KING OF THE UNDERWORLD.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1902, 10 November 1913, Page 10

KING OF THE UNDERWORLD.

"BIG TM" SULLIVAN

SOME PERSONAL GLIMPSES.

In death as in life, "Big Tim" Sullivan did the unexpected. For, as the New York newspapers are saying, who would have expected that the body of the city's must popular politician would lio for two weeks unrecognised in the morgue after a lonely death on a railroad track in the outskirts of tho town ? But the beginnings of this career arc as interesting and more pleasant to think of. Timothy D. Sullivan was one ot those men who live by nicknamcs. First it was "Dry Dollar"; then, in recognition of tho man's physical size and growing political importance, .it was "Big Tim" or the "The Big Fellow." The "Sun" tells how he earned tho first name:

One day about forty-five years ago a 6eveu-year-old child was walking up the Bowery on his way to school, an alort Irish youngster, with eyes that tools in everything along the humihsng street. In front of a saloon near Grand Street a shaggy individual , wag piling up empty beer-kegs for the brewery wagon to haul away. The boy saw something that made his eye pop. • He dropped the battered arithmetic that was swinging from a strap, waited till the roustabout had sleuehed back into the saloon, rapidly peeled from one of the kegs the 2r?en rcremin stamp, and ran like a scared rabbit. He hardly stopped till he got to school.- His desk was near a window where the sunlight streamed in and he laid the wet stamp on-tho desk top, smoothing it very carefully. The teacher had seen him,

"Timmy," ho said sharply, "what are you doing?" "Dryin' a dollar, sir," said the boy. And for years and years afterward the man who became the absolute! boss of Manhattan below Fourteenth Street was known to friends and foes as DryDollar Sullivan.

The nickname stuck to him while he was in school, and it was yelled after him by the boys in the street when he went to work selling papers and hustling for his widowed mother. To these early days, likewise belongs the origin of the annual Sullivan distribution of shoes. "Tlio Times" tells this story: _ Jn 1873 ho was goiiig to school in Elm Street, and one mighty cold day in February his teacher, Miss Murphy, told him to stay behind when tho other boys were let out. As they ran off hfl said:

"Miss Murphy, if you've got to punisli me, let's get it over, 'cause I'vo got to get some papers out before it's too late."

"Timmy," said Miss Murphy, "there's no punishment. I didn't want you to go out with the others, so that they could see your shoes."

Sho gave liim a ticket to Timothy Brennan, a shoemaker, and there he got a new pair of shoes. , ■ And so,, when fortune smiled 011 him, ill every year 011 the same day in February shoes were distributed at his expense to all who applied for them. In the same paper we find it told how he first became a ; political force: One day as he was passing the Tenths he saw a local' pugilist beating.a woman. He -went to her rescue, and a mighty battle began. -He won out, after a contest that is still remembered, and thenceforth he was hailed as the leader of the "gang." Tammany needed Such men to consolidate its power, and from that street-fight grow up the one-time all-nowerful "Sullivan Gkn."

Then, by acts of personal kindness and physical prowess, by sheer hard work, and the use of all the tricks of the trade, Tim Sullivan worked his way up, until ho became a political potentate over the swarming East' Side below Fourteenth Street. It would be easy, says "The Sun" editorially, "to exaggerate the number of his personal intimates and devoted friends, but that at tho lievday of his power he liad a vast constituency which was obedient to his orders and automatic to liis manipulations no one has' ever doubted." Elections to tho Assembly, State, Senate, national House of Representatives, came when lie wanted them. He made money and lost much, for he was an inveterate gambler and race-track bettor, though he prided himself 011 his abstention from drink and tobacco. It is said that lie could have been the leader of Tammany, but he remained a' lovel follower of Croker,and then of Murphy. Office-holding did not get him out of touch with his constituents. On the contrary, pays "The Times."

His authority pir the Eflst Side was still further strengthened by his kindness to those accused of criines, big or little. In one of his speeches, in the days of his power, when the announcement that Big Tim was to speak would fill any hall on the East Side, ho told how a. good woman who had adonted him bade him go to tho Tombs and see if in the morning line-up there were any whom he could aid. ' He went, and kept -on going daily, until he had acquired so great a following among tho downtrodden and disreputable that he was sometimes hailed as the "King of the Underworld." 'But as he told the storv he added earnestly:

"I never got money frcm any thief, any gambler, or any dive-keoper, That's so, so help me God."

Tim Sullivan's career in Albany, where lie usually got what he wanted, and in Washington, where he was less conspicuous, was told at length in the papers when they learno] of his death. His advoracy of woman-sitffrage was a peculiar feature of his legislative activity.

The decline in strength of the Sullivan clan and the end of race-track gambling lessened "Big Tim's" influence somewhat. But in 1912 he Was again elected to Congress, though lie never took his seat, owing to'ilie failing of his mental powers in the last year of his life. The funeral at old St. Patrick's in Mott Street was such a gathering as will probably never meet" again to mourn the passing of a political leader. As we read in the New York "Evening Post": —

United States Senators and Representatives, prize-fighters, Justices of the Supremo Court, clergymen, gangsters, thugs, saloon-keepers, merchants, lawyers, business men, and. labourers! honest men and thieves, rich men and poor men, good women'and women who stand across the line, joined together to-day to pay a filial tribute to "Big Tim." . . . The most remarkable thing was that the dominant feeling with all these people of many degrees was sympathy, not curiosity. There were tears in men's eyes, and nvery now and then a woman wept openly.