governing body of Tammany Hall meet, their deliberations are accompanied by rehearsals of companies from the uptown theatres which use the stage of this old building for breaking in new plays. Tammany is not all work.

Under the thirty-five assembly-district leaders are 998 election-district leaders, and 11,400 precinct workers in New York County. Technically Tammany is limited to New York County; in theory, which has little to do with fact, it is merely allied with the Democratic organizations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

During the most of its history the actual leadership has centered in the hands of one man or of a small oligarchy. Aaron Burr was its first conspicuous leader. Fernando Wood, although for a time the leader of a rival organization, Mozart Hall, during his later life was one of the first Tammany rulers to acquire the title of 'Boss.' William Marcy Tweed, whose thefts rose to millions, was essentially a one-man ruler. So, too, was 'Honest' John Kelly, who obtained authority when Tammany cleansed itself of Tweedism. Richard Croker and Charles F. Murphy carried on the dynasty.

The precinct workers, the electiondistrict captains, and the assemblydistrict leaders, are now all elected in direct primaries of the Democratic Party. Popular sanction can therefore be claimed for them. But year after year the same men are elected. In every Tammany district the workers call on the voters to urge every citizen to cast his ballot in the election. Manners and customs vary in different districts; but in many the election captain merely asks the citizen to vote. Of course, advice and information are given if the voter is uncertain as to the merits of competing candidates. Who is not occasionally uninformed as to some of the issues in these days of long

ballots? Still, the main responsibility of the electioneer is to see that his people vote. Apathy on the part of citizens is a mark of incompetence to be checked against the leader.

Tammany Hall makes a business of politics and its leaders find that their energies are consumed by the work they do for their organization. District leaders are now generally employed as commissioners or deputy-commissioners in municipal departments at salaries ranging from $6500 to $10,000 a year. Until a few years ago the office of sheriff, which under the fee-system paid as much as $100,000 a year, was bestowed upon a favorite leader. It is interesting to recall that Governor Smith was the last to enjoy these fees. The dominant leaders seldom hold important offices. Their relationship to office-holding is comparable to the function the banker exercises toward business and industry.

In the changing history of American politics the customs and methods of Tammany have varied. An examination of the long and tangled record of bribery and corruption associated with such men as Tweed does not show that the morals of the Tammany legislators and executives were and executives were on a different plane from those of their rivals in the Whig or Republican parties. Tweed, whose loot has been estimated as high as $75,000,000, employed both Democrats and Republicans. The records of the past are in many instances shocking and some of the present deals are hardly less so. But Tammany corruption seems to rise and fall with the morals of the country. Boss Tweed himself was contemporaneous with the misconduct of some of those in high position during the Grant administration. At present Tammany is relatively clean; at least as clean as Washington perhaps cleaner.

A dispassionate review of Tam

many's way with the voter develops a few clear impressions. The economic development of the United States in general and of New York in particular challenged a number of political theories which regardless of their regardless of their validity were dear to the American people. During the early years hostility to corporations and especially to banks was widespread. Business, however, needed banks and the corporate organization of production and exchange. Consequently, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Whigs and Tammany 'Republicans,' Democrats and Republicans of a later era, all by devious methods, yielded to the demands of business. Banks were created, railways built, public-service institutions established. Sometimes legislators were bribed. On the other occasions political bosses were made directors of great corporations. More recently contracts were given to the friends of politicians. But in every case the business man has sought some favor or some privilege from the public. If the politician has been bribed the business man was the briber, and if Tammany got its millions business got its tens of millions. It is obvious that the man who took the bribe was not the only criminal in the transaction. Monopoly often was necessary to the successful operation of a utility. By indirection the political leaders have frustrated the wishes of the masses of their constituents while doing the bidding of a few promoters of large enterprises. If public opinion had been better informed, if political leaders had been incorruptible, if business had scorned to stoop to debauch politicians, the history of New York and of the United States would have moved in channels far remote from those in which it has actually flowed. But Tammany has been composed of average men, good men and weak men,

and, like their richer fellow citizens whom they served under cover, Tammany leaders have again and again been faithless to their trust.

The attitude of Tammany men toward corruption exposed in their organization is exactly like that of any other group of citizens. They use the word 'purge' in describing what takes place after a scandalous exposure. Tweed was succeeded by 'Honest' John Kelly, who purged the organization. Later, when vice and crime had flourished under the Croker régime, Tammany was again purged. That is to say, a few of the conspicuous wrongdoers were removed, new men were substituted for them, and the political hierarchy continued. This is the familiar human procedure. It is precisely what happened at Washington after the Senate Oil Committee brought out its sensational findings. Few Republicans Few Republicans abandoned their party because of the oil affair; few Tammanites leave the Hall when one of their leaders is caught in incriminating circumstances.

All along Tammany has accepted the standards and the customs of the time. Its leaders still speak of 'idealism' with that scorn with which practical men view the impracticable. But when an idealistic programme has won a sufficient body of support to count in politics, Tammany is quick to adopt it. Tammany's great lack is social prestige. Tweed was made a convict and an outcast, but 'silk-stockings' who dealt with him went scathless. Richard Croker was never seen in the more exclusive stratum of New York society, but Richard Croker's business associates were men of impeccable standing. So too with Charles F. Murphy. There were no better names in financial America than those of the men who were the principal beneficiaries of Murphy's most criticized acts. The

critic of Tammany perceives in this dual relationship a certain insincerity. How can Tammany be the friend of the alien, the exponent of the views of the workingman, and the comrade of his leisure hours, and still in important public matters act as the secret servant of the rich? If human nature were logical there could be no answer to this question, but as it happens most of man's institutions are woven of contradictions.

The people of New York do not expect too much of politics. Time and again, they have revolted against Tammany's wickedness only to find that a Whig, a Reformer, a Republican, or a Coalitionist was not more to their

taste.

At the present time, a Tammany man is Governor of the State and it is the consensus that New York has had few wiser chief executives than is the former East-sider, Alfred E. Smith, who now occupies the Mansion at Albany. New York expects him to fill Murphy's place later on. Smith has been a forward-looking leader and his record in public office may be favorably compared with that of any other of the recent governors of American states. John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York City, is a resident of Brooklyn and therefore not technically a Tammany man, although of course he is Tammany's choice. Much has been said against the Hylan administration and much ought to be said, but the just charge against it is stupidity rather than dishonesty. In fighting the public utilities Hylan has shown little creative ability and in consequence he has complicated the city's pressing problem of

transportation. But when that has been said, it must also be admitted, as impartial investigators have testified, that New York is morally a clean city. Open prostitution is no longer tolerated. The ancient alliance between the vice and liquor interests and the politicians has fallen into desuetude and immorality has ceased to flaunt itself in the city streets. Tammany has again adapted itself to what it believes is desired by a majority of the people.

What the future holds for Tammany Hall is a matter of conjecture. Some observers believe that already Tammany Hall is but a shell. The disappearance of the saloon, the subsidence of officially recognized vice, the growing difficulty of maintaining illicit relations with corporate interests which seek gifts from governments these influences, some hold, have withdrawn from Tammany those funds necessary to its existence. Perhaps this supposition is true, but it must be remembered popular governments are relatively new phenomena. Universal suffrage necessitates forms of political organization if the public business is to be carried on. Tammany is undeniably expert in political organization. Its leaders have mastered the art of appealing to hundreds of thousands of voters and of discovering the common denominator of their views. It seems hardly probable that the need for organization will vanish within the immediate future; or that Tammany Hall will lose the cunning in filling that need which it has so eminently possessed during the entire life of this republic.

THERE was a wedding at noon in the village church, a couple of miles from our summer community by the lake, and as most of our colony were somewhat interested in the girl we turned out in force. It was an outwardly festive and to my sense agreeably solemn little affair. There was a bank of lady's-slippers and maidenhair ferns before the altar, and the air was heavy with the sweetly mortal scent of lilies. The clergyman in white vestments had a full consciousness of the finality of his function. He joined in permanent wedlock a white, smiling, tearful bride of twenty to a well-dressed groom of thirty-five, who looked very experienced, very serious, and slightly bald. Cornelia, who is a connoisseur, whispered to me that it was in every respect a 'most suitable match.' I made a mental note to ask her at the next opportunity what the essentials of a suitable match are. I happened, however, to ride away from the ceremony in the rear seat of her car, sandwiched between her two children, Dorothy and Oliver Junior; and their comment was less flattering.

'Bah!' exclaimed Oliver. 'Let's go and have a swim. It made me sick.'

'Me too,' said Dorothy. 'It made me cold all over to hear her promising to forsake all others and keep herself only for that wizened stick. Why should she forsake all others, just because she is married? It sounds as if she were going as missionary to the Indians.'

'Or as trained nurse to an isolation hospital,' Oliver suggested.

"When I am married,' said Dorothy, 'I shall not forsake all others- at least, unless I get a better one than that.'

'You are severe critics,' I murmured, secretly delighted to observe that the children were using the dialect of their feelings, rather than that polite language which well-bred youth, like Japanese ladies, habitually employs in the presence of its elders. 'At what age do you expect to be married, Dorothy?'

'I shall never marry!' she replied with a deep blush. She is of course at exactly the correct age for saying that. But if you have n't seen her, you can have no adequate notion how dire and how delicious that threat is on her lips. She inherits 'eligibility' from both her parents. Her mother has a clear, expressive, sunlit loveliness; but Dorothy's beauty has in it an element of subtlety-from her father and a suggestion of sorcery and peril. She has her mother's complexion but her father's eyes. It is the unexpected combination and contrast that fascinates one: the filleted blond hair and the fluent roses of the fair skin, with the brown. eyes, dark yet full of lambent lights eyes of which the centres seem gleaming paths leading into shadows where a man might easily wander and be lost.

'And why won't you marry?' I pursued; for as we were driving at a good speed over a rough road I was

sure the watchful maternal ears could not overhear us. And so was Dorothy.

'Oh, I don't like the choice,' she said, 'that marriage presents-nowadays.'

'A choice!' I repeated with irreverent levity. 'You have n't come to that yet, I trust. But what do you think the choice is going to be?'

"You may laugh,' said Dorothy, 'but we all know well enough. We don't have to wait till we have made it, to know what the choice is. It is either a "good American husband," ten or twenty years older than you, who has a fine position and a character and nice middle-aged friends, and can give you a home and a social circle and clothes and things - but has n't anything to say to you. He simply has n't anything to say to you.'

'Why do you keep hollering, "He has n't anything to say to you"?' mocked her brother. 'Who has n't anything to say? Who? Who? Who?'

'Shut up!' said Dorothy, with more sweetness than the words can carry. "You heard. I said, "The good American husband has nothing to say to you."

"That is rather a defect,' I assented wickedly, if you've got to be alone with him for the rest of your life. Yes, it's a rather serious defect in a man with whom, forsaking all others, a girl of twenty expects to spend the next fifty years. But Dorothy, if you don't take a good American husband, what is the alternative?'

'Oh, a boy of your own age, of course,' she answered promptly. A boy that you like like in all ways, I mean: like his voice, like his eyes, like the temperature of his hands - not like fins. He talks with you about the things that interest you they are just the same as the things that interest him; and you like to do things with him; and if there is anything perfectly

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splendid you wish he were there; and whenever you see him coming your heart begins to dance.'

'Well,' I said, 'that seems that seems an attractive sketch. Why not choose a boy like that?'

'Because,' she explained, 'it seems as if nowadays none of the boys that one really likes is ever going to amount to much. At any rate, you must wait till your doddering old age before you can hope to be married — and what's the use then? He won't be interesting to me, and I won't be nice for him - then. But we'll just sit around in padded chairs, with ear trumpets in our ears, and yell, "Whadye say?" at each other; and wish it were bedtime.'

'I don't quite understand the reason for this postponement.'

'If,' she said, 'they are boys of your own age, and enjoy the books and music that you do, and are nice to dance with, why, then they think they are going to be poets or composers, and so they don't work, and they flunk out of school, and your mother asks you why you persist in playing around with "that worthless fellow" - does n't she, Oliver?'

'Yep!' said her brother, and grinned. Dorothy, leaning across my knees, first pinched, then patted him, and said: 'Poor old Ollie! He's nicer than almost any boy I know, and yet Dad says he's a "worthless fellow," too.'

When I suggested that the only hope was to take one of these nice worthless fellows and put some 'starch' into him, the rear seat burst into a peal of conspirant laughter. Possibly that hope had been tried. Cornelia whirled around upon us, and demanded:

'What are you children talking about?'

I answered sedately that we were discussing 'education for life,' and that there were certain points on which I should like her opinion. But we were