there was forty per cent more civil service reformers
among the jailbirds. If any legislative committee wants the detailed
figures, I'll prove what I say. I don't want to give the figures now,
because I want to keep them to back me up when I go to Albany to get
the civil service law repealed. Don't you think that when I've had my
inning, the civil service law will go down, and the people will see that
the politicians are all right, and that they ought to have the job of
runnin' things when municipal ownership comes?

One thing more about municipal ownership. If the city owned the
railroads, etc., salaries would be sure to go up. Higher salaries is
the cryin' need of the day. Municipal ownership would increase them all
along the line and would stir up such patriotism as New York City never
knew before. You can't be patriotic on a salary that just keeps the wolf
from the door. Any man who pretends he can will bear watchin'. Keep your
hand on your watch and pocketbook when he's about. But, when a man has
a good fat salary, he finds himself hummin' "Hail Columbia," all
unconscious and he fancies, when he's ridin' in a trolley car, that the
wheels are always sayin': "Yankee Doodle Came to Town." I know how it is
myself. When I got my first good job from the city I bought up all the
firecrackers in my district to salute this glorious country. I couldn't
wait for the Fourth of July 1 got the boys on the block to fire them
off for me, and I felt proud of bein' an American. For a long time after
that I use to wake up nights singin' "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Chapter 14. Tammany the Only Lastin' Democracy

I've seen more than one hundred "Democracies" rise and fall in New
York City in the last quarter of a century. At least a half-dozen new
so-called Democratic organizations are formed every year. All of them go
in to down Tammany and take its place, but they seldom last more than
a year or two, while Tammany's like the everlastin' rocks, the eternal
hills and the blockades on the "L" road--it goes on forever.

I recall offhand the County Democracy, which was the only real opponent
Tammany has had in my time, the Irving Hall Democracy, the New
York State Democracy, the German-American Democracy, the Protection
Democracy, the Independent County Democracy, the Greater New York
Democracy, the Jimmy O'Brien Democracy, the Delicatessen Dealers'
Democracy, the Silver Democracy, and the Italian Democracy. Not one of
them is li