The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

“But he said the Dead Rabbit was a drum for crooks!” protested Sheeny Joe, speaking to the redfaced man.

“S’ppose he did,” retorted the other, “that don’t take a dollar out of the drawer.”

“An’ he’s to break my nose an’ get away?” complained Sheeny Joe.

“Well, you oughter to take care of your nose,” said the red-faced man, “an’ not go leavin’ it lyin’ around where a kid can break it.”

Sheeny Joe was not to be shaken off; he engaged in violent argument with the red-faced man. Their tones, however, were now more guarded, and no one might hear their words beyond themselves. While this went forward, the magistrate, to save his dignity, perhaps, and not to have it look as though he were waiting for orders, pretended to be writing in his book of cases which lay open on his desk.

It was Sheeny Joe to bring the discussion between himself and the red-faced man to an end. Throughout the whispered differences between them, differences as to what should be my fate, Sheeny Joe showed hot with fury, while the red-faced man was cool and conciliatory; his voice when one caught some sound of it was coaxing.

“There’s been enough said!” cried Sheeny Joe, suddenly walking away from the red-faced man. “No duck is goin’ to break my nose for fun.”

“The boy’s goin’ loose,” observed the red-faced man in placid contradiction. “An’ the girl goes to her friends, wherever they be, an’ they aint at the Dead Rabbit.” Then in a blink the countenance of the redfaced man went from calm to rage. He whirled Sheeny Joe by the shoulder. “See here!” he growled, “one more roar out of you, an’ I’ll stand you up right now, an’ it’s you who will take sixty days, or my name aint Big John Kennedy. If you think that’s a bluff, call it. Another yeep, an’ the boat’s waitin’ for you! You’ve been due at the Island for some time.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Kennedy!” replied Sheeny Joe, his crest falling, and the sharpest terror in his face, “that’s all right! You know me? Of course it goes as you say! Did you ever know me to buck ag’inst you?”

The red-faced man smiled ferociously. The anger faded from his brow, and leaving Sheeny Joe without further word, he again spoke to the magistrate.

“The charges ag’inst these two children, your honor, are withdrawn.” He spoke in his old cool tones. “Captain,” he continued, addressing that dignitary, “send one of your plain-clothes people with this girl to find her friends for her. Tell him he mustn’t make any mistakes.”

“The cases are dismissed,” said the magistrate, making an entry in his book. He appeared relieved with the change in the situation; almost as much, if that were possible, as myself. “The cases are dismissed; no costs to be taxed. I think that is what you desire, Mr. Kennedy?”

“Yes, your honor.” Then coming over to where I sat, the red-faced man continued: “You hunt me up to-morrow – Big John Kennedy – that’s my name. Any cop can tell you where to find me.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered faintly.

“There’s two things about you,” said the red-faced man, rubbing my stubble of hair with his big paw, “that’s great in a boy. You can hit like the kick of a pony; an’ you can keep your mouth shut. I aint heard a yelp out of you, mor’n if you was a Boston terrier.” This, admiringly.

As we left the magistrate’s office – the red-faced man, the reputable old gentleman, my father, Apple Cheek, and myself, with Anne holding my hand as though I were some treasure lost and regained – the reputable old gentleman spoke up pompously to the red-faced man.

“I commend what you have done, sir; but in that connection, and as a taxpayer, let me tell you that I resent your attitude towards the magistrate. You issued your orders, sir, and conducted yourself toward that officer of justice as though you owned him.”

“Well, what of it?” returned the red-faced man composedly. “I put him there. What do you think I put him there for? To give me the worst of it?”

“Sir, I do not understand your expressions!” said the reputable old gentleman. “And I resent them! Yes, sir, I resent them as a taxpayer of this town!”

“Say,” observed the red-faced man benignantly, “there’s nothin’ wrong about you but your head. You had better take a term or two at night school an’ get it put on straight. You say you’re a taxpayer; you’ve already fired the fact at me about five times. An’ now I ask you: Suppose you be?”

“Taxpayer; yes, sir, taxpayer!” repeated the reputable old gentleman, in a mighty fume. “Do you intend to tell me there’s no meaning to the word?”

“It means,” said the red-faced man in the slow manner of one who gives instruction; “it means that if you’re nothin’ but a taxpayer – an’ I don’t think you be or you’d have told us – you might as well sit down. You’re a taxpayer, eh? All right; I’m a ward-leader of Tammany Hall. You’re a taxpayer; good! I’m the man that settles how much you pay, d’ye see!” Then, as though sympathy and disgust were blended: “Old man, you go home and take a hard look at the map, and locate yourself. You don’t know it, but all the same you’re in New York.”

CHAPTER IV – THE BOSS ENTERS THE PRIMARY GRADE OF POLITICS

PERHAPS you will say I waste space and lay too much of foolish stress upon my quarrel with Sheeny Joe and its police-cell consequences. And yet you should be mindful of the incident’s importance to me as the starting point of my career. For I read in what took place the power of the machine as you will read this printed page. I went behind the bars by the word of Big John Kennedy; and it was by his word that I emerged and took my liberty again. And yet who was Big John Kennedy? He was the machine; the fragment of its power which molded history in the little region where I lived. As mere John Kennedy he would be nothing. Or at the most no more than other men about him. But as “Big John Kennedy,” an underchief of Tammany Hall, I myself stood witness while a captain of police accepted his commands without a question, and a magistrate found folk guilty or innocent at the lifting of his finger. Also, that sweat of terror to sprinkle the forehead of Sheeny Joe, when in his moment of rebellion he found himself beneath the wrathful shadow of the machine, was not the least impressive element of my experience; and the tolerant smile, that was half pity, half amusement, as Big Kennedy set forth to the reputable old gentleman – who was only “a taxpayer” – the little limits of his insignificance, deepened the effect upon my mind of what had gone before.

True, I indulged in no such analysis as the above, and made no study of the picture in its detail; but I could receive an impression just as I might receive a blow, and in the innocence of my ignorance began instantly to model myself upon the proven fact of a power that was above law, above justice, and which must be consulted and agreed with, even in its caprice, before existence could be profitable or even safe. From that moment the machine to me was as obviously and indomitably abroad as the pavement under foot, and must have its account in every equation of life to the solution whereof I was set. To hold otherwise, and particularly to act otherwise, would be to play the fool, with failure or something worse for a reward.

Big Kennedy owned a drinking place. His barroom was his headquarters; although he himself never served among his casks and bottles, having barmen for that work. He poured no whisky, tapped no beer, donned no apron, but sat at tables with his customers and laid out his campaigns of politics or jubilated over victory, and seemed rather the visitor than the proprietor in his own saloon. He owned shrewdness, force, courage, enterprise, and was one of those who carry a pleasant atmosphere that is like hypnotism, and which makes men like them. His manner was one of rude frankness, and folk held him for a bluff, blunt, genial soul, who made up in generosity what he lacked of truth.

And yet I have thought folk mistaken in Big Kennedy. For all his loud openness and friendly roar, which would seem to tell his every thought, the man could be the soul of cunning and turn secret as a mole. He was for his own interest; he came and went a cold calculating trader of politics; he never wasted his favors, but must get as much as he gave, and indulged in no revenges except when revenge was needed for a lesson. He did what men call good, too, and spent money and lost sleep in its accomplishment. To the ill he sent doctors and drugs; he found work and wages for idle men; he paid landlords and kept the roofs above the heads of the penniless; where folk were hungry he sent food, and where they were cold came fuel.

For all that, it was neither humanity nor any milk of kindness which put him to these labors of grace; it was but his method of politics and meant to bind men to him. They must do his word; they must carry out his will; then it was he took them beneath the wing of his power and would spare neither time nor money to protect and prosper them.

And on the other side, he who raised his head in opposition to Big Kennedy was crushed; not in anger, but in caution. He weeded out rebellion, and the very seed of it, with as little scruple and for the same reason a farmer weeds a field.

It took me years to collect these truths of Big Kennedy. Nor was their arrival when they did come one by one, to make a shade of change in my regard for him. I liked him in the beginning; I liked him in the end; he became that headland on the coasts of politics by which I steered my course. I studied Big Kennedy as one might study a science; by the lines of his conduct I laid down lines for my own; in all things I was his disciple and his imitator.

Big Kennedy is dead now; and I will say no worse nor better of him than this: He was a natural captain of men. Had he been born to a higher station, he might have lighted a wick in history that would require those ten thicknesses of darkness which belong with ten centuries, to obscure. But no such thing could come in the instance of Big Kennedy; his possibilities of eminence, like my own, were confined to Tammany and its politics, since he had no more of education than have I. The time has gone by in the world at large, and had in Big Kennedy’s day, when the ignorant man can be the first man.

Upon the day following my release, as he had bid me.

I sought Big Kennedy. He was in his barroom, and the hour being mid-morning I was so far lucky as to find him quite alone. He was quick to see me, too, and seemed as full of a pleasant interest in me as though my simple looks were of themselves good news. He did most of the talking, for I sat backward and bashful, the more since I could feel his sharp eyes upon me, taking my measure. Never was I so looked over and so questioned, and not many minutes had come and gone before Big Kennedy knew as much of me and my belongings as did I myself. Mayhap more; for he weighed me in the scales of his experience with all the care of gold, considering meanwhile to what uses I should be put, and how far I might be expected to advance his ends.

One of his words I recall, for it gave me a glow of relief at the time; at that it was no true word. It was when he heard how slightly I had been taught of books.

“Never mind,” said he, “books as often as not get between a party’s legs and trip him up. Better know men than books. There’s my library.” Here he pointed to a group about a beer table. “I can learn more by studyin’ them than was ever found between the covers of a book, and make more out of it.”

Big Kennedy told me I must go to work.

“You’ve got to work, d’ye see,” said he, “if it’s only to have an excuse for livin’.”

Then he asked me what I could do. On making nothing clear by my replies – for I knew of nothing – he descended to particulars.

“What do you know of horses? Can you drive one?”

My eye brightened; I might be trusted to handle a horse.

“An’ I’ll gamble you know your way about the East Side,” said he confidently; “I’ll answer for that.” Then getting up he started for the door, for no grass grew between decision and action with Big Kennedy. “Come with me,” he said.

We had made no mighty journey when we stopped before a grocery. It was a two-store front, and of a prosperous look, with a wealth of vegetables and fruits in crates, and baskets, and barrels, covering half the sidewalk. The proprietor was a rubicund German, who bustled forth at sight of my companion.

“How is Mr. Kennedy?” This with exuberance. “It makes me prout that you pay me a wisit.”

“Yes?” said the other dryly. Then, going directly to the point: “Here’s a boy I’ve brought you, Nick. Let him drive one of your wagons. Give him six dollars a week.”

“But, Mr. Kennedy,” replied the grocer dubiously, looking me over with the tail of his eye, “I haf yet no wacancy. My wagons is all full.”

“I’m goin’ to get him new duds,” said Big Kennedy, “if that’s what you’re thinkin’ about.”

Still, the grocer, though not without some show of respectful alarm, insisted on a first position.

“If he was so well dressed even as you, Mr. Kennedy, yet I haf no wacancy,” said he.

“Then make one,” responded Big Kennedy coolly. “Dismiss one of the boys you have, d’ye see? At least two who work for you don’t belong in my ward.” As the other continued doubtful Big Kennedy became sharp. “Come, come, come!” he cried in a manner peremptory rather than fierce; “I can’t wait all day. Don’t you feed your horses in the street? Don’t you obstruct the sidewalks with your stuff? Don’t you sell liquor in your rear room without a license? Don’t you violate a dozen ordinances? Don’t the police stand it an’ pass you up? An’ yet you hold me here fiddlin’ and foolin’ away time!”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Kennedy,” cried the grocer, who from the first had sought to stem the torrent of the other’s eloquence, “I was only try in’ to think up w’ich horse I will let him drive alreatty. That’s honest! sure as my name is Nick Fogel!”