnel helped to reduce the judiciary to the level of incompetence that characterized the other branches of the state government. Judges were elected by popular vote for the comparatively short period of eight years. The Supreme Court, which consisted of thirty-three justices, exercised appellate jurisdiction in eight general terms. The Court of Appeals was made up of four elected judges and four Supreme Court justices who served one-year terms on a rotating basis. The organization of the appellate tribunals produced con- stant conflicts, while the annual changes in the make-up of the Court of Appeals created both confusion and an inability to dispose of the backlog of cases. Although the judiciary included some enlightened and disin- terested jurists, it was by and large a political institution whose members were selected for their availability rather than their ability.
Every autumn the Democratic and Republican parties waged bitter and relentless campaigns for control over some part of the state government. Both parties were "plunderbunds" whose principal objective was to get at the booty that was theirs for the taking after a victory at the polls. Victory meant jobs for the faithful who had got out the vote and an op- portunity for graft for those who got the jobs. For the electorate it meant little more than a change in names without a change in policies. Upstate Republicans could be as corrupt as Tammany Democrats, and officials
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from both parties received kickbacks from contractors, falsified their ac- counts, and exacted political contributions from their subordinates on the public payroll. At the height of a spirited campaign politics often seemed little more than a game to outsiders, but to politicians it was a business whose profits were frequently as large as they were illicit.
The only major issues on which the two parties disagreed concerned the nation rather than the state, and their platforms were usually nothing more than carbons of the collection of statements pieced together at the quadrennial conventions of their respective national organizations. Dur- ing campaigns for state office Democratic and Republican orators held forth in city auditoriums or at country crossroads on the significance of the tariff, currency, and Reconstruction. Corruption in the state govern- ment was the only state issue-as contrasted with national issues-that invariably received the attention of the politicians, but it was not an issue on which the leaders of the rival organizations basically disagreed. Both parties condemned corruption, and both were corrupt. At every election the "outs" begged the voters to "throw the rascals out." If the voters re- sponded, the roles of the two parties were reversed, but the substance of the roles rarely changed. Victory at the polls enabled a politician to be corrupt; defeat compelled him to denounce corruption. Whether calling their opponents thieves or lecturing the voters on national policies, Demo- cratic and Republican politicians appealed to the electorate with all the clichés of American political warfare. Every effort was made to keep old hatreds alive, and symbols that recalled past glories were substituted for reasoned arguments of current issues.
Both parties were machines, and each machine was ruled by a boss or by a group of bosses. Aided by numerous lieutenants, most of whom held public office, the state boss was in a position to exert a decisive influence on local politics, the legislative and appointive processes at Albany, and the distribution of federal patronage in New York State. He played a major part in the selection of his party's nominees for state office, and his hench- men helped to pick candidates for local and county offices. He and the machine that he bossed got out the vote on election day, collected cam- paign contributions, protected the economic groups supporting the party from hostile legislation, saw that government contracts were awarded to those firms that gave the machine its financial support, settled disputes over patronage within the party, disciplined the organization's dissidents, and served as the continuing force, that held the party together despite changes in state administrations.
Because of the rivalry between the Democratic organizations in Brook- lyn and New York City, it was exceedingly difficult for any single indi- vidual to dominate the party on a state-wide basis. From 1870 until the turn of the century Hugh Mclaughlin bossed Brooklyn's Democrats and
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successfully resisted all efforts of Tammany Hall to take over his highly efficient and effective organization. Tammany, in turn, was run by William Marcy Tweed until his imprisonment in the early 1870's, when he was succeeded by "Honest" John Kelly. Both Democratic machines received the overwhelming support of Irish immigrants and Irish-Americans, and both were so firmly entrenched that they could not be destroyed by the various reform groups within the party. Despite the rivalry between the Tammany and Mclaughlin organizations, Tweed was able to rule both his party and the state from 1868 to 1871, and Samuel Tilden exercised equally effective-but immeasurably more honest-control over the Democratic party during his term as governor from 1875 to 1876.
The Republican state machine enjoyed a marked advantage over its Democratic counterpart. It could generally count on a majority in both houses of the legislature, and Republican presidents during the postwar years provided it with the federal patronage within the state. The Post Office Department had more workers in New York than in any other state, and the Federal Customs House in New York City was the largest in the nation. As a consequence, the Republican leadership in New York was as- sured a large supply of jobs for the organization's hacks even when the party lost control over the state government. With his election to the governorship in 1864 and again in 1866, Reuben E. Fenton became the acknowledged boss of the Republican party in New York. By 1870, how- ever, Fenton had been forced to relinquish his position to Roscoe Conkling, who remained the ruler of New York's Republicans until after his resigna- tion from the United States Senate in 1881.
During Fenton's two terms as governor the Reconstruction controversy in Washington preoccupied the Republicans in Albany. For a short time the state party was split between President Johnson's Conservative sup- porters who were led by Thurlow Weed and Henry Raymond of the Times, and the Radicals who backed the Sumner-Stevens program for the South and whose acknowledged leader was Fenton. This interlude of factional- ism ended with the triumph of the state's radicals, who succeeded in re- electing Fenton governor in 1866 and in selecting Conkling as United States senator in 1867. Despite the Republicans' preoccupation with na- tional issues, Fenton's administration was not devoid of local accomplish- ments. The legislature made provisions for the establishment of Cornell University, opened the public schools to even the poorest New Yorkers by abolishing the rate-bill system, and legally established an eight-hour working day. The law providing for the latter, however, contained enough exceptions to make it almost meaningless.
The most dramatic and least edifying events of the Fenton administra- tion occurred in the legislature at the climax of the Erie Railroad war. In 1867 Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt secured control of the New York
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Central system, and he temporarily gained control of the Erie Railroad and removed Daniel Drew as the line's treasurer. But Drew soon re-established himself in power. Within a short time he, Jay Gould, and James Fisk were conducting a rate war with the Central. When Vanderbilt sought to regain control of the Erie, Drew responded by issuing worthless stock. Vanderbilt bought between six and seven million dollars' worth of Erie securities, while Fisk gleefully declared, "If this printing press don't break down, I'll be damned if I don't give the old hog all he wants of Erie." As soon as Vanderbilt discovered that Erie's bosses could print stock faster than he could buy it, he secured a warrant for their arrest on the ground that they were illegally issuing certificates in defiance of a court order. The Erie triumvirate then fled to Jersey City with more than $6,000,000 in cash and procured a judge to set aside the warrant for their arrest. At this point Gould was sent to Albany to bribe the legislature into approving Erie's illegal stock issues. Vanderbilt soon arrived at the capital with money to buy off Gould's supporters in the Senate and Assembly. What promised to be a saturnalia of corruption was avoided only after Vanderbilt decided that it would be cheaper to accept a compromise than to meet the prices demanded by the more avaricious legislators. Under the new arrange- ment Drew and Gould took over the Erie, and, with the aid of Tweed, they systematically robbed the road of its remaining assets.
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