Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1885 — THE NEW YORK ELECTION. [ARTICLE]

THE NEW YORK ELECTION.

The Only Wonder Is That It 4 Was Not Worse. ■. * •-7- -1-.-From the Chicago Tribune. . - • For thirty years the State of New York has been a debatable ground, with its general drift toward Democracy since the war period ended. Fourteen Gubernatorial elections have now been held since the Republican party was organized, and each party has carned*seven, the most emphatic Republican victories being won during the war epoch, when the party had the benefit of Democratic accessions. Since 1874 the Republicans have had but one Governor (Cornell, in 1879, when the Democrats ran two candidates), and the drift of the State has been so steadily in their direction that the Democrats now claim it in their column. The reasons for this are not far to find. New York City is the dumping-ground for Europe. Tens of thousands of Irish have poured into it, been naturalized, and are now known as “Tammany,” an organization at least 80,000 strong. The Italians and French are also very numerous, and are solidly Tammany Democratic. The Germans also mainly all vote the Democratic ticket there. The few Republicans among them have neither an organ nor an organization. Resides these there are some fifteen or eighteen thousand American voters in the city who act with the Democrats, and, with the thirty or forty thousand Germans and a few Irish, constitute the other faction called the “County Democracy.” Out of the 140,000 Democratic voters of that city, fully 120,000 are “foreigners,” and their numbers are continually increasing, as their sons vote with them and more and more of their relatives arrive from Europe. New York has thus become really an Irish city under the rule of Tammany Hall. It has an Irish Mayor and an Irish Sheriff and many of the Judges. . The Irish control the Council, the Police, the Fire, and the Street Departments, and most of the offices, as they do in Boston and New Haven.

Brooklyn is in the same political condition in a lesser degree. It gives a Democratic majority of from 9,000 to 12,00 Q. Three-fourths of the Democrats there are Irish. They have also swarmed over into Connecticut, and hold New Haven and other cities in sufficient strength to make Connecticut a Democratic State. Westchester County, adjoining New York, and all the river towns up to Troy and Albany are also under Irish control, and consequently are Democratic strongholds. . Arrayed against Tammany is the “County Democracy,” composed of Americans, Germans, and a few’ Dish, whose only political object is to contest the local offices with the Tammany Irish. The two factions hate each other cordially. The Republicans being in a hopeless minority in the city, there is no necessity for compromise or union between the factions, and there is nothing to abate the fierceness of their rivalry. Their only object is to outvote each other and seize the local offices, and for this purpose to call out as big a vote as possible on each side so as to monopolize the consumption of the revenues, which now are swollen to about $33,000,000 per annum, and which are sufficient to give employment to 20,000 officeholders of all sorts.

Under conditions like these the Democrats have a solid and reliable majority of at least 60,000 on both sides of the river. Around the bay they control 5,000 more. In the range of river towns from Albany down to New York there. is an additional 5,000, so that the Republicans have a fixed, unyielding majority of at least 70,000 to overcome with their vote west of Albany. In other words, except under extraordinary circumstances, this majority is a little more than that from the rural districts. The Republicans, carrying a majority of the counties, still retain control of the Legislature, and will be able to make the laws, subject to the Governor’s veto, but this fearful foreign majority around the Bay of New York has swamped them on the State ticket. The savage effort of the two factions to get control of the local offices added to their strength on the State ticket, which both factions supported. The only hope of Republicans in the future lies in the nomination of a man of extraordinary popularity like Mr. Blaine, but who can at the same time command the mugwump vote. This vote Mr. Davenport had, but, whatever it may have amounted to, it was far more than offset by the “Blaine Irish,” who went back to their allegiance all over the State. This fall, as in 1884, the Republicans also had to fight against the rural Prohibitionists, who have become possessed of the insane idea that they can enforce prohibition in a State like New York, the chief city of which would vote down a prohibition amendment by more than 100,000 majority if it were ever submitted, and if carried would trample its enforcement under foot. Their vote last year was 25,000, more than nine-tenths of it Republican, and this year it will probably reach 40,000. With such ’ tremendous obstacles confronting the Republicans, the chief among them being the Irish obstacle in the alien city of New York, it is needless to look further for the cause of their defeat. The only Wonder is that it was not worse.