The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1910. WHAT IS TAMMANYISM ?

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 887, 5 August 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, AUGUST 5, 1910. WHAT IS TAMMANYISM ?

» The definitions which have been given to the term "Tammanyism" of late would seem to indicate that a section of the Government following has a very narrow idea of what the word really means. Either that or a determined effort is being made to prevent critics of the Government from using it by attempting to convey the impression that it cannot be used v against Ministers without charging them with peculation. This is not only wrong, but it is so transparently wrong that we wonder at .the foolishness which permits the adoption of tactics so easily exposed. The Tammany Society was established in New York in 1805, taking its name, so it is said, from an Indian chief called Tamanend or Tammany, and clothing itself with a sort of mock Indian character. Originally its purposes were social and charitable rather than political, but by 1836 it had taken a political character and dominated the politics of New York. The policy was the famous doctrine of "the spoils to the victors," formulated by one Makcy. By the middle of the nineteenth century the in the city was ripe for the growth to power of, 'Tweed, the greatest and most in-

famous of all the Tammany bosses. His career is described by the Hun. James Bkyce in his monumental work The American Commonwealth; and we can only summarise it here in the statement that Tweed and his associates held New York by the throat lor years and used their groat power to misspend many millions of dollars ' before they were cast down. The character and the magnitude of the •leading exploits of the Tammany lting have no parallel iu modern countries, but suinu uf the methods adopted by the lting have been imitated in various parts of the world. For example, on page 388 of thu second volumo of Mb. Bryce's hook (third edition), we read that "among tho numerous contracts by which the city treasury was depleted, not a few were afterwards found to have been given for printing to three companies in which Tweed' and his intimates were interested." When, therefore, a Government spends the public mgney in presenting an obviously unjustifiable amount of business to a company in which members of the Government are financially interested, it is simply copying tho procedure of Boss Tweed. On page 390 it is recorded that "the press had been largely muzzled by lavish payments to it for advertising, and a good many minor journals were actually subsidised by the Ring." Can anyone say that this Tammany trick, of which, by the way, President Kruger and tho Taotai-of Shanghai saw the advantages, has not been practised in New Zealand? Again (page 391), "the King had cunningly placed on the pay rolls of the city a large number of persons rendering comparatively little service, who had become a body uf janizaries, bound to defend the Government which paid them, working hard for it at elections, and adding, together with the regular employees, no contemptible quota to the total Tammany vote." Read "Government" for "Ring," and 'nation" for "city," and we got a picture of New Zealand politics that is quite faithful enough for all practical purposes. It is to these methods, and methods like these, that those critics refer who speak of Tammanyism in New Zealand politics. They are methods which, if not invented, were at any rate perfected, by the Tammany Ring, and it is therefore quite correct to call them ' Tammany methods. Perhaps our readers will be interested to have the view which Mr. Erycb, writing in 1894, took of the future of New York. The best hope of reform, he felt,- lay in a policy of union amongst citizens and in the stimulation of a keener sense of public duty. After the many failures of the past, it is not safe to be sanguine. But there does appear to be at this moment a more energetic spirit at work among reformers than has ever been seen before, and a stronger sense that the one supremo remedy is to strike at the root of the evil by arousing the consciences of the better classes, both rich and poor, and by hplding up to them a higher ideal of civic life.". The same appeal is being made in New Zealand to-day.