t make them district leaders. We keep
them for ornaments on parade days.

Tammany Hall is a great big machine, with every part adjusted delicate
to do its own particular work. It runs so smooth that you wouldn't think
it was a complicated affair, but it is. Every district leader is fitted
to the district he runs and he wouldn't exactly fit any other district.
That's the reason Tammany never makes the mistake the Fusion outfit
always makes of sendin' men into the districts who don't know the
people, and have no sympathy with their peculiarities--We don't put a
silk stockin' on the Bowery, nor do we make a man who is handy with his
fists leader of the Twenty-ninth. The Fusionists make about the same
sort of a mistake that a repeater made at an election in Albany several
years ago. He was hired to go to the polls early in a half-dozen
election districts and vote on other men's names before these men
reached the polls. At one place, when he was asked his name by the poll
clerk, he had the nerve to answer "William Croswell Doane."

"Come off. You ain't Bishop Doane," said the poll clerk.

"The hell I ain't, you--I" yelled the repeater.

Now, that is the sort of bad judgment the Fusionists are guilty of. They
don't pick men to suit the work they have to do.

Take me, for instance. My district, the Fifteenth, is made up of all
sorts of people, and a cosmopolitan is needed to run it successful. I'm
a cosmopolitan. When I get into the silk-stockin' part of the district,
I can talk grammar and all that with the best of them. I went to school
three winters when I was a boy, and I learned a lot of fancy stuff that
I keep for occasions. There ain't a silk stockin' in the district who
ain't proud to be seen talkin' with George Washington Plunkitt, and
maybe they learn a thing or two from their talks with me. There's one
man in the district, a big banker, who said to me one day: "George,
you can sling the most vigorous English I ever heard. You remind me of
Senator Hoar of Massachusetts." Of course, that was puttin' it on too
thick; but say, honest, I like Senator Hoar's speeches. He once quoted
in the United States Senate some of my remarks on the curse of civil
service, and, though he didn't agree with me altogether, I noticed
that our ideas are alike in some things, and we both have the knack of
puttin' things strong, only he put on more frills to suit his audience.

As for the common people of the district, I am at home with