as with the other. He eats corned beef and kosher meat with equal
nonchalance, and it's all the same to him whether he takes off his hat
in the church or pulls it down over his ears in the synagogue.

The other downtown leaders, Barney Martin of the Fifth, Tim Sullivan of
the Sixth, Pat Keahon of the Seventh, Florrie Sullivan of the Eighth,
Frank Goodwin of the Ninth, Julius Harburger of the Tenth, Pete Dooling
of the Eleventh, Joe Scully of the Twelfth, Johnnie Oakley of the
Fourteenth, and Pat Keenan of the Sixteenth are just built to suit the
people they have to deal with. They don't go in for literary business
much downtown, but these men are all real gents, and that's what the
people want--even the poorest tenement dwellers. As you go farther
uptown you find a rather different kind of district leader. There's
Victor Dowling who was until lately the leader of the Twenty-fourth.
He's a lulu. He knows the Latin grammar backward. What's strange, he's
a sensible young fellow, too. About once in a century we come across
a fellow like that in Tammany politics. James J. Martin, leader of the
Twenty-seventh, is also something of a hightoner and publishes a law
paper, while Thomas E. Rush, of the Twenty-ninth, is a lawyer, and Isaac
Hopper, of the Thirty-first, is a big contractor. The downtown leaders
wouldn't do uptown, and vice versa. So, you see, these fool critics
don't know what they're talkin' about when they criticize Tammany Hall,
the most perfect political machine on earth.

Chapter 12. Dangers of the Dress Suit in Politics

PUTIN' on style don't pay in politics. The people won't stand for it. If
you've got an achin' for style, sit down on it till you have made your
pile and landed a Supreme Court Justiceship with a fourteen-year term at
$17,000 a year, or some job of that kind. Then you've got about all you
can get out of politics, and you can afford to wear a dress suit all day
and sleep in it all night if you have a mind to. But, before you have
caught onto your life meal ticket, be simple. Live like your neighbors
even if you have the means to live better. Make the poorest man in your
district feel that he is your equal, or even a bit superior to you.

Above all things, avoid a dress suit. You have no idea of the harm
that dress suits have done in politics. They are not so fatal to young
politicians as civil service reform and drink, but they have scores of
victims. I will mention one sad case. After th