WILSON’S nomination in 1912 was equivalent to an election. The split in the Republican Party made this a foregone conclusion. They forgot the interests of the country in a bitter internal struggle for the control of their party machinery. Roosevelt, furiously ambitious to regain his power, was pitted against the old organization bosses, who were determined to retain possession of the party. Led by Penrose they were lost in an implacable rage against the “rebel” who had once unhorsed them in the party councils. To them the election of a president became a secondary matter. The supremely important issue was the control of their party machinery. Penrose and his fellow bosses felt that their future—their very existence as political leaders—was at stake. If Roosevelt made good his position, that the Independents ought to continue to control the mechanism of the party (as they had controlled it during his tenure of office), what did it profit Penrose and his kind to build up their state machines, only to be balked of the supreme prize of national ascendancy? They would, like Othello, find their occupation gone. With the fury of men blinded by hatred and ambition, they preferred to wreck the party’s chances for the next four years if, by so doing, they could destroy the Roosevelt rebellion against their domination.

I really felt that my own connection with the campaign was at an end. With the Presidency thus secure by reason of the Republicans’ internecine quarrel, we Democrats were in the position of a plaintiff who had simply to go through the formality of entering judgment by default and take possession of the Government on behalf of the people.

I had never participated in the active work of a national campaign, and it did not appeal to me to do so. The offer made me by McCombs to become chairman of the Finance Committee I had promptly declined, as I thought that if I had anything to do with the finances of the National Democratic Committee, I should be treasurer. So I prepared to spend the summer in the Adirondacks. But the day that I was to take my family to the mountains I motored down to Sea Girt to bid Governor Wilson good-bye. The Governor had not yet come down to breakfast, and, as I had to take an early train to make my connection for the mountains, I was about to leave when word came down from him requesting me to wait a few minutes longer, as he was anxious to see me. Shortly afterward he came down the steps, as sprightly and active as a man of thirty, full of energy and determination. When I told him I had come to say good-bye to him, he was surprised and concerned.

“This is a great disappointment to me,” said Governor Wilson. “I had hoped that you would accept the position of chairman of the Finance Committee. This is a new position which I have asked the National Committee to create especially for you, and I had relied upon your willingness to accept it and render me a great service.”

I told the Governor that I was disinclined to be merely a money collector, and unless I was appointed treasurer, or a member of the Campaign Committee, I should not care to participate in the campaign. The Governor answered:

“Of course I expect you to be a member of the Campaign Committee, and I still hope that I can persuade you to accept the chairmanship of the Finance Committee. My idea is that in this campaign the chairman of the Finance Committee will have to perform the functions of the president of a bank, directing the large financial policies and protecting me against mistakes of accepting moneys from improper sources. The treasurer should correspond to the cashier. He should be the custodian of the funds and have charge of the clerical and bookkeeping details.

“I shall insist that no contributions whatever be even indirectly accepted from any corporation. I want especial attention paid to the small contributors. And I want great care exercised over the way the money is spent. These duties will call for an unusual degree of ingenuity and resourcefulness. I would not ask you to undertake this task if I didn’t think you had the imagination to accomplish it; and I would not expect you to accept it if I did not think it would be interesting to a man of your experience and ability.”

The Governor seemed so genuinely concerned and showed so clearly that he dreaded facing another financial canvass after the frequent worries he had endured from this source in his pre-nomination fight, that I could no longer resist. I accepted, and added:

“I shall take a few days to settle my family in the Adirondacks; then I shall return and get to work. And now, Governor, having accepted the responsibility, I want to assure you that you may dismiss all thoughts of finance from your mind from now until election.”

The Governor took my hand and held it while he said:

“You do not realize what a load you are lifting from my shoulders. I can now devote myself entirely to campaigning and to my duties as Governor.”

I considered the discussion closed and was about to leave, when the Governor detained me.

“One thing more,” he said. “There are three rich men in the Democratic Party whose political affiliations are so unworthy that I shall depend on you personally to see that none of their money is used in my campaign!”

I gave him my assurance, and he gave me their names. This was the only occasion on which I discussed finances with Mr. Wilson from that day to this. I made good my promise that he should have no cause to think again of finances. And when he went into the White House he went without obligations, expressed or implied, to any man for any money that had been contributed during the campaign.

The principal reason I was able to make good my promise to the Governor was that I instituted, for the first time in American political history, a budget system both for collecting the funds and expending them. I called to my assistance Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick, a budget expert; and in consultation with the members of the Democratic National Committee, we worked out an allotment of the amounts we expected from the various states. We then worked out the kinds of legitimate expenditures which we would encounter, weighed their relative values, and allotted to each its corresponding proportion of the money we expected to raise. With minor exceptions, we adhered to this budget throughout the campaign; and we had the great pleasure of paying every bill in full before the first of the following January, and of having $25,000 cash balance to the credit of the National Committee in bank.

My financial work in the National Committee was novel to me only in the sense that it was managing the use of money in a new field. But my work with the Committee on its human and political sides was an entirely new experience, and a very fascinating one.

On the human side, I found the same play of personal ambitions—of jealousy and other evil passions—aroused by the prospect of advantage in politics, that I had seen aroused by the prospect of material reward in business. But, on the whole, the human picture in politics was as pleasant as it was interesting. Our headquarters was, to be sure, the scene of the ill-humoured rivalries of McCombs and McAdoo and their adherents; but, on the other hand, it was the scene also of the touching fraternal devotion of “Joe” Wilson, whom the Governor affectionately called “my kid brother,” who gladly did all the tasks that came to hand out of sheer regard for the Governor. The delightful friendships that I formed with Rollo Wells, Josephus Daniels, Joseph E. Davies, Senator O’Gorman, Hugh C. Wallace, Homer S. Cummings, and others, were a source of enduring pleasure. We all soon fell into the genial habit of calling one another by our first names—this is indeed a custom of the National Committee. McCombs, who felt somewhat my greater age, began calling me “Uncle Henry,” a name which has since stuck to me in the familiar conversation of most of my close political friends.

As it ultimately turned out, the headquarters was a proving ground for coming Cabinet members, senators, and diplomats. Josephus Daniels had for the moment abandoned his paper in North Carolina and come to New York to take charge of the national publicity. McAdoo dropped his business temporarily to become vice-chairman of the National Committee and forward the Wilson fortunes. Congressman Redfield, discarded by the local Democratic organization in Brooklyn, found an opportunity for usefulness which led to his later appointment as Secretary of Commerce. At the Chicago branch of National Headquarters, Albert S. Burleson of Texas was a field-marshal of our growing army. Colonel House did not take an active part in the direction of the campaign; he was then only in process of attracting Wilson’s confidence in him as a man above the wish for personal advancement.

But on its political side I found my work a real revelation. Perhaps, indeed, the biggest single lesson I ever got in politics I got through the contact I then experienced with William Sulzer, who was Democratic candidate for Governor of New York. This experience added so much to my knowledge of the invisible government which stands behind government, and was besides so picturesque and dramatic, that I think it worth while recounting it at some length.

One morning as I sat at my desk at the headquarters in New York, an odd though familiar figure was ushered into my office. I had known William Sulzer for perhaps twenty years. His greatest pride was his resemblance in face and figure to the immortal Henry Clay. This physical resemblance was not fanciful. Sulzer had his high forehead, large mouth, and deep-set eyes—he bore, indeed, altogether a quite remarkable likeness to the Sage of Ashland. He had, too, the same long, slender, and loose-jointed figure. This resemblance, with which Nature had endowed him, Sulzer had cultivated with assiduous care. He had grown a long forelock, and had trained it to fall over the forehead after the Clay style. And he had cultivated a gift for ready speech into as near an approach to the eloquence of Clay as his limitations of mind permitted.

But as I looked up at him that morning in 1912, I saw Sulzer garbed in a strange departure from the elegance with which Clay, who was something of a dandy, was used to adorn his person. Sulzer was made up—it is fair to use this theatrical expression because Sulzer was evidently seeking a theatrical effect—made up to portray the part of “a statesman of the people.” His coat was of one pattern, and his vest of another. His baggy trousers were of a third. The gray sombrero which he always affected was rather dingy; his linen just a trifle soiled. Familiar as I was with Sulzer’s political poses, through our acquaintance, I mentally noted the skill of the morning’s costume in dressing the part of “a friend of the people.”

Sulzer’s career had been of a sort possible only in America. A native of New Jersey, the son of a Presbyterian minister, a graduate of Columbia University, a man of good family, good mind, and good education, he had taken up his residence on the lower East Side of New York City, had joined the Tammany organization, and had struck out boldly for a great political career in those untoward surroundings. Despite his religious heritage, he had been greatly impressed, as a young man, with the prophecy of a clairvoyant who had told him he should be Speaker of the New York State Assembly, Governor of New York, and President of the United States.

Sulzer had, indeed, made considerable progress on this path of political advancement. Elected to the State Assembly as a young man in his early twenties, he quickly rose to prominence, and at thirty he was chosen Speaker—the youngest man, I believe, ever to hold that office. From the State Assembly he was sent by Tammany to Congress, and now, in 1912, had represented his district in Washington for seventeen years. He constantly “played up” to the Jewish element. The ingratiating manner which he carefully cultivated appealed to a people, proud, sensitive, and accustomed to a lack of consideration from officers of Government. In Congress he was indefatigable in the interest of his constituents; and, on the whole, his attitude on public questions was satisfactory. From the public viewpoint Sulzer was one of the most respectable of the Tammany adherents. From the Tammany viewpoint he was “safe.”

The nomination of Governor Wilson and the assurances of Democratic Party success in the national campaign gave Sulzer his great opportunity. From the Tammany leaders came covert intimations to us members of the Democratic National Committee, that we would be permitted to suggest the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York. Fortunately we realized the implications of this offer and declined it. It meant, in substance, that Tammany, by permitting us to name the candidate for Governor, thereby became fully affiliated with the national campaign and would be in a position to demand, after election, special consideration in the distribution of Federal patronage. We made a reply which did not offend Tammany but which, on the other hand, left us entirely free of the Tammany entanglement. We said that we were not interested in taking a hand in the state situation; that we endorsed the then widespread public demand for an “open convention” to nominate the Governor. We suggested that Tammany refrain from dictating the nomination, so that the Independents of New York would support the national as well as the state Democratic ticket.

The Tammany leaders professed to accept this decision. The state convention, when held, had the air of an open convention. They cast about for a candidate, and settled on Sulzer. Without inconveniencing Tammany, he had been able to make something of a reputation as a political progressive. He had professed a great attachment for social reforms, the kind which Roosevelt in Washington and Wilson in New Jersey had made popular. He had built up a reputation as a friend of the common man, and in New York he was still “strong with the East Side.” Tammany manipulated the “open convention” at Syracuse, and Sulzer was nominated for Governor.

I had followed Sulzer’s career with a good deal of interest. Though I did not approve of his capitalizing politically his friendship for a racial element, I felt, nevertheless, that he had been a useful public servant; and he had been successful with me, as he had been with many other political independents, in making me believe that he was sincerely interested in the cause of civic reform. Consequently, I greeted him cordially.

Sulzer began the conversation by thanking me for “what I had done in helping him and bringing about his nomination.” This was a polite generality as, of course, I had had no hand in that enterprise, except that I had been a party to the “hands-off” policy of the National Committee, and also, that I had shared in the request of the Committee to McAdoo not to accept this nomination which some of his friends were trying, with some hope of success, to secure for him. We had felt that it was his duty to stay in the national campaign, as McCombs was still incapacitated by illness.

Sulzer then went on to express the wish that I would be of use to him after he was elected. He spoke in glowing terms of the reputation Governor Wilson had made by his reforms in New Jersey, and expressed an ambition to make a similar record as Governor of New York. He confided to me the clairvoyant’s prophecy of his future and declared that he believed that the path to the Presidency lay in championing “the cause of the people.”

He wanted my coÖperation, after he should be elected Governor, in formulating plans to make his administration a success. As everyone knows who is experienced either in business or politics, there are “subtleties of approach” that suggest a man’s real meaning without his even remotely mentioning the true subject in conversation. Sulzer’s remarks were of this nature. I saw plainly that he was directing my thoughts to a point where it would be possible for him without embarrassment to solicit a subscription to his campaign fund. I wanted to save the future Governor of New York from soliciting a subscription, and consequently, I forestalled his intention by voluntarily handing him my check for $1,000. His response to this action was in keeping with the amenities of the situation. He said: “I did not expect that from you. I don’t want it, because you are doing so much for the National Committee.” But the check disappeared into a pocket of his dingy coat.

In the meantime, the march of political events led us on to Election Day and victory. Woodrow Wilson was triumphantly elected President, with a Democratic Congress behind him. The political ambitions of some of his managers were gratified. McAdoo became Secretary of the Treasury; Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; Redfield, Secretary of Commerce; and Burleson, Postmaster-General. What my friends a few months earlier had called a hopeless cause was now a dazzling success.

In April, 1913, Senator O’Gorman telephoned me from Washington that he had been requested by the President to offer me the Ambassadorship to Turkey. I apparently astonished him when I told him please to thank the President for me, but that I would not accept. O’Gorman, whom I had known for many years, urged me to come to Washington to discuss the matter with him. He said that I had no right to refuse such a tender over the telephone. I complied with his request, and we discussed the matter one evening until well past midnight. O’Gorman used all his persuasive powers, and told me that it seemed strange that I, an entire newcomer in politics, without ever having rendered any other political service, should have the temerity to decline to be one of the President’s ten personal representatives, in the capacity of Ambassador at one of the important Courts of Europe. He told me that the President was very much disappointed at my decision; and urged me to see him personally, and explain to him my reasons for declining. He said he knew the President was very anxious to avail himself of my services, and thought it ill advised for me to refuse to obey what amounted to a command from the head of the Government. I called on the President, and he said:

“I want you to take the Embassy at Constantinople. I am convinced that the two posts that demand the greatest intellectual equipment in our representatives are Turkey and China. Therefore, I am particularly concerned to have, in these two countries, men upon whom I can absolutely rely for sound judgment and knowledge of human nature. This is the reason I am asking you to take the post at Constantinople.”

“If that is the situation,” I replied, “I should much prefer China, although it is only a ministership. And for this reason: the Jews of this country have become very sensitive (and I think properly so) over the impression which has been created by successive Jewish appointments to Turkey, that that is the only diplomatic post to which a Jew can aspire. All the Jews that I have consulted about your offer have advised and urged me to decline it. Oscar Straus has been criticized by some of his co-religionists for accepting a second and even a third appointment to Constantinople. I don’t mind criticism, but I share the feeling of the other Jews that it is unwise to confirm an impression that this is the only field for them in the diplomatic service.”

Mr. Wilson’s reply was aggressive in manner and almost angry in tone.

“I should have hoped,” he said, “that you had a higher opinion of my open-mindedness and freedom from prejudice than this. I certainly draw no such distinctions, and I am sorry that you should have thought so. I think you will agree with me when I give you my further reasons for this choice. In the first place, Constantinople is the point at which the interest of the American Jews in the welfare of the Jews of Palestine is focussed, and it is almost indispensable that I have a Jew at that post. On the other hand, our interests in China are expressed largely in the form of missionary activities, and it seems quite necessary that our Minister there should be a Christian, and preferably a man of the evangelical type; and I am sincerely anxious to have you accept Turkey.”

Nevertheless, I remained firm in my refusal to accept the offer, and told the President I would have to find some non-political path in which to serve the people.

As I left the President, he gave me a look which is hardly describable. He was sadly disappointed that he had not been able to dominate my decision. He showed a deep affection for me, and it was evident how much he regretted that his arguments had failed to persuade me. On the other hand, I felt sorry, and probably showed it in my face, that I appeared so ungrateful at not promptly complying with his request, and abiding by his judgment that Turkey was the best place in which I could serve the country.

Shortly thereafter, my wife, my daughter Ruth, and I embarked for Europe, where we intended to spend the summer. While at Aix-les-Bains, I met Ambassador Myron T. Herrick, and I mentioned to him that I had refused the Ambassadorship to Turkey. He told me that I had made a grievous mistake, and probably from ignorance; that I did not comprehend what a splendid position that of Ambassador was; that not only I, but my children and my children’s children, would be benefited by my having held such a position. He ended by urging me that if I still could obtain the post, I should take steps to secure it.

My friend, Dr. Stephen S. Wise (of the Free Synagogue of New York, of which I was president), was then in Paris. I wrote him about the matter, and asked whether he could come to Aix-les-Bains for a consultation. He replied that he had but three days left in Europe, but that if I would start to Dijon the following morning he would also start from Paris, and we should both reach Dijon at noon. He would meet me at the station, and we could have four hours together to discuss the matter before our return to our respective bases.

We met at Dijon as arranged, and to my astonishment I found Wise tremendously anxious to have me accept the position. He told me that he had just visited Palestine, and that amongst the other services that I could render in Turkey, would be a great service to the Jews in Palestine. He reminded me of the happy experience, in the same office, of Solomon Hirsch, of Portland, Ore., who had been president of his congregation in that city. I knew the facts of that experience as Mr. Hirsch was the uncle of Judge Samson Lachman, who had been my partner in the practise of the law for twenty years. Dr. Wise urged me with all the force of his eloquence to rescind my declination.

I told Dr. Wise that I would be back in America in September, and if the position had not yet been filled at that time, I would reconsider it. On the strength of this statement, Dr. Wise telegraphed the President that I would accept. Within three days I received a cable from the President, again tendering me the position, and I accepted it.

Meanwhile, on January 1, 1913, Sulzer had been inaugurated as Governor of New York. A few weeks before this event, some of the leading social workers of New York City came to me and asked me to secure them an opportunity to have a conference with the President-elect. They wished to put before him the kind of legislation that would be required to carry out the social programme which they had been largely responsible for having embodied in the Democratic and Progressive platforms. I told them I did not see how the President could do much in this direction. Most of their plans called for state legislation, and I pointed out that it would be better and more effective for them to meet Governor Sulzer. I offered to give a dinner at my house in New York, at which Governor Sulzer would be the guest of honour, and I told them they might give me a list of the people whom they wished to have meet him. The list they gave me included the best-known social workers, such people as Homer Folks, Owen R. Lovejoy, Mary E. Dreier, Lillian D. Wald, John A. Kingsbury, and Edward T. Devine.

Sulzer accepted my invitation readily enough. One reason for his acceptance became apparent when I heard that the state printer at the moment was pressing him for the manuscript of his inaugural address, which he had not yet written, though it was already late in December. When the address was delivered some days later it embodied in his own language many of the thoughts and proposals that were put forward that evening by the social workers.

After the dinner the party adjourned to the library, and there I seated Sulzer in a big carved oak chair, facing the others, who sat in a semicircle before him. Each of the guests in turn made a presentation to the Governor of the situation and needs in the field of social reform in which he or she was an expert. These were really splendid expositions of the improvements required in the health, child-labour, tenement-house, and other laws. When Sulzer made his reply to their addresses, I was astonished at the grasp he displayed of the principles involved in these reforms, and at the eagerness with which he embraced their advocacy. It really seemed as if he were going to go heart and soul into making a record of progressive legislation for his administration.

I was not less delighted when, after a conference a few weeks later with Messrs. Folks, Kingsbury, and Devine, concerning the most important of these reforms—the drastic revision of the health laws—the four of us went up as a delegation to see Sulzer, and secured his hearty support. The situation was, that the health laws of New York State were being administered by five or six hundred health boards in the various villages, and an investigation had shown that a very substantial percentage of the health commissioners in these places were undertakers. We proposed a centralized state health board headed by a state health commissioner. Sulzer agreed to back the plan. He went further and said to me: “What’s more, you may name the Health Commissioner.” We thereupon returned to New York, and my friends drew up a draft of new laws to regulate the public health. This codification was enacted by the legislature at Sulzer’s insistence, and has since been adopted by more than thirty states. We agreed that Dr. Hermann M. Biggs was the ideal man for Commissioner, and I asked Sulzer to appoint him. He then hedged on his promise and selected another man, though Dr. Biggs was later appointed and made a national reputation in the office. Sulzer did, however, make good a part of his promise. He felt it necessary, for political reasons, to appoint two or three men of his own choice to the State Board of Health, but he allowed us to name the majority membership.

Sulzer’s administration thus started auspiciously. He saw, what every other shrewd observer also saw: the dazzling opportunity which lay before any politician who stood out boldly for the people as against the bosses, and who could embody this independent position in practical measures of reform. The lesson of Roosevelt’s career had just been confirmed by Wilson’s. But the experiences I am now narrating ultimately convinced me that Sulzer did not have the courage which had carried these two men of eminence. He “played politics,” and got no further than an unconvincing imitation of their methods. He continued to assure us Independents, on the one hand, that he was whole-heartedly converted, and that he had broken entirely with his past. But later we found out that he was at the same time assuring his friends in Tammany that “I am the same old Bill.” He tried to imitate Roosevelt’s success in another direction, in building up a personal “machine” in New York State by coquetting with the up-state Independent Democrats, to whom he allotted a share of the patronage which he controlled.

Ultimately, of course, both sides found him out for what he was. When they did, the Independents simply dropped him. Tammany, however, exacted a swift and terrible vengeance. If discipline were to be maintained within the wigwam, not even the appearance of open revolt could be tolerated, and Tammany proceeded to make a spectacular example of Sulzer.

Sulzer’s first appearance at Albany as Governor was not, however, a shock to Tammany alone. Albany is like Washington on a small scale. The Governor’s mansion was, traditionally, not only the office of the chief executive of the state, it had been likewise the social centre around which revolved a sort of court of Élite society. Heretofore every governor of New York had been a very presentable social figure, and they had all maintained at the executive mansion an atmosphere of social distinction. Sulzer rudely overturned this tradition. He wished in every possible way to dramatize his rÔle of “friend of the people.” Consequently, he always referred to the executive mansion as the “People’s House,” and ostentatiously invited all who would to come and call upon him in it. The staid Knickerbocker society of Albany was aghast at the sight of throngs of what they termed “the rabble” invading the hitherto exclusive chambers of the executive mansion. Great was their anger toward Governor Sulzer. They, too, cherished hopes for vengeance.

In the meantime, Sulzer was having other difficulties in maintaining his rÔle of independence. One day he telephoned me to come up at once to his rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria. He had a matter of great importance to discuss, he said, and we could talk it over at luncheon. When I arrived, I found him in great excitement.

“The powers,” he exclaimed, meaning Tammany, “are trying to force me to appoint a certain man chairman of the Public Service Commission, and I am refusing to do it because I don’t think it a proper appointment. But they are getting very angry about it, and I don’t know what to do.”

I told him there was only one thing he could do and that was to continue to refuse to appoint him.

“But,” complained Sulzer, “it means my political death if I don’t name him.”

“Well,” I said, “then you are going to political death anyway. Because as surely as you yield to them, the public at large will become even bitterer enemies than Tammany. On the other hand, if you at least prove to the public that you have the nerve to stand out against the organization, they will come to the rescue and stand firmly behind you.”

As we talked, a Tammany leader was announced. Sulzer had him ushered into his bedroom while we continued our talk in the parlour. Evidently the Tammany leader was waiting for his final decision, for at length Sulzer said:

“Very well, I will go in there.”

He went into the bedroom and was gone for more than an hour. I had to wait so long that I grew impatient and, ringing for a waiter, ordered my luncheon. As I ate, I could hear the voices through the closed door, and though I could not distinguish the conversation, it was violent, for occasionally I could hear an explosion of vocal fireworks in the bedroom. When at length Sulzer came out, his manner was one of excited bravado. Throwing back the tails of his Prince Albert coat and assuming the Henry Clay pose, he exclaimed, “Well, I have done it! I have actually defied them!”

And he added:

“I did it on your account and by your advice. And now you have got to do me a favour.”

When I asked what this meant, he replied: “It may come to this: Murphy may press me so hard to name somebody else whom I ought not to nominate that I may have to appoint you yourself as chairman of the Commission. Even Murphy would not dare to prevent the confirmation of the appointment of the chairman of the Finance Committee of the Democratic National Committee. Will you accept the position if that situation arises?”

This was a critical test of my willingness to serve the cause of good government, as I had every reason to suspect that President Wilson would soon offer me a position of a much greater distinction in the National Government. But I was so wrapped up in the hope of achieving political regeneration in New York, as we had just achieved it in the nation, that I did not hesitate.

“If I can keep you from having to obey orders from Murphy in making your appointments, I will even do that,” I replied.

Sulzer thanked me warmly and then added:

“Now you must do me one other favour.”

“What is that?” I inquired.

“You have got to make a speech at my birthday dinner down at the CafÉ Boulevard to-morrow night. I want you to show that you are back of me.”

“Governor,” I replied, “I will make that speech; but let me tell you now, bluntly, that I shall say there what I have told you to-day, that I shall continue to back you only so long as you adhere to your promises to us to be independent.”

“I don’t care what you say,” said Sulzer, “if only you will come down and prove that you are behind me.”

This dinner was quite a dramatic occasion. The old CafÉ Boulevard was the Delmonico of the East Side, and it had been the scene of many a Tammany festivity. Sulzer here was among his own people, and this gave him the feeling of confidence which came from having his friends around him. The dinner was in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. People well known in many walks of life crowded the tables. Sulzer was personally still popular, and the feeling of the occasion was one of cordial good wishes. Not only were his life-long friends of the East Side among those present, but such other Democratic friends as Senator Stone of Missouri, Frank I. Cobb of the New York World, John D. Crimmins, and myself; and even representative Republicans, such as District Attorney (later Governor) Whitman, Judge Otto Rosalsky, Louis Marshall, and Samuel S. Koenig, were among the diners.

I resolved to take no chances of spoiling my speech, which I had prepared rapidly but with great care the day before. So when I arose, I read it. This address made a local sensation at the moment. It was called by the papers “the wish-bone speech.” As it was very brief and as it had some effect on the political situation at that time, I think it worth quoting.

“Governor,” I said, “you have wished, and have been training all your life to be a leader of the people; you have wished it so long that now it has become true, and we want to see your wish-bone converted into back-bone, for you will need much of it.

“You are now at the head of a mighty host that is marching onward in the fight for good government. Picture to yourself the thousands behind you in a solid phalanx, crowding you on so that you cannot turn back. If you fail them as a leader the march will still proceed, and someone else will be chosen.

“The combat is to be fought to a finish. The people have discovered how near they were to losing their Democracy, how both great parties were in danger of falling into the control of designing self-seekers who were determined to secure control of the Government for their own selfish ends. At Baltimore it was determined that they could not control the National Government. It was you who, as presiding officer of the Convention, gave Mr. Bryan the opportunity to throw the victory to Mr. Wilson.

“At Syracuse, you were nominated in an open convention to lead the Democrats of this state. We look to you to be the Governor of the Empire State, and not to be the agent of undisclosed principals who hide themselves from the public view. They can no longer govern this country, state or city; and no office-holder needs to be responsible to or afraid of them.

“There is but one master who will last forever and to whom all ought to bow, and that is enlightened public opinion. If you enlist under its banner, you can proceed unmolested by petty tyranny, and the harder you fight, the greater will be the army that will enlist in your cause and under your leadership. You are to be envied the opportunity you have to advance the cause of good government. It is not an easy task; your opponents are numerous and trained in the art of spiking their opponents’ guns; but you must stand up, plant yourself firmly, saying: ‘Come one, come all. This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I.’”

This address, with its unexpected note of blunt warning, became the key-note of the evening. The other speakers discarded their prepared addresses and spoke in a similar vein. Sulzer realized that he had to meet this challenge, and in his reply he pledged himself anew to the cause of the people.

“Long ago,” he said, “I made a vow to the people that in the performance of my duty no influence would control me but the dictates of my conscience and my determination to do the right—as I see the right—day in and day out, regardless of political future or personal consequences. Have no fear—I will stick at that.”

These were brave words. But Sulzer proved unequal to their promise. All he did was to go far enough in the surface appearance of independence to rouse the Tiger of Tammany to a fury of vengeance.

Tammany soon found an occasion to carry out this intention, and they removed Sulzer from his office. This act of private vengeance cost Tammany four years of control of the city government of New York, for Hennessy’s disclosures made the public eager to administer a rebuke to Tammany, and this rebuke took the form of electing Mitchel as Mayor.

The Tiger’s opportunity to impeach Sulzer came about in this way: When Sulzer filed his sworn statement of campaign expenses, Tammany scented some gross discrepancies and did some shrewd detective work. The result was that they discovered that he had not included in his list of contributions the $2,500 he had received from Jacob H. Schiff, nor the checks of several others, including my own, which amounted in all to many thousands of dollars. By careful investigation they had established the fact that he had not applied these moneys to his campaign expenses, but had deposited them to his personal account and used the money as margin with a Wall Street broker for stock-market speculation. Thereupon, Tammany leaders in the State Legislature arose in the Assembly Chamber and impeached William Sulzer of high crimes and misdemeanours. They charged him, among other things, with filing a false statement of campaign expenses, with perjury, and with the suppression of testimony; and demanded his dismissal from office. The Assembly sustained a motion for his impeachment. When I returned from Europe in September, 1913, I found that his trial was in progress, and I was summoned as a witness to testify before the High Court of Impeachment.

It would take the pens of a Macaulay and a Swift to do justice to this modern burlesque of the trial of Warren Hastings. I use the term “burlesque” in no sense of disrespect toward the Court and its setting. The dignity of the proceedings was almost awe-inspiring. But the defendant lent no such exalted interest to the event as did the romantic figure of Warren Hastings. The offences of Hastings had, at least, the dramatic merits of their magnitude. Burke’s indictment of him was a recital of crimes worthy of the treatment of a Greek tragic poet. Hastings’s accusers were distressed queens, pillaged treasures, and suffering peoples. Burke’s plea for a verdict was an appeal to the conscience of mankind.

By this comparison the Sulzer impeachment was a travesty, the defendant a petty misdemeanant, and the purpose of the trial a spiteful vengeance on a rebellious henchman. The setting of the Court, however, gave the event a fictitious dignity. The Senate Chamber at Albany had been altered for the occasion by the state architect. A lofty seat had been provided for the presiding judge of the High Court of Impeachment, Judge Edgar M. Cullen, who, as chief judge of the Court of Appeals, presided ex officio. Below him was a long seat for the associate judges. Ascending tiers of seats were provided for the forty-four members of the State Senate who, with the judges of the Court of Appeals, constituted the High Court of Impeachment. Behind Judge Cullen’s chair the entire wall of the room was hung with a dark red velvet curtain in the centre of which was emblazoned the coat of arms of New York in gold embroidery, flanked on either side by national emblems. At one side of the court room, places were provided for the “Fourth Estate,” the gentlemen of the press, to whom Burke had made so eloquent an appeal on the greater historical occasion. The public balcony, which at the Hastings trial had been crowded with the Sarah Siddonses and the haut ton of London, was, here at Albany, crowded with the vengeful Knickerbocker aristocracy, who had come to gloat in triumph over the final discomfiture of the demagogic desecrator of the executive mansion. The Edmund Burke of the Sulzer impeachment was Edgar T. Brackett, late of the New York Senate. Alton B. Parker and John B. Stanchfield were the chief counsel of the managers for the Assembly which had presented the indictment, but Brackett was the man who made the oratorical impeachment. Sulzer stood upon the prerogative of early precedents and refused to make a personal appearance before the Court. In compliance with a judicial ruling he abstained from functioning as Governor while the trial was in progress and, instead of facing his accusers, spent his time in a frantic but futile effort to make political combinations that would save him.

Witness after witness testified to Sulzer’s solicitation of contributions for which he had made no accounting. My testimony was only confirmatory of a mass of evidence elicited from men of eminence like Jacob H. Schiff and many others. I appeared before the Court on September 24, 1913. Replying to questions from the prosecutor, I repeated the conversation I had had with Sulzer when I gave him my check for $1,000, and I also testified to the fact that on the day I returned from Europe, Governor Sulzer had telephoned me, “If you are going to testify I hope you will be easy with me”—to which I answered that I would testify to the facts.

The verdict of the court was “Guilty.” Sulzer was shorn of his high office. His proud hopes, fostered by the soothsayer’s prophecy, were sadly broken. Knickerbocker society had its revenge; the “People’s House” became again the executive mansion. And Tammany had its vengeance; it had crushed its rebel henchman and given all other potential malcontents a spectacular object lesson.