Birmingham state herald., 1896-11-01
ELECTION DAY IN NEW YORK.
PICTURESQUE HOLIDAY SIGHTS IN THE METROPOLIS.
To Large Class of People This Is the
 one Great Day of the .E Year. ai

IT. Ernest Ingersoll has written for tie November Century paper on eElec- tion Day in New York;" which has many striking illustrations by Jay Hambidge. MT. Ingersoll. after speaking of those who take advantage of the holiday to flock out of town, says:
 Another class rejoice in this holiday as an opportunity to sit at home enjoying domestic comfort, reading in slippered ease the postponed book, or fondling the pet hobby. The people" call them silk stockings" and have no fear of their beautifully modulated expressions of censure, because they rarely back it up by a vote.
 Down at the polls they cannot under stand this frame of mind. A certain num- Der of citizens, to be sure, come, deposit their votes as quickly as possible and go away with an attitude of having per- formed disagreeable duty. But to the many who are more or less visible there all day this is the most important occa- sion of the year, and there is hardly any thing they would not rather do than miss 1t. To be sure, it may be worth a few dollars to them, directly or indirectly, but plainly they look further than this, and have hazy sense of the dignity of the act, comparable to the fetish-worship- pers notion of religion. They are not ignorant, foreign, dollar-a-day laborers, stupid and besotted with liquor, but men earning wages enough to enable them to pay their footing in the barroom club and having sufficient brains to make them serviceable to their captain" Alert with the keenness of the streets, know ing everybody and feeling above none, they are wholly devoetd to "the cause" as long as they get fair treatment.
 It is these men who make the voting places picturesque. In rough garb and with lordly swagger, they sandwich themselves between neat and dignified lawyers, merchants and clergymen, prouly sensitive of their equality at the polls. Sometimes the motley line reaches out of doors and down the street. AS soon as one has voted he joins the loiterers outside and pompously lights a cigar, scornful of the black pipe more familiar to his teeth. ! <.
 In the afternoon the brick captain, who has been lodging all day from poll to poll, obtains an approximate list of those Of his side who have not yet voted, and despatches workers to bring them out" They search their haunts and presently return with recruits. Some of these de- 1inquents have simply been tardy others are sick or lame or blind, and are gently conducted to the polls, perhaps in car riage, placed in the line, and carefully assisted to the ballot box. The attention he gets on election day Is a genuine com- fort to many poor devil kicked about all the rest of the year. Now and then a henchman seizes a captain and whis- pers portentously in his ear A moment later he hurries off, looking very impor- tant, and soon reappears with com paniOn, who is sent on alone, while he himself stays back at the corner. This means that some voter has been ascer- tained to be out of town or sick abed, and that a willing and thrifty stranger has come to vote dllegally) in his name. This is only one of many tricks election off, e cIl a a n e n ward the end of the day, and sometimes at a cost to the latter of no small cour- age, for whisky emboldens the toughest workers to try to stand on his head" any one who interferes with them.
 The day wears on-Sunday without the churches, gray day in every sense of the word. In the lower wards, where folk are close enough together to feel one an- others warmth, and where it really mat ters whether Mike OFarron or Barney Cadigan is to be alderman or coroner each crossroads has an excited crowd; but up town the side streets are deserted, and even Broadway and Fifth avenue are dead.
 The first to break the silence are the boys crying the afternoon papers; but there is nothing in them except clever guesswork, unless the tension factions at some polling place, or the wild foolish ness of tipsy worker, has brought on a fight or two Election day rows are now remarkably rare in New York.
 Loiterers increase about the polling places, and voters crowd forward, fearful lest they be too late. The weary inspect ors and clerks must now work harder than ever, and the watchers watch their very best. This Is the time when the schemer gathers results-gets in his fine work, as he would tell you. Men present themselves with spacious claims, politi- clans bulldoze, and 1t Is only the most de- termined guardian of the purity of the bal ot who in this last hour can withstand th pressure. It happened in several dis tr cts in 1894, when the voter was called upon to fold and select from twenty-three ballots, that there was not time enough In ihe day for all those entitled to the franchise to reach the ballot box, and voting twice in one place was out of the question.