Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH. 26, 1934. TAMMANY'S "CHARITY"

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 72, 26 March 1934, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, MARCH. 26, 1934. TAMMANY'S "CHARITY"

.In the neighbourhood of Hell Gate in the East River of New York is an island which was formerly known as Blackwell Island but in the course of the present century has changed its name to Welfare Island. If the revelations of the last two months could have been anticipated, Devil's Island might have been considered a less inappropriate alias, and the fact that Hell Gate is only a mile or two away would have strengthened its claim. The conditions which were revealed in January by a surprise visilj to Welfare Island Prison under the new municipal administration were shocking enough even to a world fairly familiar with the general character of Tammany rule, but the New York message which on Saturday described the latest revelations as "comparable" to those really understates the case. From the standpoint of laxity, inefficiency, lawlessness, and corruption there may not be very much to choose.between the two cases, but the extension of Tammany principles from the penal to the charitable administration has introduced elements of cruelty, of misery, and of horror which, if not completely lacking before, were present in a relatively negligible degree. This second class of Tammany's victims were not criminals. Old age, sickness, and infirmity were their only offences, but they were handed over to the tender mercies of rascals who fobbed and starved them, stealing their money and their families' money as well as that of the city, and denying them the help of eidier doctors or nurses. It was not Hell Gate for: many of these victims of Tammany "charity"; they had been admitted right inside. Apart from the choice of Welfare Island as the site, and Christian charity as the pretext, of this inferno, there is another element of irony in the 'matter. The opening paragraph of the full-page article on "Tammany Hall" in :■ the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is as follows:— Quite as old as the TJ.S. Government, this powerful politicar organisation in New York City.has, -with only occasional intermissions, not only ruled that city since the year 1800, but at times has exercised great. influence in State administration ' and even in national affairs. To - which the Oxford Dictionary makes the essential addition for nonAmerican readers that "in English use the name has become associated with the political and municipal corruption which at various times has characterised the government of New York." The original name of the organisation was not Tammany, but St. Tammany, Tammany being the name of an Indian chief who was sainted for this purpose in mockery of the imported saints that other societies, loved to honour. In 1790 there was a* Society of St. Tammany "founded on the true principles of patriotism, and having for its motives charity and brotherly love." In 1805 this society, or another of the same name, obtained from the Legislature "a charter incorporating it," says the "Britannica," "as a benevolent and charitable body to give relief to members and others," but the political organisation continued as an apparently distinct body. As a political organisation Tammany Hall has continued to profess the principles of patriotism, benc volence, and charity which were professed by its "founding fathers," bu,t in their application these principles have inevitably taken on a political colour. No reader of "Mr. Dpoley" can have forgotten the picture that he presents of the assiduous attention paid by the bosses, not merely at election times, but at all times, to the needs of the poor and ,of the utter impossibility of the reformer provided with no better equipment than arguments based on moral principles and public policy making headway against, it; It would, of course, be absurd to suppose that the bosses of New York, who have been far longer»at the game, have not just, as firm a grasp of its first principles as their brethren of Chicago. Tammany knows how to look after its friends, and besides the'rich spoil, sometimes almost beyond the dreams of avarice,1 that it offers to the rich and the powerful, its political philanthropy is equally careful to cater for the needs of the humble. To hundreds of thousands of New York voters it is not a sink of corruption but a benevolent society whose bounty, unlike that of the city or the State, never fails. But in the shocking news from Welfare Island we may perhaps see another distinction that Tammany is compelled to draw. In that charter of 1805 to which we have referred the Society of St. Tammany was incorporated as "a benevolent and charitable body to give relief to members and others." Tammany has shown a liberal benevolence to its members whom it has turned loose to fatten on the unfortunates in the Welfare Island Home, but it is' a terrible kind of "charity" that it has extended to the "others" whom those jxpresenfe "Gross misman-

agement, cruel and inhuman treatment of the aged, sick, and dying, and political chicanery and graft" are charged against the officials who for services rendered have been rewarded in this ghastly fashion, and the particulars supplied leave no hope that the charges are exaggerated. The old and infirm iji'mates were deprived of their life savings by officials of the institution through wills dictated by^tlft superintendent and through life policies in which the officials were named as beneficiaries. There was no medical nursing staff for feeble-minded inmates. Choice foods for the blind and sick were stolon by attendants. It is a diabolical business, in which' the dictated wills -and life policies might well have escaped the ingenuity of a purveyor of fictitious s crime. Special attention is also due to the profits of the national superintendent of the home, who had bolted just in time. He had "banked 84,000 dok lars in the last eight years, when his salary was only 28,000." The eight years exactly cover Tammany's last lea^e of power.