Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-03-27
TAMMANY HALL.

Mr.. Van Buren, Denslow has an article
in the International Review on Tammany
Hall, which sets forth in very strong
light the increasingly difficult problemof the
government of large cities. 1t is made
conspicuously apparent that in New York
the common remedies for bad govern
ment, namely, attendance at the prima-
ries of taxpayers, and more steady
participation in political movements, can
be of no avail whatever. The reason
of this is, that out of 400 voters
in New York, only about 10000 are tax
payers. The rest belong to the proletariat.
They constitute the material with which
Tweed ruled and robbed the city SO long,
and with which Tammany Hall still rules
and robs it. These non-taxpaying voters
have by their steady support of thieves in
the government increased the rate of tax
alton in New York from 81 so to $40 per
capita. Tammany Hall has known how to
manage them. The principle has always
been identical with that which controlled
the Roman proletariat. Pdnem ct circenses
has not lost its hold on the mob through
the lapse of time, and there does not
appear to be any accessible remedy
for this intolerable state of things.
The reviewer whose paper we cite pro-
poses second municipal chamber, in which
the taxpayers alone shall be represented.
him that this reform, even if it was
effective in principle, would demand the
remuneration of power on the part of
the present rulers of the city, and that
Tammany Hall is little likely to accept
such proposition. Tammany, indeed,
has got New York State as well as New
York city by the throat. 1t controls the
Legislature at Albany as well as the Mayor
and city Government. And what Tam
many Hall is in New York, that similar
institutions promise to be before long in
all our great cities. One of the most
IdCGS III OlIC INGW 1OIh Cels6 10
the preponderance of the foreign element.
That element, mostly Irish, is really alien
in all important respects. 1t consists of
men who are densely and hopelessly ignor-
ant of American governmental doctrines,
who have no patriotic attachment
to this country, who are clannish
in the extreme, who are venal
almost beyond belief, and who there
fore afford at once the most malleable
and dangerous material that demagogues
can handle. And what has already hap
pened In New York threatens to happen in.
San Francisco. The latter is no longer an
American city. Its foreign voting ele-
ment exceeds its home voting element, and
its foreign voters, as in New York, are for
the most part Irish, and have shown them
selves to be less amenable to American and
republican influences than anywhere else
in the Union. Kearneyism is emphatically
an alien and an Irish agitation. Every
body sees that. No such movement could
have been made by Americans, for the
methods and the policy are wholly opposed
to American habits and practices. And in
San Francisco as in New York it is plain
that demagogues are rapidly controlling
the government through the manipula-
ton of its foreign voting element,
and that in short time it will
be no more possible to prevent the
Inauguration of Boss Tweed regime
| than it was in New York. And the
question arises, what remedy is there for
these enormous evils? We can see none
| save in the stimulation of the whole
country to the publication of politics and
the reform of education. Propositions to
repeal the naturalization laws, or to insti-
| tute special chambers for taxpayers, are
not open to serious discussion, because
they are manifestly impossible of accom-
plishment. The only way to find prac-
teal remedy is to ascertain what is sus-
ceptible of actual application under the
existing conditions This is very difficult,
but we are inclined to think that the