ied, for default, bribe-taking, or theft; and the fewest were
punished. The civic history of New York to the present day is one long
struggle to free itself from its blighting grip. Its people's parties,
its committees of seventy, were ever emergency measures to that end, but
they succeeded only for a season. There have been decent Tammany mayors,
but not for long. There have been attempts to reform the organization
from within, but they have been failures. You cannot reform an
"organized appetite" except by reforming it away. And then there would
be nothing left of the organization.

For whatever the rank and file have believed, the organization has never
been anything else but the means of satisfying the appetite that never
will be cloyed. Whatever principles it has professed, they have served
the purpose only of filling the pockets of the handful of men who rule
its inner councils and use it to their own enrichment and our loss and
disgrace. We have heard its most successful leader testify brazenly
before the Mazet legislative committee that he was in politics working
for his own pocket all the time. That was his principle. And his
followers applauded till the room rang.

That is the Tammany which has placed murderers and gamblers in its high
seats. That is the Tammany which you have to fight at every step when
battling with the slum; the Tammany which, unmasked and beaten by the
Parkhurst and Lexow disclosures, came back with the Greater New York to
exploit the opportunity reform had made for itself, and gave us a lesson
we will not soon forget. For at last it dropped all pretence and showed
its real face to us.

Civil service reform was thrown to the winds; the city departments were
openly parcelled out among the district leaders: a $2000 office to
one,--two $1000 to another to even up. That is the secret of the
"organization" which politicians admire. It does make a strong body. How
it served the city in one department, the smallpox epidemic bore
witness. That department, the pride of the city and its mainstay in days
of danger, was wrecked. The first duty of the new president, when the
four years were over and Tammany out again, was to remove more than a
hundred and fifty useless employees. Their only function had been to
draw the salaries which the city paid. The streets that had been clean
became dirty--the "voter" was back "behind the broom"--and they swarmed
once more with children for whom there was no roo