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.
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