containing text of speeches by Carl Schurz, William Travers Jerome, George Haven Putnam, Seth Low, Felix Adler and others

“ Can they be blind to their present opportunity to shake off the odious yoke of a grinding and degrading despotism? Here they see the banner of a civic uprising carried by trustworthy leaders. Who will be simple enough to be misled by the quibbles and cavils resorted to as to the manner in which that banner has been raised, or by the transparent trick of the tryrant in distress to hide himself for a time behind a respectable name? That banner, as it now floats over us, is the banner of deliverance, and if the citizens of New York are true to themselves, it will be the banner of victory. ”

“ Of all men in America Boss Croker and his crew are those who hat Mr. Shepard's high principles and reformatory aims most bitterly, and who are most ardently bent upon defeating those principles and aims. Why the very platform upon which they nominated Mr. Shepard glories in the record of their past achievements, and the candidates on the same ticket with him, who are, if elected, to be his coadjutors, are taken from the ranks of their faithful. ”

“ The first fact that, in our efforts for good government, stares us in the face is the existence of an organization — Tammany Hall — whose very purpose it is to give the city the worst government it dares, to the end of making money out of it. And this organization has been for years, and is now, in full possession of the municipal power. To describe its character, I cannot do better than quote Mr. Shepard's own language, uttered in a Seth Low mass-meeting, in the municipal campaign of 1897. ”

“ You women who live above Fourteenth Street do not know the conditions that exist in this city, the horror and shame and cruelty and wrong that the poor people of this city have to suffer. When you add to their natural burdens the burdens of blackmail, of extortion, and plunder you add a burden that if you did your duty this year, if you had done your duty in the past, those people would not have had to bear. ”

“ Thus they need very much money for their well-known purposes, and to raise that money they have to burden the taxpayers with no end of sinecures and superfluous salaries; they have to put the whole business of the city, from the big corporation down to the boot-black, under a system of blackmail — the most insidious species of highway robbery ever invented; they have to levy assessments on the brothels and gambling hells and become protectors and propagators of vice, for the more such places there are the greater will be the income from them. ”

“ We must not content ourselves with merely replacing the vicious Tammany methods of government with better ones, but we must spare no effort to drag the evildoers, the corruptionists, the blackmailers, the protectors and promoters of vice, out of their holes and to bring them to justice and condign punishment, so that they may not only receive their dues, but serve as warning examples. ”

“ This is the most extraordinary campaign I ever witnessed; a struggle for good municipal government, in which we have to choose between two candidates for the Mayoralty who, both honorable men, profess to aim at the same ideals of municipal administration. ”

“ We make war upon them, not for the purpose of fighting the Democracy, but to deliver the city of its tyrants, bloodsuckers, and demoralizers. When I express the hope that under the coming city administration more of the Tammany rascalities, not one-tenth of which have so far become publicly known, will be uncovered and exposed to popular abhorrence, and as many as possible of the blackmailers will be sent to jail, I mean that they should be prosecuted, not as Democrats, but as criminals. ”

“ An organization glorying in a leader who tells you with cynical frankness that he is in politics for his own pocket all the time? Can you hope to reform that crowd from the inside by moral suasion and the charm of a virtuous example? ”

“ I can only hope that my friend Shepard, whom I cherish and esteem so much, and to whom, from the bottom of my soul, I wish well, may not be buried under the ruins.
“One word more. One of the chief elements of Tammany's power is the terrorism it exercises over men's minds. It has made people afraid by the cunning unscrupulousness of its persecutions. There are thousands of business men in this city who do not dare to do or refuse anything the doing or refusing of which might bring upon them the displeasure and the ruthless vengeance of the Tammany tiger. ”

“ The municipal governments of our large cities are notoriously the sorest point in the working of American institutions. They have, almost without exception, produced corruption and misrule of the most appalling kind. One of the chief causes of these dreadful failures has been found in the fact that in voting for municipal officers the citizens are asked, and induced, to divide, not on questions of municipal interest, but on the lines of National party politics. ”

“ Do we not all know that in our recent history the National Democracy succeeded only when, spurning Tammany's counsel, it took as its leader a man who was ‘loved for the enemies he had made,’ Tammany being the chief representative of those enemies? ”

“ At the outset of this campaign I said that the single issue of it was Crokerism, and speaking now, after both sides have been deployed, I say again that the single issue of it is Crokerism. On the one side is a ticket named by Mr. Croker from top to bottom, standing upon a platform approved by Mr. Croker, associated with a county ticket also approved and named by Mr. Croker. The ingenuity of the lawyer, even of the adroit lawyer, is not competent to make anybody thin, who will stop to think, that a victory for that ticket is anything but a victory for Richard Croker. ”

“ He calls it a illusory attempt. If we consider the history of the reform movement in this city from the small beginnings of the so-called Goo-Goos, of the 1,200 of whom I have the honor to have been one, to the 150,000 votes cast for Mr. Low at the last election, do you not feel that the contention of Mr. Shepard is erroneous, and that the movement for reform has grown steadily and is bound to grow?”
Julius H. Seymour spoke briefly on the issues of the campaign. ”

“ There are in Greater New York to-day probably close to 100,000 disreputable women. The wise man is not the man who seeks by the severity of the criminal law to prevent that which the criminal law cannot prevent. He seeks to minimize the dreadful evils of a lot so pitiful that it makes one shudder to think of it. But we find in this city men who grow rich from the shame of these women.
“We find policemen who so grow rich — not all of them. Very few of the men who walk the beats, practically none of the men who walk the beats, touch a penny of that money ”

“ It is true, as my friend says, that people have too long been accustomed to that way of electing municipal officers to be easily weaned of it. But this is only a reason, not for abandoning, but for continuing with redoubled energy the effort for educating the popular mind up to a more enlightened view of the public interest. ”

“ Do you think the big Tammany chiefs can get rich without a very liberal flow of funds? Do you think they can keep tens of thousands of their retainers and voting cattle in food and clothes and good spirits, alcoholic and other, without immense cash returns? ”

“ We have all the Democratic organizations of New York supporting the Fusion cause. We do not admit that Tammany Hall is a Democratic organization. Taking out the votes bought by Tammany, the votes which are enforced by it, and the votes of those who favor opportunity to break the law, we believe we will have a majority of the Democratic votes of New York for our ticket. ”

“ Putnam has referred to the 30,000 gamblers and disorderly persons who are going to oppose me, according to some respectable and astute politicians, but there are not any 30,000 gamblers and disorderly persons who are going to oppose me, not at all. The administration of this city has been so vicious and corrupt that even the gamblers and disorderly persons cannot stand it any longer. ”

“ And you will find a good many gamblers who, when it comes to the question of putting their vote in the ballot box, are going to vote for me — not because they believe that if I am elected they are going to get any favors at my hands.
“There is not one of the indecent people of the City of New York who does not know that they will get just what is coming to them. ”

“ You feel no responsibility that it comes to you personally to see that this thing is not so; you do not even inquire if it is so, and when a man tells you that it is so you say he is a ranter and railer, and is talking of things he knows not about. ”

“ It is also true that our present methods of making non-partisan nominations are quite imperfect and liable to misuse. But that should only stimulate good citizens to exert their ingenuity for improving them. ”

“ We must have in office, not only a Mayor who will do this part of his duties with zest and alacrity, which, certainly Seth Low will, if elected, but we must put by his side coadjutors in sympathy with the work, and especially a District Attorney who understands his business and will do it, not only with ability, but with fearless resolution and enthusiastic energy — just such a public prosecutor as we shall have in Mr. ”

“ The ingenuity of Tammany and its Brooklyn allies was sorely taxed to find a means for averting the storm, and that means was believed to be found in the nomination for the Mayoralty of a man of eminent respectability, a man who had gained distinctive standing as a fiery opponent of Tammany and a champion of reform. Thus Mr. Shepard was nominated. ”

“ Shepard, tells us that our Citizens' Union, by its independent course, has fulfilled its mission in forcing the two parties both to nominate decent men for the Mayoralty, and that this is all that independent movements should be required to do. ”

“ On the contrary, it grows worse with age, as all such powerful organizations for plunder do. In fact, its latest performances in city government that have been exposed rather exceed its former ones in nastiness. ”

“ They know thatt if citizens vote for municipal candidates because they are Republicans or Democrats, they will be apt to vote for Republicans or Democrats, although they are rascals, and to protect the rascals in office because they are Democrats or Republicans. ”

“ If that ticket is elected Richard Croker may return to England and claim in the presence of the civilized world that this great city of New York actually prefers to be governed from Wantage, and actually prefers to have its politics administered by a man who will do it for the sake of his own pocket all the time rather than to choose for its officials men who have been put in nomination in open antagonism to Mr. ”