"A modern invention practised in Tammany Hall is for the genl. Committee to dispense with primary elections. It was introduced by Wood and has continued since he was driven out. The effect of two or three years' practice under the system has been to break off relations between that body and the masses in the wards. It was no longer necessary for the one committeeman and his four dummies, who represented a ward in the committee, to keep up a vital party in his ward. The ward committees fell into disuse, and in some cases what remained of them were in hostile hands. Meanwhile the outsiders felt that they had no chance, and antagonisms were multiplied in all the captains of tens and fifties--the new men, the active elements of fresh ambition. The chiefs of the general committee became totally bankrupt, were split into two parties--about equal--had been occupied for months in a scuffle for the assets, the real value of which they did not see till the last moment. In a party twice as large as any it had to contend with, and therefore tending to division--with its central organization in this condition, and its ward all run out--Wood hung up his sign over the outsiders. He made local organizations among them; worked at it assiduously for two years. When I stepped inside the ring and took a view I thought that in some wards, each having once and half as many people as your county contains, we should scarcely have machinery enough to run our ticket with--the 11th, for instance. We had less than two weeks to get up our organization, beginning anew--in a bad state of local nominations, many of the candidates running on both tickets and being really against us. Wood had gained the lower stratum of the Irish, combined many special interests, and at last had the aid of the jobbing Republicans, two of whom voted for him to every one of the other class for Havemeyer. Then the _Tribune_, in _bad_ faith, and the _Post_ in good faith, succeeded in making the impression that the way to beat Wood was to vote for Opdyke; and not only kept the moderate Republicans to him, but drew many quiet citizens who preferred Havemeyer, but were most anxious to beat Wood. "In truth, the leaders of the Republican party and Wood were in perfect concert, as they are partners in the gigantic schemes of plunder, which will presently appear. "Mr. Havemeyer polled a prodigious vote of the business classes and of the silent people, but not enough to supply the defects of the organization which, in my judgment, did not by its own strength give him 15,000 votes. "Enough of this. I should not have gone over the ground except for the curiosity you expressed--that what appeared to be an immense public opinion was ineffectual. It is a public opinion with a party, and not without, that sweeps the stakes.