This was the point, the procession. Any such rich material evidence of power was a sufficient reason for49 loyalty in the minds of these people. They worship power. None know it better than these particular individuals who lead them. The significance of forcing so many to march, coming thus rapidly home to me, I dropped around to the district Tammany club on the afternoon and evening preceding this eventful day. The palatial chambers of the district leader in the club are his arena, and on this particular evening these same were the center of much political activity. Signs of the power of which I had heard and seen other evidences were here renewed before my eyes. Arranged in a great meeting-chamber, the political hall of the club, were tables and counters, behind which were standing men who, as I learned immediately afterward, were of high standing in the district and city organization. Deputy commissioners of the water department, the department of highways, of sewers; ex-State senators, ex-assemblymen, police sergeants, detective sergeants, aldermen, were all present and all doing yeoman service. Upon the tables were immense sheets, yards in diameter, with lists of names. Back of the tables were immense piles of caps, badges and canes. As fast as the owners of the names on the list appeared their names were checked and their invitation cards, which they threw down cheerily upon the table in company with a five-dollar bill, were marked paid and passed back for further use. At the other tables these cards were then good for a cap, a cane, and two badges, all of which the members were expected to wear.
Energetic as were the half-dozen deputy commissioners,50 police sergeants, detective sergeants, ex-assemblymen and the like, who labored at this clerical task without coats or vests, they were no match for the throng of energetic Tammanyites who filed in and out, carrying their hats and canes away with them. Hundreds of clerks, precinct captains, wardmen, street-cleaners, two-thousand-dollar-a-year clerks, swarmed the spacious lobby and greeted one another in that perfunctory way so common to most political organizations. The “Hellos,” “Well, old mans,” “Well, how are things?” and “There goes” were as thick and all-pervading as the tobacco smoke which filled the rooms. Tammanyites in comfortable positions of all degrees moved about in new clothes and squeaky shoes. Distinct racial types illustrated how common is the trait of self-interest and how quick are the young Germans, Irish and Jews to espouse some cause or profession where self-interest and the simultaneous advancement of the power of some particular individual or organization are not incompatible. Smilingly they greeted one another, with that assumption of abandon and good fellowship which was as evidently assumed for the occasion as could be. In the case of many it was all too plain that it was an effort to be as bright and genial as they appeared to be. However, they had mastered the externals and could keep a straight face. How hard those straight mouths could become, how defiant those narrow protruding jaws, only time and a little failure on some one’s part would tell.
While the enthusiasm of this labor was at its highest51 Mr. Powers put in an appearance. He was as pictured. On this occasion, his clothes were plain black, his necktie black, his face a bright red, partially due to a recent, and very close shave. He moved about with catlike precision and grace, and everywhere politicians buttonholed or bowed to him, the while he smiled upon every one in the same colorless, silent and decidedly secret way.
“Mr. Powers, we’re going to run out of caps before long,” one official hurried forward to say.
“Dugan has that in charge,” he replied.
“I guess we’ll have a full attendance,” whispered another of those high in his favor.
“That’s good.”
While he was sitting in his rosewood-finished office at one side of the great room dozens of those who had come from other districts to pay their respects and buy a ticket looked in upon him.
“I’ll be with you in the morning, Michael,” said a jolly official from another district.
“Thank you, George,” he replied smiling. “We’ll have a fine day, I hope.”
“I hope so,” said the other.
Sitting about in their chairs, some of the older officials who had come to the club on this very special occasion fell into a reflective mood and dug up the conditions of the past.
“Do you remember Mike as an alderman, Jerry?”
“I do. There was none better.”
“Remember his quarrel with Murtha?”
52 “Aye! He was for taking no odds from anybody those days.”
“Brave as a lion, he was.”
“He was.&rd............