Satan's Invisible World Displayed or, Despairing Democracy

s Invisible World Displayed." The title, of course, is an adaptation, not an invention. The original holder of the copyright was one Hopkins, of the seventeenth century, who, having ha

itnesses exposed to public cross-examination before a State Commission in the City of New York. In the reports of the infernal Sabbats, for attending which thousands of old women were burnt or hanged in the seventeenth century, there always figures in the background, as the central figure in the horrid drama, a form but half-revealed, concerning whose identity even the witchfinders speak with awe. The weird women, with their incant

nal phantasmagoria once again, with heelers for witches, policemen as wizards, and secret sessions in Tammany Hall as the Witches' Sabbat of the new era. And behind them all, always present but dimly seen-the omnipresent central force, whose name is muttered with awe, and whose mandate is obeyed with speed-is the sam

one which appeals specially to the sense of humour. Tammany, according to tradition, was the name of a Delaware Indian who in ancient days belonged to a Redskin co

conflicts with the Mohicans, who in those days pitched their wigwams on the island of Manhattan. He owes it to a battle which he fought with no less a personage than the great enemy of mankind. In the days when St. Tammany, passed his legendary existence, there were no white men on the American

ttests, the Devil is not a person who will accept a first refusal. Changing his tactics, he brought upon St. Tammany and his Delawares many grievous affliction

h left him no option but to obey. Again and again the Devil, renewing his attacks, tried his best to circumvent St. Tammany, but finding that all was

YORK, WITH THE W

prairie land to this day. At last, after the forests had been destroyed, and the country trodden flat, St. Tammany, catching his adversary unawares, tripped him up, and hurled him to the ground. It was in the nick of time, for Tammany was so exhausted with the prolonged struggle that when he drew his scalping-knife to make a fin

evil first came to New York, where, as if in revenge for his defeat, he seems to have chris

g seemed more appropriate to the revolutionary heroes than to adopt as their patron saint a brave who had "whipped the Devil." St. Tammany, therefore, came to be adopted by the American army as a kind of counterpart to our own St. George. St. Tammany and the Devil seemed to be a good counterpoise to the legendary tale of St. George and the Dragon. The 12th of May was Tammany's Saint's Day, and was celebrated with wigwams, liberty poles, tomahawks, and all the regular para

any, but preferred to call his Society the Columbian Order, in honour of Columbus. The transactions of the Society dated from the discovery of America. Besides the European head, who was to be known as the Great

f Natural History, and got together the exhibits which formed the nucleus of Barnum's famous museum. It was a social and convivial club, which met first in a hotel of Broadway, then in a public-hou

tinctively American of all the associations that have ever been founded in the New World. A writer of "The Story

inauguration of the first President, and at a spot within the sound of his voice as he spoke his first official words to his countrymen, it has not only continued down to the present time-through nearly three generations of men-but has controlled the choi

n Paris excepted. Greater than a party, inasmuch as it has been the master of parties, it has seen political organisation after organisation, in whose conflicts it has fearlessly participated, arise, flourish, and go down, and yet has stood ready, with powers unimpaired, to enga

selves of the opportunities afforded by current events as they have arisen. Tammany has not only furnished the most capable politicians the country has possessed, but has managed to ally itself

NY HALL, ER

it has always displayed the wisdom of the serpent. Considering the place where the Author of all Evil found refuge after his discomfiture by St. Tammany, a Republican may be pardoned for suggesting that the wisdom of Tammany is due to the wisdom of the Old Serpent. Certainly, many innocent persons have been accused of dalliance with the foul fiend on much worse prima facie evidence than that which is furnished by the universal admission that Tammany, out of the most uncompromising materials, has succeeded in achieving exploits which antecedently would have been absolutely

HALL, OP

so long if it were composed of Thugs and desperados, and that witness no doubt is true. Even so stout and stalwart an opponent of Tammany as Dr. Albert Shaw has frequently felt himself constrained to admit that the insane fashion in w

ings of a finely adjusted machine as it is like knowing the obscure topogra

he w

of municipal government, and then makes it possible for an irresponsible self-centred political and mercenary society like Tammany to gain for itself the real control, and thus to assume a domination that ought to be centred i

s success seems to lie chiefly in the fact that Tammany has from the first been really a democratic organisation. No one was too poor, t

urst had scored his first great success over the politicians of New York. The ex-Tammany Captain shook his head when I asked him what he thought of Dr. Parkhurst's campaign. He had no use for Dr.

I am a newly arrived citizen in your precinct, and come to

I would send two or three trusty men to find out all about you. Find out, for instance, whether you really meant to work and serve Tammany, or whether you were onl

uld I hav

whenever an election was on, and then to hustle around and make e

I get for my t

a pull that you might have with the alderman in case you got into trouble, whatever it was you would be entitled to your share. If you get into trouble, Tammany will help you out. If you are out of a job Tammany will see that you have the firs

great secret, of Tammany's success. Tammany is a brothe

eaders, who had held the federal offices of Collector of the Port of New York, and of United States District Attorney for the Southern district of New York, skipped to Europe after embezzling, the one ￡250,000, the other ￡15,000. About twenty years later, another

was a leading man in Tammany in the Forties, organised as a kind of affiliated institution the Empire Club, whose members were too disreputable even for Tammany. These men, largely composed of roughs and rowdies, who

ched the immigrants at the piers on the arrival of every steamship or packet; conducted them into congenial distric

tells a story which sheds a lurid ray of light on the man and manners of that time. Mr. Godwin, who preceded Mr. Godkin in the incessant warfare which the Evening Post has waged against Tammany, had given more than usual offence to Ry

"What do you mean by interfering in th

stabbed in the back. You were going to do a sneaking thing; you were

me a coward, Mike Wa

with me now. We will lock ourselves into a room; I will take a knife and you take one

e bowie-knife, took one himself, and said: "You stand in that corner, and I'll stand in this. Then we

onist, and said: "Mike, you and I have always been friends; what is the use of our fighting now? If we get at it, we shall both be killed, and there is no good in that." Walsh for a moment s

he first man to publicly accuse Tammany of tampering with the ballot-box. He was not

mmany frauds committed by the Empire Club in New York City in 1844 unquestionably gave Polk the meagre maj

ANDO

rom bad to worse until Mike Walsh, a few years before the War,

olitic of New York there is not political or personal hon

Wood was a ward politician who first became known to the public by a prosecution in which it was proved that he had cheated his partner by altering the figures in accounts. He did not deny the charge, but pleaded statutory limitation. Having thus succeeded in avoiding ga

ammany politicians were aghast at the colossal frauds which he practised at the polls-frauds not only unique in their dimensions, but in the exceeding variety and multiplicity of their methods. On January 1st, 1869, Tweed and his allies began to plunder the city in a fashion which might have made the mouth of a Roman proconsul water. His ally, Connolly, was made Comptroller, while Tweed himself found ample scope for his fraudulent genius in the posts of Deputy Street Commissioner and Supervisor. In the first year he issued fra

s company, which furnished all the stationery used in the public institutions and departments, and this company alone received some three millions a year. On an order for six reams of cap paper, the same amou

ectation that an honest bill would be raised all the way from sixty to ninety per cent. In the first months of the ring's stealing the increase was about sixty per cent. Some of the bills were increased by as much as ninety per cent., but the

ions, and his opponents secured a majority on the Board of Aldermen. Thereupon the resourceful rascal promptly went down to Albany, bought up a sufficient number of Congressmen and senators to give him control of the Legislature, a

he never stopped till he had "audited" about 6,000,000 dols. worth. Connolly's part in the little game then came in, and that worthy citizen drew his warrants for the money, which that simple-minded "scholar and gentleman" the Mayor endorsed, without having the least idea what

as Mr. Tilden said in his account of

(about ￡466,000) nominally for advertisements, most of which were never even published, or never seen. Not only the City government, but the lion's share of the State government also had fallen into the hands of "Boss" Tweed and his confederates. Millions of dollars were stolen by the conspirators by means of "street openings," "improvements," new pavements, and other frauds. The Ring took from the public treasury a sum amounting to over

AM M.

ty of Paris after the War of 1870-1 was only one-fourth that amount. Fraud may be more costly than War. The total direct property loss occasioned by the great fire at Chicago in 1871, when three

TI

ent Andrews, of Brown University, in telling the history of the last quarter century, says, "He used gleefully to show his friends the safe where he kept money for bribing legislators, finding those of the Tammany-Republican stripe easiest game. Of t

as elected. He had distributed in the poorer districts some ￡10,000 worth of coal and flour, and one of his champions brought down the house by declaring that "Tweed's heart has always

ttle difficulty in laying hands upon all that was necessary in order to secure the prosecution and conviction of Tweed. Tweed's two infamous judges were driven from the bench, and he himself was clapped into gaol. He made his escape, and sought refuge in Spain. He was,

e had done right, and was willing to "submit himself to the just criticism of any and all honest men." From this it would seem that Mr. Croker is not alone in his imperturbable consciousness of public rectitude. Tweed on one occasion admitted that he had perhaps erred, but he explained he was not to blame. The fault lay with

es unlimited power to punish summarily whatever they chose to consider to be contempt. By this law, which was fortunately

John Kelly and Richard Croker. Mr. Godkin declares th

y himself, and, whether he rendered any account of it or not, died in possession of a handsome fortune. His policy was the very safe one of making the

Committee of Tammany. It showed that they were all professional politicians, and that among them were one convicted murderer, three men who had been indicted for murder, felonious assault, and bribery, respectively, four professional gamblers, five ex-keepers

year 1894. All the efforts of the reformers see

ins unshaken, but grows stronger from year to year. Every year its management d

Croker held almost as despotic a sway over New York as an Oriental potentate over his kingdom," one month after that statement had

DITOR OF THE "EVENI

n foe of