“Nothing,” said he, “unless you needed it. I was twenty years captain and I never got anything for myself, but if you needed anything you would get whatever was going. It might be a job that would give you employment under the city, it might be a pull that you might have with the alderman in case you got into trouble, whatever it was you would be entitled to your share. If you get into trouble, Tammany will help you out. If you are out of a job Tammany will see that you have the first chance of whatever is going. It is a great power, is Tammany. Whether it is with the police, or in the court, or in the City Hall, you will find Tammany men everywhere, and they all stick together. There is nothing sticks so tight as Tammany.” Therein, no doubt, this worthy ex-captain revealed the great secret, of Tammany’s success. Tammany is a brotherhood. Tammany men stick together, and help each other. The record of Tammany, however, hardly bears out the claim made for it by Mr. Croker as to the honesty and purity of its administration. From its very early days Tammany has had a bad record for dishonesty and utter lack of scruple. As early as 1837, two Tammany leaders, who had held the federal offices of Collector of the Port of New York, and of United States District Attorney for the Southern district of New York, skipped to Europe after embezzling, the one £250,000, the other £15,000. About twenty years later, another Tammany leader, who was appointed Postmaster for New York, advanced £50,000 of post-office money in order to carry Pennsylvania for Buchanan. These, however, were but bagatelles compared with the carnival of plunder which was established when Tweed was Tammany Boss. It was not until about the middle of the century that Tammany laid the hand upon the agency which for nearly fifty years has been the sceptre of its power. A certain Southerner, rejoicing in the name of Rynders, who was a leading man in Tammany in the Forties, organised as a kind of affiliated institution the Empire Club, whose members were too disreputable even for Tammany. These men, largely composed of roughs and rowdies, who rejoiced in the expressive title of the Bowery Plug Uglies, were the first to lay their hand upon the immigrant and utilise him for the purpose of carrying elections. Mr. Edwards, writing in _McClure’s Magazine_, says:-- It was the Empire Club, indeed, which taught the political value of the newly-arrived foreigner. Its members approached the immigrants at the piers on the arrival of every steamship or packet; conducted them into congenial districts; found them employment in the city works, or perhaps helped them to set up in business as keepers of grog-shops.