Satan's Invisible World Displayed; or, Despairing Democracy: A Study of Greater New YorkStead, W. T. (William Thomas)
History
Satan's Invisible World Displayed; or, Despairing Democracy: A Study of Greater New York
Stead, W. T. (William Thomas)
New York (N.Y.) -- Politics and government; Police -- New York (State) -- New York
In the Thirty-sixth Election District of the Second Assembly District it
was estimated that 5,000 out of the 12,770 votes counted were fraudulent.
In the Seventh of the Third 567 ballots were found in the box for a
district which had only 508 names on the register. Repeating and
personation were almost universal. The lodging-houses played a leading
part in the squalid and sordid drama. The tramps who use these dossing
kens are all registered. But as they seldom pass three nights in the same
place, they rarely vote where they are registered. That, however, is a
mere detail. Mr. Goff says:--
The same men who registered did not, as a rule, vote upon the names
given. To have them do so would require their maintenance at the
lodging-house, and that would be too expensive. A more economic plan
was adopted. A few days previous to election the proprietors of the
lodging-houses were furnished, by the election-district captains, with
lists of the names registered from their houses. Separate slips for
each name were then supplied, and on election day the tramps, as they
come along, were handed the slips, and they voted on the names thus
given as frequently as they could get the slips. The election workers
were never hard pushed to bring out the registered vote. They simply
sent for the men when they wanted them, and were always supplied with
the required number. Sometimes the floater forgot the name given to
him or could not read the slip; sometimes a man who could not speak
English wrestled with an American name, or an English-speaking man
struggled with a Polish name. In all of these cases the obliging
inspectors helped them out either by looking at the slip or by giving
some sort of pronunciation to the unpronounceable name. In some
election districts there was a rivalry as to who could vote on the
most names, and the man who won the honours was an ex-convict, who
voted eighteen times in two election districts of the Third Assembly
District.--_Ib._, p. 205.
The evidence taken before the Lexow Committee abounds with vivid little
vignettes of how elections were conducted in New York City only four years
since.
Here, for instance, is what Mr. Louis Meyer, a Republican inspector in the
Third Assembly District, heard given as official directions by Police
Captain Devery to a platoon of policemen on the morning of the November
poll, 1893. The Union League and the City Club had decided to send
watchers to the polls to detect any illegal practices. So by way of
preparing for their reception, Captain Devery told the police in Mr.
Meyer’s hearing:--
There is a lot of silk-stocking people coming from up town to bulldose
you people, and if they open their mouths, stand them on their
heads.--Vol. i., p. 203, Lexow Report.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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