endanger his supremacy. By a single coup d'état he swept out the whole Central Committee the moment they began to show a disposition to have some voice in the management of the party, alleging, as was naturally the fact, that they were candidates for office. No one was allowed to enter who had talent or influence enough to become a rival; no one was allowed to speak who would not constantly belaud "our noble leader"; and the men whom he selected as his lieutenants and allowed to come to the front were, without exception, not only men who accepted of these conditions, but men who for some reason or other stood in such relation to the controlling element of the party that he could at any time he chose turn on them and fire them out.[1] By this denunciation of politicians, by thus striking down every head that raised itself in his organization, he not only appealed to prejudice and jealousies, but to the personal interest and ambition of the club membership. The political hewers of wood and drawers of water, who made up the clubs, flattered themselves with the idea that they were the men of whom sheriffs, and supervisors, and school-directors, and Senators, and Assembly-men were to be made, and they brought to the new party and to the support of Kearney all the enthusiasm which such a hope called forth.
It may seem strange that a party thus constituted and led should poll such a heavy vote. But in our large cities, and progressively in the country as a whole, the active managing portion of a party bears a very small proportion to the vote which it polls. In New York or Philadelphia, as in San Francisco, but a handful of men make the tickets between which, on election-day, the majority of voters must choose. So in this case the heavy vote came from people who never joined the clubs or visited the sand-lot—from people who were so utterly disgusted with the workings and corruptions of old parties as to welcome "anything for a change."
And this feeling was greatly intensified by a train of occurrences which called attention to the prevailing corruption. Kearney's tirades against daylight robbers and official thieves had a basis of fact. To say nothing of bank-failures and stock-swindles, it came to light that brokers were engaged in selling positions on the police; that the questions upon which the teachers in the public schools are appointed and promoted were regular articles of merchandise; and that, running through successive administrations, the most enormous stealing had been going on in street improvements. Three important municipal officials committed suicide, one after another, and, behind all that came
- ↑ To illustrate what I mean, the man whom Kearney made vice-president, and who assumed his place during his absence, was an unnaturalized Englishman, who had been a sort of anti-Catholic missionary, and who could for this and other reasons get no lasting hold upon the Irish, of whom the active party was largely composed, and whom, when Kearney finally chose to, he flung aside without the slightest trouble. This was not an exception, but the rule.
