Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1901 — Tammany Charity. [ARTICLE]

Tammany Charity.

A timely article ia Leslie’s Monthly lays stress upon one bulwark of Tammany that reformers often lose sight of. Annually it has been the custom for the present chief to arise at a meeting of the executive committee and ask Treasurer John McQuade: “How much money remains from the last campaign?” “Oh, about $50,000, I guess,” may be the reply. “Well, then, I move that $20,000 be donated to the poor of the city, and a similar sum for the Cuban war sufferers,” says the chief. “I guess We can worry along on the other $10,000.” Nor are folks permitted to forget such gifts as this. Workers have been repeatedly subjected to rebuffs from recipients of Tammany bounty. Stepping into a “double-decker” tenement one day, the Republican women started to argue with a number of the female occupants about the virtues of the candidates Whose cause they espoused, and the good government they would be sure to give, were they elected. A strapping mother of twelve childnen—four of them voters—listened respectfully to the eloquence of the visitors. When they had finished, she placed her-hands on her hips and retented: “Sure and phwat you say about Gfheral Tracy being a good man may be true. I dunno. But will he give me four boys jobs? Will he take care of the old man when he is sick? Will he give me and the brats an excoorsion every summer and a turkey dinner every winter? That’s what Tammany does fer me, and that’s why the old man and me boys vote the ticket straight.”