DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9137, 9 July 1908, Page 5

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION.

TWELVE THOUSAND DELEGATES. Received July 9, 12.30 a.m. NEW YORK, July 8. The Democratic Convention opened at Denver yesterday. Twelve thousand delegates were present. The convention adjourned out of respect to the late Mr Grover Cleveland, ex-President of the United States, who recently died. A cablegram from New York last week stated that ten thousand claquers (persons hired to applaud) were assembling at Denver for the Democratic Convention. Tammany had sent five train loads of politicians with £25,000 in loose change, tens of thousands of bottles of wine and beer, and one and three-quarter million cigars. These arrangements, it is naively explained, are intended to arouse enthusiasm. The Tammany Society is a powerful political organisation, whose ostensible objects on its formation in 1805 were charity and reform of the franchise. Its growth was rapid, and from the first it exercised, under a central committee and chairman, known as-the "Boss," remarkable political influence on the Democratic aide. Since the gigantic frauds practised in 1870-71 on tho municipal revenues by the then "Boss," William N. Tweed, and his "ring," the society has remained under political suspicion as a party machine not too scrupulous about its ways and means.