Municipal government -- United States; Political corruption -- United States
There is more to share in New York. It is impossible to estimate the
amount of it, not only for me, but for anybody. No Tammany man knows it
all. Police friends of mine say that the Tammany leaders never knew how
rich police corruption was till the Lexow committee exposed it, and that
the politicians who had been content with small presents, contributions,
and influence, “did not butt in” for their share till they saw by the
testimony of frightened police grafters that the department was worth
from four to five millions a year. The items are so incredible that I
hesitate to print them. Devery told a friend once that in one year the
police graft was “something over $3,000,000.” Afterward the syndicate
which divided the graft under Devery took in for thirty-six months
$400,000 a month from gambling and poolrooms alone. Saloon bribers,
disorderly house blackmail, policy, etc., etc., bring this total up to
amazing proportions.
Yet this was but one department, and a department that was overlooked by
Tammany for years. The annual budget of the city is about $100,000,000,
and though the power that comes of the expenditure of that amount is
enormous and the opportunities for rake-offs infinite, this sum is not
one-half of the resources of Tammany when it is in power. Her resources
are the resources of the city as a business, as a political, as a social
power. If Tammany could be incorporated, and all its earnings, both
legitimate and illegitimate, gathered up and paid over in dividends, the
stockholders would get more than the New York Central bond and stock
holders, more than the Standard Oil stockholders, and the controlling
clique would wield a power equal to that of the United States Steel
Company. Tammany, when in control of New York, takes out of the city
unbelievable millions of dollars a year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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