Tammany

George Washington Olvany is the official head of Tammany Hall--the successor of Tweed. Croker, Murphy. He is not as powerful as his predecessors. On matters of importance, he takes orders from Alfred Emanuel Smith, who has shaped Tammany into respectability, though only being one of the Sachems.

George Washington Olvany, with the presidential election looming, was the author of a defense of Tammany Hall, in the November Scribuer's, entitled "The Present-Day Tammany."* Excerpts:

"In the last three generations--since the close of the Civil War--the Democratic party has named eleven men for the presidency. Six of them--Seymour. Greeley, Tilden, Cleveland, Parker, and Smith-- were New Yorkers. Three of the six-- Seymour, Tilden, and Smith--have been conspicuous members of Tammany Hall.

"Horatio Seymour was defeated by Ulysses S. Grant, who had a plurality of only 305,456 votes of the total vote of 5,724,688. Seymour carried New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. The election of Grant was inevitable, for Grant sympathizers dominated the election in the Southern States where voting was permitted. The votes of Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia, all concededly Seymour States, by special act of Congress were not counted. . . .

"Samuel J. Tilden had a clear majority of the popular vote cast in 1876. and a majority of the electoral vote until the honest result was nullified by the infamous report made by a 'returned board' manipulated by the Republican national administration.

"Alfred E. Smith, from present indications, will receive a clear majority of both the popular and electoral votes to be cast this fall. No such jugglery as followed and set aside the elections of 1868 and 1876 can prevail in 1928. . . .

"In this day and generation it is generally taken for granted in New York that assaults upon and fabrications about Tammany are intended for political capital in other sections of the country, where the present-day Tammany is unknown, and where the traditions of what happened half a century ago may pass current as of today.

"The fact that the present-day Tammany has advocated election reforms, fought for woman suffrage, enacted the most progressive social-service and public-welfare laws in the world, and that these laws and the Tammany-made industrial code for the protection of wage-earners of both sexes have been copied by most of the States of the Union and by foreign governments is never stressed by the leather-lunged hirelings of so-called 'reform movements' that sprout, attain rank, growth, and wither, all within a few years. . . .

"In the 142 years of its active existence the Tammany Society, as has been the case with practically every active organization-- whether it be political, social, or other, has not been able to keep some scamps from membership. . . ."

Mr. Olvany's most telling argument was a quotation from famed Historian Charles A. Beard: "Tammany is our greatest social-service agency, and it holds its power because it understands sympathetically the needs and trials of the masses. Its leaders visit those who are sick and in distress. . . . Tammany asks no questions and fills out no pink and green cards. Its office hours are not from ten to four, but continuous. . . . Its virtue is its humanity. . . ."

*The old Tammany has been exposed and exploited by M. R. Werner in a fat book called Tammany Hall. The book contains practically no. facts about Tammany since the World War.