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,”