Читать книгу The Color of a Great City - Theodore Dreiser - Страница 10

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In an area of territory including something like forty thousand residents of the crowded East Side of New York there dwells and rules an individual whose political significance might well be a lesson to the world.

Stout, heavy-headed and comfortably constituted, except in the matter of agility, he walks; and where he is not a personal arbiter he is at least a familiar figure. Not a saloon-keeper (and there is one to every half-block) but knows him perfectly and would be glad to take off his hat to him if it were expected, and would bring him into higher favor. Not a street cleaner or street division superintendent, policeman or fireman but recognizes him and goes out of his way to greet him respectfully. Store-keepers and school children, the basement barber and the Italian coal-dealer all know who is meant when one incidentally mentions “the boss.” His progress, if one might so term his daily meanderings, is one of continual triumph. It is not coupled with huzzahs, it is true, but there is a far deeper and more vital sentiment aroused, a feeling of reverence due a master.

I have in mind a common tenement residence in a crowded and sometimes stifling street in this vicinity, where at evening the hand-organs play and the children run the thoroughfare by thousands. Poor, compact; rich only in those quickly withering flowers of flesh and blood, the boys and girls of the city. It is a section from which most men would flee when in search of rest and quiet. The carts and wagons are numerous, the people are hard-working and poor. Stale odors emanate from many hallways and open windows.

Yet here, winter and summer, when evening falls and the cares of his contracting business are over for the day, this individual may be seen perched upon the front stoop of his particular tenement building or making a slow, conversational progress to the clubhouse, a half-dozen doors to the west. So peculiar is the political life of the great metropolis that his path for this short distance is blockaded by dozens who seek the awesome confessional of his ear.

“Mr. Powers, if you don’t mind, when you’re through I would like a word with you.”

“Mr. Powers, if you’re not too busy, I want to ask you a question.”

“Mr. Powers—” how often is this simple form of request made into his ear. Three hours’ walking, less than three hundred feet—this tells the story of the endless number that seek to buttonhole him. “Rubbing something offen him,” is the way the politicians interpret these conversations.

Being a big man with a very “big” influence, he is inclined to be autocratic, an attitude of mind which endless whispered pleas are little calculated to modify. Always he carries himself with a reserved and secret air. There is something uncompromising about the wide mouth, with its long upper lip, the thin line of the lips set like the edge of an oyster shell, the square, heavily-weighted jaw beneath, which is cold and hard. Yet his mouth is continually wrinkling at the corners with the semblance of a smile, and those nearest as well as those farthest from him will tell you that he has a good heart. You may take that with a grain of salt, or not, as you choose.

I had not been in the district very long before I saw in the windows of nearly every kind of store a cheaply-printed placard announcing that the annual outing of the Michael J. Powers Association would take place on Tuesday, August 2d, at Wetzel’s Grove, College Point. The steamer Cygnus, leaving Pier 30, East River, would convey them. Games, luncheon and dinner were to be the entertainment. Tickets five dollars.

Any one who has ever taken even a casual glance at the East Side would be struck by the exorbitance of such a charge as five dollars. No one would believe for an instant that these saving Germans, Jews and other types of hard-working nationalities would willingly invest anything over fifty cents in any such outing. Times are always hard here, the size of a dollar exceedingly large. Yet there was considerable stir over the prospective pleasure of the day in this district.

“Toosday is a great day,” remarked my German barber banteringly, when I called on the Saturday previous to get shaved.

“What about Tuesday?”

“Mr. Powers holds his picnic. Der will be some beer drunk, you bet.”

“What do you know about it? Do you belong to the association?”

“Yes. I was now six years a member alretty. It is a fine association.”

“What makes them charge five dollars? There can’t be very many around here who can afford to pay that much.”

“Der will be t’ree t’ousand, anyway,” he answered, “maybe more. Efferybody goes. Mr. Powers say ‘Go,’ den dey go.”

“Oh, Mr. Powers makes you go, does he?”

“No,” he replied conservatively. “It is a nice picnic. We haf music, a cubble of bands. Der is racing, schwimming, all de beer you want for nodding, breakfast und dinner, a nice boat ride. Oh, we haf a good time.”

“Do you belong to Tammany?”

“No, sir.”

“Hold any office under Mr. Powers?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, why do you go, then? There must be some reason.”

“I haf de polling place in my back room,” he finally admitted.

“How much do you get for that?”

“Sixty-five dollars a year.”

“And you give five of that back for a ticket?”

He smiled, but made no reply.

It was on Monday that the German grocer signified his intention of going.

“Do all of you people have to attend?” I inquired.

“No,” he replied, “we don’t have to. There will be somebody there from most of the stores around here, though.”

“Why?”

“Ask Mr. Powers. There’ll be somebody there from every saloon, barbershop, restaurant and grocery in the district.”

“But why?”

“Ho,” he returned, “it’s a good picnic. Mr. Powers looks mighty fine marching at the head. They say he is next after Croker now.”

Among the petty dealers of the neighborhood generally could be found the same genial acceptance of the situation.

“Dat is a great parade,” said a milk dealer to me. “You will see somet’ing doing if you are in de distric’ dat night. Senators walk around just de same as street cleaners; police captains, too.”

I thought of the condescension of these high-and-mighties deigning to walk with the common street cleaners, coerced into line.

“Are you going?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Want to go?”

“Oh, it’s good enough.”

“What do you think of Powers?”

“He is a great man. Stands next to Croker. Wait till you see de procession dat goes by here.”

The Michael J. Powers Association

This was the point, the procession. Any such rich material evidence of power was a sufficient reason for 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, 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 highest 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?”

“Aye! He was for taking no odds from anybody those days.”

“Brave as a lion, he was.”

“He was.”

“There’s no question of his nerve to-day.”

“None at all.”

“He’s a good leader.”

“He is.”

“How did Powers ever come to get his grip upon the district?” I inquired of an old office-holder who was silently watching the buzzing throng in the rooms before him.

“He was always popular with the boys,” he answered. “Long before the fortieth was ever divided he was popular with the boys of one section of it. Creamer was leader at that time.”

“Yes, but how did he get up?”

“How does anybody get up?” he returned. “He worked up. When he was assistant mechanic in the Fire Department, getting a hundred and twenty a month, he gave half of it away. Anybody could get money off him; that was the trouble. I’ve known him as a lad to give seventy-seven dollars away in one month.”

“Who was he, that he should distribute money so freely?”

“Captain of two hundred, of course. He wasn’t called upon to spend his own money, though.”

“And that started him?”

“He was always a smart fellow,” returned the speaker. “Creamer liked him. Creamer was a fighter himself. Mike was as brave as a lion. When they divided the district he got John Kelly to give Powers the other half. He did it, of course, because he could trust Powers to stand with him. But he did it, just the same.”

“Kelly was head of Tammany Hall then?”

“He was.”

While we were talking a cart-driver or street-cleaner made his way through the broad street-door towards the private office where so many others were, taking off his hat as he did so and waiting respectfully to one side. Dozens of young politicians were trifling about. The deputy commissioner of highways, the assistant deputy tax commissioner, the assistant deputy of the department of sewers, and others were lounging comfortably in the chief’s room. Three or four black-suited, priestly-looking assistants from the office of the chief of police were conferring in that wise, subtle and whispering way which characterizes all the conversation of those numerous aspirants for higher political preferment.

Some one stalked over to the waiting newcomer and said: “Well?”

“Is Mr. Powers here this evening?”

At the sound of his name the leader, who was lounging in his Russia-leather chair within, raised his head, and seeing the figure in the reception area, exclaimed:

“Put on your hat, old man! No one is expected to put off his hat here. Come right in!”

He paused, and as the street-sweeper approached he turned lightly to his satellites. “Get the hell out of here, now, and let this man have a chance,” he said quickly, the desire to be genial with all being apparent. The deputies came out of the room smiling and the old man was ushered in.

“Now, Mr. Cassidy,” I heard him begin, but slowly he moved around to the door and closed it. The conversation was terminated so far as we listeners from without were concerned. Only the profuse bowing of the old man as he came out, the “Thank ye, Mr. Powers, thank ye,” repeated and repeated, gave any indication as to what the nature of the transaction might have been.

While such incidents were passing the evening for some, the great crowd of ticket-purchasers continued. Hundreds upon hundreds filed in and out, some receiving a nod, some a mere glance of recognition, some only a scrutiny of a very peculiar sort.

“Are these all members of the club?” I asked of a friend, an ex-assemblyman and now precinct captain in the block in which I voted.

“They’re nearly all members of the district organization,” he replied.

“How many votes do you claim to control?”

“About five thousand.”

“How many votes are there in the district?”

“Ten thousand.”

“Then you have fully half the votes assured before election-time rolls around?”

“We’ve got to have,” he replied significantly. “There’s no going into a fight under Powers, unless he knows where the votes are. He won’t stand for it.”

While sitting thus watching the proceedings, the hours passed and the procession thinned down to a mere handful. By midnight it looked as if all were over, and the leader came forth and quietly took his leave.

“Anything more, Eddie?” he asked of a peaked-face young Irishman outside his office door.

“Nothing that I can think of.”

“You’ll see to the building?” he asked the deputy commissioner of taxes.

“It’ll look like a May party in the morning, Chief.”