"Tammany" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... o'clock as near as I can remember, when a timid knock on the front door startled both of us. I answered the call, expecting to find that fairy Miss Tescheron ready to pop in and oust me like a Republican hold-over on a Tammany Happy New Year's. I peeped out as charily as a jailer. The dim light revealed a tiny messenger boy—something awful had probably happened up home! A messenger boy was enough to startle both of us, for no one in the world would spend half a dollar to tell us anything unless they ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... I'm the busiest man out of a job in New York. I carries a bunch of railroad stocks on margin, trades off some Bronx buildin' lots for a cold water tenement, and unloads a street openin' contract that I bought off'm a Tammany Hall man. Every time I thinks of that steam yacht, with all them hands burnin' up my money, I goes out and does some more hustlin'. Say, there's nothin' like needin' the dough, for keepin' a feller up on his toes, ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... a purely local reputation, if only for eccentricity, by such means. But Mr. Jarvis's reputation was far from being purely local. Broadway knew him, and the Tenderloin. Tammany Hall knew him. Long Island City knew him. In the underworld of New York his name was a by-word. For Bat Jarvis was the leader of the famous Groome Street Gang, the most noted of all New York's ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... because Bud's old man is a Tammany boss—which gives Bud a big pull wid d' police. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... were rich," she went on, "or you would not have dared offer yourself to me. All my friends were amazed at my stooping to accept you. Your father was an Irish Tammany contractor, wasn't he?—a sort of criminal? But I simply had to marry. So I gave you my family and position and name in exchange for your wealth—a good bargain for you, but a poor one ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... not to be an easy victory. Outside his own party, to prevent his succeeding himself as district attorney, Tammany Hall was using every weapon in her armory. The commissioner of police was a Tammany man, and in the public prints Wharton had repeatedly declared that Banf, his star witness against the police, had been killed by the police, and that they had prevented the discovery of his murderer. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... crumpled up like a can that has been kicked by a heavy boot, her forepart came down in the square, and the rest of her length, with a great snapping and twisting of shafts and stays, descended, collapsing athwart Tammany Hall and the streets towards Second Avenue. Her gas escaped to mix with air, and the air of her rent balloonette poured into her deflating gas-chambers. Then with an immense impact ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... entered political life in 1790 and joined the Democratic party, which came into power by the election of Jefferson as President and Burr as Vice-President. Davis went to Washington shortly afterward, and was boasting that the elevation of Mr. Jefferson was brought about solely by the management of Tammany Hall. Mr. Jefferson was a philosopher, and soon after caught a very large fly, calling the attention of Mr. Davis to the remarkable fact of the great disproportion in size of one portion of the insect to its body. Mr. Davis took the hint, and left the President, in doubt ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... at a street corner where, above a saloon with a large beer-sign, stretched dim tenement windows toward a dirty sky; and on that drab corner glowed for a moment the mystic light of the Rose of All the World—before a Tammany saloon! Chin high, yearning toward a girl somewhere off to the south, Carl poignantly recalled how Ruth had worshiped the stars. His soul soared, lark and hawk in one, triumphant over the matter-of-factness of daily life. Carl Ericson ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... police relief made his work easier, as toughs whose families had been relieved did not trouble him so much. It is an interesting fact that, during the hard times of 1893-94, political clubs vied with each other the country over in distributing aid. Leaders of Tammany Hall were shrewd enough to urge their followers to organize relief distributions in every ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... the full zenith of his power and glory and of the wealth so easily acquired by certain methods, his daughter was married. All of the then chiefs and district officers of Tammany, city officials, judges and heads of departments vied with each other in the presentation of wedding gifts, among which was a check for $100,000 from the father. Seldom has any bride received a more magnificent tribute, for, coming from such sources, they were nothing ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... believe in votes for women myself," added the waiter, "but I don't believe in openly insultin' 'em in public. And think of the likes of him sayin' as all he wanted was to get elected and as if he didn't care how! Why he ought to be in that Tammany Hall gang back in New York! That's the only place in all this United States, I reckon, where folks stand for that sort of stuff. It's understood back there that all they want is a fat job and the people be damned, but people out here ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... Thomas Fairman's house at Shackamaxon—otherwise Eel-Hole—and in this pleasant springtime, April 4, 1683, he met King Tammany under the forest elm, with the savage people in half-moon circles, looking at the healthy-fed and business-like Quaker. There Tammany and his Indian allies surrendered all the land between the Pennypack ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... York Amusement Co.'s Stock. HARRY PALMER to reopen Tammany with a grand scalping scene in which the TWEED tribe of Indians will appear in aboriginal costume. NORTON, GENET, and confreres have kindly consented to perform their original ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... from time to time appear in the English papers, saying that there has been a hold-up on Fifth Avenue, or that the Chief of Police in some great city has been found to be the head of a gang of international assassins, that things called Tammany and graft and saloons flourish there without let or hindrance, had attracted me to the United States. I wanted to live in such a country. Here, I said, is a place where every man's hand is for himself, where the revolver ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... of Newt has been uniformly respectable but honest—so respectable, indeed, that Mr. Boniface Newt, the father of Abel, a celebrated New York merchant and a Tammany Sachem, had a crest. He had even buttons for his coachman's coat with a stag's head engraved upon them. The same device was upon his sealring. It appeared upon his carriage door. It figured on the edges of his dinner-service. It was worked into the ground ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... and again, he constantly recovers his influence, because he is performing a necessary political task and because he is genuinely representative of the needs of his followers. Organizations such as Tammany in New York City are founded on a deeply rooted political tradition, a group of popular ideas, prejudices, and interests, and a species of genuine democratic association which are a guarantee of a long and tenacious life. They will survive much of the reforming machinery which ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... I have "interviewed" politicians of every school and temper—from Fernando Wood, the chief "wire puller" of swindling Tammany Hall, up to doughty, tongue-tied General Grant, the "useless slaughtering" commander of the northern forces during the civil war— having had the pleasure of learning from the former how "logs" are "rolled" in the furtherance of party ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... political danger comes perhaps from those who are comparatively fit. Any one who has been in America, who has stood among the crowd in a Philadelphian law-court during the trial of a political case, or has seen the thousands of cartoons in a contest in which Tammany is concerned, will find that he has a picture in his mind of one type at least of those who ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... people, "If you will vote for me as the superintendent of this public improvement, I will employ you on the works, whether you are industrious and capable, or idle and worthless." There were then no Tammany Hall politicians or Philadelphia Republican ringsters. The spoils system was unknown. That is an invention of later times. Politicians did not seek office with a view of getting rich. Both Federalists and Democrats sought office to secure either the ascendency ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... although office was often urged upon him, as when the friends of General Jackson wished him to go as representative to Congress, or President Van Buren offered him the secretaryship of the navy, or Tammany Hall, in New York, unanimously and vociferously nominated him for mayor, an incident in the later annals of the city which transcends the most humorous touch in Knickerbocker's History. He was appointed secretary of legation in England in 1829, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... noted for a civic corruption which has been, theoretically, abominable to all good citizens, and which the capitalistic class has denounced as abominable to itself. I suspect this to be an imaginative conception of the situation. Tammany Hall is, I take it, the administrative bureau through which capital purchases its privileges. An incorruptible government would offend capital, because, under such a government, capital would have to obey the law, and privilege would cease. Occasionally, Tammany grows rapacious and ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... as we were in the liquor business there in New York it was almost natural that we should vote the Tammany rule because every ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... Common Council in 1832 a franchise for the exclusive use of Fourth avenue, north of Twenty-third street—a franchise which, it was openly charged, was obtained by distributing bribes in the form of stock among the aldermen. [Footnote: "The History of Tammany ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... The girl pointed to the long double row of grisly wooden edifices down the street. "Them's Sadler's Shacks on this side, and Tammany Barracks on the other. They go all the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bunch of the boys how Bob Fitzsimmons hit; The barman is talking of Tammany Hall, and why the ward boss got fired; I'll just sneak into a corner, and they'll let me alone a bit; The room is reeling round and round ... O God, but I'm ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... her aunt. "He is worse than all the Tammany bosses put together. The other men on the council of ten eat out of his hand, as Abel Landover says. His word is law,—or, I should have said, his smile is law. All he has to do is to grin and the argument is over. I've never seen anything like the way ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... you're having?" the fat, dirty janitress enquired. Mrs. Foley was the widow of a useful Tammany man, and she owned real estate in Flatbush. She was huge and soft as a feather bed. Her face and arms were permanently coated with dust, grained like wood where the sweat ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... erecting 40 of the others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196 buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am sure, the patronising approval of the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... his chief's superior: a brilliant journalist, originally on the Times, afterwards editor of the New York World, when, by dint of his energy and pluck, he was the chief cause of breaking up the notorious Tammany Ring; a charming writer of picturesque country scenes—in fact, an accomplished man, and one harshly treated by that fickle dame Fortune by being branded, rightly or wrongly, as the mere creature ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... forgetful of the day, and in the evening an elegant entertainment and ball were given in the Capitol Building, which, we are informed, were largely attended. So late as 1796, Kentucky and Virginia persisted in preserving the Old Style date. But we have documentary evidence that in 1790 the Tammany Society of New York celebrated the day on February 22. The society had been organized less than a year, and it is interesting to see that it did not allow the first Washington's Birthday in its history to pass by without fitting ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... to | |inquiries addressed to him with negative shakes of | |the head. He swung into the cabinet room with the | |set stride with which he mounted the steps of the | |Baltimore platform to deliver his famous speech | |attacking Charles F. Murphy and Tammany Hall, and | |precipitating his break with Champ Clark, whose | |nomination for the presidency up to that time seemed| |assured. | | | |For more than an hour after he reached the cabinet | |room the doors were closed. Across the hall the | |President's personal messenger had erected ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... Booth, was a member of the Century and of the Lotos. The law of the day was represented by such men as Mayor Hall, until he resigned as a result of the criticism of fellow-members growing out of the exposures of the Tammany frauds in the summer and autumn of 1871, W.M. Evarts, Judge Garvin, Judge Gunning S. Bedford, Eli P. Norton, and John E. Burrill. Of men prominent in political and municipal life were August Belmont, Samuel J. Tilden, Peter B. Sweeny, former Mayor George Opdyke, Isaac ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... to-day than any city in the land outside of New England. My old friend, Mayor Low, urged the consolidation of Brooklyn with New York on the ground that its moral and civic influence would be a wholesome counteraction of Tammany and the tenement-house politics. For self-protection, I joined with my lamented brother, the late Dr. Storrs, in an effort to maintain our independence. Ours is pre-eminently a city of homes where the bulk of the people live in an undivided dwelling, and I ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... appreciation of a politician so distinguished, I was waited upon by a delegation of the before-named politicians, (two of whom came slightly intoxicated,) who had come, as they said, to tender to me an invitation to visit New York. A public reception by the Mayor and Council; a grand banquet at Tammany Hall; the honor of being made one of its Sachems; free apartments and two charming serenades at the New York Hotel; and divers suppers at very respectable houses, were temptingly suggested as an inducement for me to come out and take ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... unless the people are discouraged from voting in the country by the belief that with Tammany to count, it matters not what majority ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the good is not in any one state, nor all the bad. While Kentucky has had her night riders, Missouri has had her boodlers, California her grafters, Illinois her anarchists, Pennsylvania her machine politics, New York her Tammany tiger, and Washington City her blizzards on inauguration days. God doesn't grow all the daisies in one field nor confine thorns to ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... [353] that the educated Filipinos, admittedly very few in number, absolutely control the masses. He adds [354] that presidentes of pueblos are as absolute bosses as is Murphy in Tammany Hall, and that the towns taken collectively constitute the provinces. The first statement is true, and the second, which is tantamount to a declaration that the presidentes control every square foot of the provinces and every man in them, is not so far ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... William L. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. A series of very plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-Senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum—the New York County Court House boot-black stand. New ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... halted by politicians, it was always Sam Caldwell who was sent across the sea to confer with them. He could quote you the market-price on a Russian grand-duke, or a Portuguese colonial governor, as accurately as he could that of a Tammany sachem. His was the non-publicity department. People who did not like him called him Mr. Forrester's jackal. When the lawyers of the company had studied how they could evade the law on corporations, and had shown how the officers of ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... existence or non-existence of a Civil Service, free trade, or mudscows; and when these things are forever crushed out of his imagination it will be time enough to give him a name, seeing he is neither Republican nor Democrat, nor Tammany, nor even a Stalwart, nor a three-hundred-and- sixer—seeing, in fact, that he is not an astronomical point in any political heaven with which the world is acquainted, but only the most nebulous of nebulae which have yet come ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... in one important particular—it is one of the worst-governed cities in Christendom. The Jews and the mulattoes divide municipal honors between them, and rival, not unworthily on a small scale, the united talents of Mozart and Tammany ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that of pow-wow, a palaver or confab, which is the Algonkin for a medicine-man. With these words may be mentioned Tammany, now used of a famous political body, but, in the 18th century, of a society named after the "tutelar saint" of Pennsylvania. The original Tammany was an Indian chief with whom William Penn negotiated for grants of land about the end of the 17th century. Littoral first became familiar in connection with Italy's ill-starred Abyssinian adventure, and hinterland marked the appearance of ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... seeking the human friends to whom he was so used, and nothing living was more harmless than he. He reminded John in some ways of those stalwart and honest peasants who were so ruthlessly made into cannon food by the gigantic and infinitely more dangerous Tammany that rules the ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science of my book three years ago, "the author is still looking forward to better things in the future." I was not deceived then. Not in the thirty years before did we advance as in these three, though Tammany blocked the way most of the time. It is great to have lived in a day that sees such ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... suffrage, sarcastically advised them to ask the Democrats for indorsement in their national convention of this year and see what would be the response. These two women, therefore, did appear before that body, which dedicated the new Tammany Hall in New York City, on July 4. An account of their insulting reception may be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 340, and in the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 304. They, with Abby Hopper ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... ceremonial show. A doll tightly wrapped in swaddling-clothes represents "the Child." Over it stands a ferocious-looking beast, easily recognized as a survival of the last political campaign,—the Tammany tiger,—threatening to swallow it at a gulp if one as much as takes one's eyes off it. A miniature Santa Claus, a pasteboard monkey, and several other articles of bric-a-brac of the kind the tenement affords, complete the outfit. The background ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... municipal corruption in New York, the noble grandsire of Tammany Hall. While Hamilton was too absorbed to watch him, he had divided New York, now a city of sixty thousand inhabitants, into districts and sections. Under his systematic management the name of every resident was enrolled, and his politics ascertained. Then Burr and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... several states adopted resolutions against it and so great was the antagonism at the first general meeting in 1784 Washington persuaded the members to abolish the hereditary feature. In spite of this condition, the excitement did not die, and in 1789 the Tammany Society was founded in N.Y.C. in opposition to the Cincinnati, and as a wherein "true equality" should govern. This was the origin of Tammany Hall, which became conspicuous ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... have heard him last November at Tammany Hall," the fat stranger answered. "He wasn't quite up to himself to-night. He wasn't so interested. Those Cubans are foreigners, you see, but you ought to heard him last St. Patrick's day on Home Rule for Ireland. Then he was talking! That speech made him a United States senator, ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... guard the morals of society and the sanitary conditions of our cities." A "moral guard" might be an excellent thing to ward off the ghosts in a country burying-ground, but would hardly prove effective against the riot of a Tammany mob on the night of an exciting election. It is absurd to speak in such fashion of work that is needed every hour. The crust of our civilization is very thin—how thin, the nation learned during the campaign just passed. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson |
