Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1878 — TWEED. [ARTICLE]

TWEED.

Stories of the Great Tammany Thief. Tweed was vain and fond of flattery, although he despised toadies and toadyism. He paid SSOO for a steel engraving and $250 for a biographical sketch, to be published in a forthcoming volume. When the proofs were sent him he objected to the caplion, “ Our SelfMade Men,” and forfeited the entire sum rather than be included in the list. He made considerable pretensions to extended reading, and could recite with considerable rhetorical effect many passages from his favorite British poets. He had in his office a Bible, a prayerbook, and a compilation of political extracts, side by side with manuals and red books. His affiliations pecuniarily with men high in social and moral grades were extended and numerous. On one occasion a party applied to Tweed for an unsecured loan of SIO,OOO. He listened patiently. Then he drew his check for $5,000, after which he wrote a note to this effect, and addressed it to one of the Police Commissioners —not Henry Smith: “Friend : wants SIO,OOO. (Who does not?) I have given him $5,000. You must get him the balance. I say given. He says loaned, but you and I know all about that ourselves. Fix him, and oblige, thine truly, “Wm. M. Tweed.” The party took the check and carried Mr. Tweed’s note to the Commissioner. The board was in session, but time was E recions, and he sent in the note with is card. Almost immediately the Commissioner came out. “ When do you want this ?” “ Before 3 o’clock to-day. ” “I can’t do it, possibly. Stay, I’ll do the best I can.” He gave his check for $2,500, and wrote a note to one of the chief officials of the city—and very decidedly not one of the ring—asking that he would draw his check, without question, for $2,500 and hand it to the bearer, who was entitled to it The astonished recipient hastened to the official named, and before 3 o’clock deposited his SIO,OOO, only $5,000 of which came from Tweed directly, but all of which was the result of Tweed’s appeal. Tweed’s subscription at the head of a paper was good for twenty others. His name for SIO,OOO meant SIOO,OOO from the others, and without question. With all his getting of money, Tweed cared little for money itself. He made enormous sacrifices at times. On one occasion he was bitten by a mania for owning an interest in newspapers. He said he had loaned or advanced to the Democrat nearly $75,000. He owned largely in the Transcript and Leader, and held either stocks or bonds of half a dozen weeklies. He professed to hold the press in derision, but was foremost in endeavoring to conciliate newspapers that opposed him or his schemes. It at one time became the custom—not yet extinct—for certain journals to claim credit for having broken the Tweed ring, and Tweed used to say that those who shouted reform the loudest had bled him most when he was in power. At one time it was freely circulated in outside circles that both the ’Squire and the Boss—Sweeny and Tweed—had Senatorial ambitions. When Mr. Sweeny was spoken to, he said he had thought it would “ be pleasant to spend a winter in Washington, but as yet he had not engaged rooms there.” Tweed, on the other hand, said, “ If I wanted to go to the Senate, I’d go; but what for? I can't talk, and I know it. As to spending my time in hearing a lot of suoozers discuss the tariff and the particulars of a contract to carry the mails from Paducah to Schoharie, I don’t tllink doing; Lliut jtxoi npir.” In speaking of his downfall he reiterated what he had said aforetime about the press: “If these picture papers would only leave me alone, I wouldn’t care for all the rest.” “But these picture papers are such caricatures that no one would ever know you by them,” said his friend. “ That makes no difference. The people get an idea that Tweed is a thief. They get used to seeing Tweed in a striped suit, and pretty soon they’ll be mad if he isn’t in one.” For the comments of journals outside of New York city he cared literally nothing. On one occasion some one sent him a copy of a peculiarly pretentious journal published in a neighboring city, in which was an article claiming the authorship of Tweed’s downfall. He looked at it, laughed, and said: “Oh, yes; I have seen this paper before. It was sent to me with a marked tirade against * Slippery Dick, the Big Judge.’ Really the man who * runs’ the paper, as he calls it, is too amusing to quarrel with.”