e the voters can go in the evening
and enjoy a smoke, a bottle, and a more or less quiet game.

This organization is never dormant. And this is the key to its vitality.
There is no mystery about it. Tammany is as vigilant between elections
as it is on election day. It has always been solicitous for the poor and
the humble, who most need and best appreciate help and attention. Every
poor immigrant is welcomed, introduced to the district headquarters,
given work, or food, or shelter. Tammany is his practical friend; and in
return he is merely to become naturalized as quickly as possible under
the wardship of a Tammany captain and by the grace of a Tammany judge,
and then to vote the Tammany ticket. The new citizen's lessons in
political science are all flavored with highly practical notions.

Tammany's machinery enables a house-to-house canvass to be made in one
day. But this machinery must be oiled. There are three sources of
the necessary lubricant: offices, jobs, the sale of favors; these are
dependent on winning the elections. From its very earliest days,
fraud at the polls has been a Tammany practice. As long as property
qualifications were required, money was furnished for buying houses
which could harbor a whole settlement of voters. It was not, however,
until the adoption of universal suffrage that wholesale frauds became
possible or useful; for with a limited suffrage it was necessary to sway
only a few score votes to carry an ordinary election.

Fernando Wood set a new pace in this race for votes. It has been
estimated that in 1854 there "were about 40,000 shiftless, unprincipled
persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others. The trade of
a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating
conventions, repeating, and breaking up meetings." Wood also
systematized naturalization. A card bearing the following legend was the
open sesame to American citizenship:

"Common Pleas:
Please naturalize the bearer.
N. Seagrist, Chairman."

Seagrist was one of the men charged by an aldermanic committee "with
robbing the funeral pall of Henry Clay when his sacred person passed
through this city."

When Hoffman was first elected mayor, over 15,000 persons were
registered who could not be found at the places indicated. The
naturalization machinery was then running at high speed. In 1868, from
25,000 to 30,000 foreigners were naturalized in New York in six weeks.
Of 156,288 votes c