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
A similar scene was described as occurring at the Third Election District
by Jacob Subin, a Republican watcher, who deposed that he had seen Mr.
Rosalsky, the captain of the Socialistic Labour Party, protest against a
young man who actually attempted to vote in Mr. Rosalsky’s name under his
very nose. Mr. Rosalsky grabbed hold of him and demanded that he should be
locked up as a repeater caught in the act. Three Tammany heelers thereupon
punched Mr. Rosalsky’s face for him. He called upon the policeman to
protect him. That worthy stretched himself leisurely and replied, “Well, I
guess I am pretty busy just now. I will see you after four o’clock, and
will have more time to spend.” The heelers then were for mauling Rosalsky
more severely; but the Tammany captain interfered, and, as an act of
grace, secured his release on condition that he went right away. Rosalsky
bolted for his life. After this Jacob Subin deemed it wiser to content
himself with a simple protest when he saw such repeating as this:--
I have seen the Tammany Hall heelers bring in five or six men, drill
them into line, and from the appearance of some of them they looked
like Irishmen, and some like recent importations from Chatham Square
or any of those dives, and most of those voted on Hebrew names; but
the fun of it was that they could not pronounce the name under any
circumstances that they were voting, and of course, as a rule, the
chairman of the board of inspectors used to correct them, and in some
instances they forgot their names entirely, and in such cases they
went out of the line, and then the heelers would approach them and
bestow such vile language upon them, and curse them and swear at them
for being so stupid as not to recollect the name of the person they
were voting under; and then they would drill them into line again, and
I protested against them. I attempted to challenge them, and I was
told unless I stopped monkeying with the regular way of doing business
that I would be thrown through the window.--Vol. i., p. 303.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE MONSTER HOTELS OF NEW YORK: HOTEL MAJESTIC.]
The appearance of the Tammany captain as master of the revels thus
reported by Jacob Subin is significant. Frank Nichols, in the
Twenty-ninth Election District of the Third Assembly, where they had
eighty-four more votes than they had names on the register, took two
voters to the poll. As he was on the wrong side his men were not allowed
to vote:--
I said, “Why can’t they vote?” and they said, “No, they could not
vote,” and I said, “What was the matter of these people they could not
vote?” and they said, “You go home; go home; you people can’t vote any
more,” and then I was put out in the middle of the street, and the
captain of the election district said, “Take this fellow away from
here,” and a fellow hit me in the eye with a brass knuckle.
Q. Did the police do anything at all?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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