We quote once more from Bryce, writing in 1894, as to the operation of machine rule in New York City:
“Such an organization as this, with its tentacles touching every point in a vast and amorphous city, is evidently a most potent force, especially as this force is concentrated in one hand--that of the Boss of the Hall. He is practically autocratic; and under him these thousands of officers, controlling from 120,000 to 150,000 votes, move with the precision of a machine. However, it is not only in this mechanism, which may be called a legitimate method of reaching the voters, that the strength of Tammany lies. Its control of the city government gives it endless opportunities of helping its friends, of worrying its opponents, and of enslaving the liquor-dealers. Their licenses are at its mercy, for the police can proceed against or wink at breaches of the law, according to the amount of loyalty the saloon-keeper shows to the Hall. From the contributions of the liquor interest a considerable revenue is raised; more is obtained by assessing office-holders, down to the very small ones; and perhaps most of all by blackmailing wealthy men and corporations, who find that the city authorities have so many opportunities of interfering vexatiously with their business that they prefer to buy them off and live in peace. The worst form of this extortion is the actual complicity with criminals which consists in sharing the profits of crime. A fruitful source of revenue, roughly estimated at $1,000,000 a year, is derived, when the party is supreme at Albany, from legislative blackmailing in the legislature, or, rather, from undertaking to protect the great corporations from the numerous ‘strikers,’ who threaten them there with bills. A case has been mentioned in which as much as $60,000 was demanded from a great company; and the president of another is reported to have said (1893): ‘Formerly we had to keep a man at Albany to buy off the “strikers” one by one. This year we simply paid over a lump sum to the Ring, and they looked after our interests.’ But of all their engines of power none is so elastic as their command of the administration of criminal justice. The mayor appoints the police justices, usually selecting them from certain Tammany workers, sometimes from the criminal class, not often from the legal profession. These justices are often Tammany leaders in their respective districts.” ...