Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: a series of very plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-Senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum—the New York County court house bootblack stand; Recorded by William L. RiordonPlunkitt, George Washington
General
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: a series of very plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-Senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum—the New York County court house bootblack stand; Recorded by William L. Riordon
Plunkitt, George Washington
Plunkitt, George Washington, 1842-1924; Tammany Hall
Take me, for instance. My district, the Fifteenth, is made up of all
sorts of people, and a cosmopolitan is needed to run it successful. I'm
a cosmopolitan. When I get into the silk-stockin' part of the district,
I can talk grammar and all that with the best of them. I went to school
three winters when I was a boy, and I learned a lot of fancy stuff that
I keep for occasions. There ain't a silk stockin' in the district who
ain't proud to be seen talkin' with George Washington Plunkitt, and
maybe they learn a thing or two from their talks with me. There's one
man in the district, a big banker, who said to me one day: "George,
you can sling the most vigorous English I ever heard. You remind me of
Senator Hoar of Massachusetts." Of course, that was puttin' it on too
thick; but say, honest, I like Senator Hoar's speeches. He once quoted
in the United States Senate some of my remarks on the curse of civil
service, and, though he didn't agree with me altogether, I noticed
that our ideas are alike in some things, and we both have the knack of
puttin' things strong, only he put on more frills to suit his audience.
As for the common people of the district, I am at home with them at all
times. When I go among them, I don't try to show off my grammar, or talk
about the Constitution, or how many volts there is in electricity or
make it appear in any way that I am better educated than they are. They
wouldn't stand for that sort of thing. No; I drop all monkeyshines.
So you see, I've got to be several sorts of a man in a single day, a
lightnin' change artist, so to speak. But I am one sort of man always
in one respect: I stick to my friends high and low, do them a good
turn whenever I get a chance, and hunt up all the jobs going for my
constituents. There ain't a man in New York who's got such a scent for
political jobs as I have. When I get up in the mornin' I can almost
tell every time whether a job has become vacant over night, and what
department it's in and I'm the first man on the ground to get it. Only
last week I turned up at the office of Water Register Savage at 9
A.M. and told him I wanted a vacant place in his office for one of my
constituents. "How did you know that O'Brien had got out?" he asked me.
"I smelled it in the air when I got up this mornin'," I answered. Now,
that was the fact. I didn't know there was a man in the department named
O'Brien, much less that he had got out, but my scent led me to the Water
Register's office, and it don't often lead me wrong.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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