The Chief

by David Nasaw

  His first miracle was the October 12 convention of his Municipal Ownership League, which was managed so spectacularly that even the opposition newspapers were forced to take the party and its candidate seriously. “If enthusiasm counts for anything,” the Times reported the next morning, “the regular party organizations will have to reckon more seriously with the third ticket than they thought up to last night. The crowd at Carnegie Hall far exceeded the attendance at the Democratic or the Republican City Convention....In less than fifteen minutes after the doors of the hall were opened the place was filled. The police handled the crowd so well that there was no disorder. For the benefit of those who could not get inside overflow meetings were held.” This was not, the Times reported, the “tin bucket” brigade of workingmen whom Hearst had attracted to previous rallies: “There were hundreds of well-dressed and apparently well-to-do citizens on the platform and on the main floor of the hall.”18

  The campaign began the next morning when the first Hearst expedition got hopelessly lost in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and had to ask a policeman for directions. But after this initial misstep, everything seemed to fall into place. Hearst had become a terrific campaigner. If, as a candidate for the presidential nomination, he had been reluctant to speak in public, he now seized every occasion he could, buoyed by the enthusiastic crowds he drew all over the city. When his opponents claimed that he was incapable of saying anything not written for him in advance by Arthur Brisbane, he discarded his text and spoke extemporaneously. He had conquered his shyness, learned to project his high squeaky voice beyond the podium, mastered the call-and-response format that was a staple of city politics, and managed to give each of his audiences precisely what it had come to hear.

  Hearst delivered the same message wherever he went. He was beholden to no one but the people. If elected he would institute municipal control and ownership of municipal services and exclude the trusts from the business of providing the city with water, transportation, ice, gas, and electricity. Without the trusts, there would be no source of boodle for the grafters; Tammany and the bosses would be eliminated from city politics and municipal government returned to the people. As the Hearst caravan moved through the city, its every step was ballyhooed before and after the event in the morning American, the Evening Journal, and the German-language New Yorker Morgen Journal.

  Hearst’s campaign for mayor was such a good story that even the opposition papers reported it as enthusiastically as he did. “William Randolph Hearst drove through the lower east side last night in a procession of triumph, the like of which has not been seen in New York in many years,” Pulitzer's World, which did not endorse Hearst or any other candidate for mayor, reported on October 31, a week before the election:

  He made five speeches to audiences that were limited only [by the] size of the halls, while outside the doors there swarmed many thousands of people, cheering wildly at the slightest excuse and waiting patiently until he reappeared so they could escort him to the next meeting place. This extraordinary enthusiasm over an individual has had its like but once before in the political history of the east side [the year before when President Roosevelt visited Little Hungary]. Mr. Hearst had a reception so enthusiastic in its cheers, so fanatical in its appearance of devotion, so vigorous in its declarations of voting for him that all the calculations of politicians about the east side were upset.19

  The Socialist party was so disturbed by the excitement which Hearst was generating in working-class and immigrant districts that, ignoring Tammany and the Republicans entirely, it implored potential voters not to be misled by this purported “friend of labor,” this “Moses” who promised to lead working people out of the wilderness to practical “socialism” via municipal ownership. Hearst was, the Socialists reminded their followers, just another capitalist.20

  Hearst’s popularity among the city’s working people reached such heights that the newspapers in early November predicted that whoever won, Hearst would take over Tammany Hall after the election. The Democrats continued to fire away, accusing him of every imaginable crime, including McKinley’s assassination. The Tammany-run Daily News published a cartoon with the ghost of McKinley pointing a finger at a fleeing Hearst and “displayed [it] in huge posters on fences and dead walls, all over New York City.... The Tammany managers tried to send out 300,000 copies of it on postal cards to voters, but they were barred from the mails as scurrilous matter.”21

  Tammany’s attempts to portray Hearst as a lunatic anarchist accelerated in the last week of the campaign. Bourke Cockran, Tammany’s star orator, declared at a huge rally at 14th Street and Union Square that Hearst had to be defeated because he represented “every appeal to passion that we have observed during the last nine years. Every incitement to murder, every encouragement to riot; every disposition to array class against class; every assault upon property and every insinuation against virtue, all those forces which have raised him to the position which he occupies. [Hearst was] an apostle of riot, an advocate of disorder, a promoter of Socialism. [His election] would be such a pronouncement of anarchy and riot that the very foundations of society would be shattered and the whole fabric of social order reduced to ruin.”22

  Unfortunately for Tammany and the Republicans, radical-baiting like this had no effect on the electorate. In his whirlwind month-long tour of the city, Hearst had managed to be seen and heard by thousands of voters. The truth was that, in person, Hearst did not resemble a bomb-throwing monster or a wild-eyed opportunist. He dressed like an undertaker, was soft-spoken, affable, and courteous. Instead of trying to disguise himself as a man of the people, he pointed to his wealth and social position as an argument for his solidity and his honesty: “I am not in this election because I have any itch for office or because I want the salary, but because I want to accomplish something for your benefit and win your approval.”23

  Hearst's ability to project his message in person and then reproduce it in print was winning him votes all across the city. The New York Times, which had dismissed his candidacy entirely three weeks earlier, on November 3 asked loyal Republicans to abandon their candidate and vote for McClellan to block a Hearst victory: “The diversion of Republican votes from Mr. IVINS [the Republican candidate] is now the only way to diminish the Hearst vote and the Hearst danger.” Colonel Mann of Town Topics, who had also dismissed the Hearst candidacy, similarly implored his readers, who, he acknowledged, looked upon “elections as an unmitigated evil or at least a distasteful function, the duties of which they are ready to shirk,” to get to the polls and vote for McClellan.24

  The Sunday before the election, the New York Herald declared in its preelection survey that Hearst’s enormous strength in Democratic districts had the pollsters confused: “Herald’s Poll Shows Party Lines Thrown to the Winds.... Mayoralty Contest a Bewildering Puzzle.... Conservatives Drift to McClellan While Wage-earners Rally to the Independent Standard.”25

  Hearst scheduled no campaign appearances on the Sunday preceding Election Day, but offered his supporters instead a free concert at Madison Square Garden by the Metropolitan Opera House orchestra. The concert attracted a crowd of 50,000, with 500 policemen to keep order. Fifteen blocks away at the Hippodrome between 43rd and 44th Streets, Tammany was holding its own rally, also with overflow crowds. Only the presence of a huge police contingent prevented bloodshed in the streets as a thousand Hearst supporters, unable to get into the Madison Square rally, marched north to confront the Tammany supporters.26

  The next morning, November 7, in its Election Day editorial, “For the Defense of the City,” the New York Times called its readers’ attention to the Hearst rally that had been held the night before:

  There were from 15,000 to 25,000 persons inside the Garden, and according to varying reports from 10,000 to 20,000 or more in the streets surrounding the building. There was unbounded enthusiasm for Mr. HEARST.... These are matters of which no prudent man will fail to take note. What do they mean? They mean that every phase and kind of di
scontent and dissatisfaction has been marshaled under the leadership of Mr. HEARST, and that the number of voters in his following is so large as really to threaten his election to the office of Mayor.

  W. R., as he was now referred to by his closest friends—it was the perfect compromise between the informal Will and the much too formal William—awoke early on Election Day and was at the polls by 6:45, with Arthur Brisbane and a coterie of supporters to cheer him on. The preelection polls, the worried newspaper editorials, and the crowds that had greeted him were proof positive that he had gotten his message across. There seemed little question but that he would poll enough votes to defeat McClellan and Ivins, the Republican candidate.

  He returned to his home for a few hours’ sleep—he was not used to getting up at such an ungodly hour—and was driven to the Hoffman House, still his political clubhouse. Max Ihmsen, his campaign manager, who had warned him the night before that Tammany would do whatever it had to to steal the election, was already apoplectic. The reports from the field were worse than even he had expected.

  All over town, there were instances of voter fraud, of poll watchers being chased away, of delays in reporting returns, of unopened and uncounted ballot boxes disappearing or being delivered to the wrong addresses or mysteriously turning up in a barber’s shop, a tailor’s shop window, and the East River. It was, the Independent declared, “the most extraordinary election ever witnessed in New York City.”27

  “Hearst watchers from the districts of Charles F. Murphy, ‘Johnny’ Oakley, and ‘Big Tim’ Sullivan,” the New York Times reported on November 8, the next morning, “came into the Hearst headquarters at the Hoffman House last night with bandaged heads. Some carried their arms in slings. At about ten o’clock in the evening a report was received that the returns were being held back from these districts.” While Hearst poll watchers were being intimidated and worse—the Times reported that one, an R. Little, had “had a finger chewed off and his face cut”—Tammany flooded the polls with repeaters.

  Hearst remained outwardly calm, dispatching new poll watchers to replace the bruised and beaten, requesting the superintendent of elections to send in deputies, and gathering testimony from his men in the field for possible legal action.

  By midnight, the returns indicated that McClellan was going to outpoll Hearst by a few thousand votes. Hearst, “pale with anger,” according to the November 8 New York Times, demanded a recount. “We have won the election. All Tammany’s friends, all Tammany’s corruption, all Tammany’s intimidation and violence, all Tammany’s false registration, illegal voting and dishonest count have not been able to overcome a great popular majority,” Hearst told reporters. “The recount will show that we have won the election by many thousands of votes. I shall fight this battle to the end.”

  “For once,” reported The Literary Digest, “the greatest exponent of ‘yellow’ journalism has uttered a statement, sensational tho it is to the last degree, that stands unchallenged by many of the most conservative papers in the city ... The local press generally ... believe that the evidences of fraud, corruption, intimidation, and force in several instances are too positive to be ignored.”28

  There were few doubts that Tammany had stolen the election, but even fewer tears were shed at Hearst’s defeat. The day after the election, the Times, simultaneously with reporting on the numerous instances of voter fraud, editorially congratulated the city’s voters on defeating Hearst: “Their votes have spared the city the humiliation, the trials, and the dangers of a four years' management of its affairs by a peculiarly reckless, unschooled, and unsteady group of experimenters and adventurers ... It is certain that the election of Mr. HEARST to be Mayor of New York would have sent a shiver of apprehension over the entire Union.”29

  Hearst put together a bipartisan team of politicians and civic leaders, with Republican candidate Ivins prominent among them, to demand a recount. He held demonstrations throughout the city and attacked Tammany more furiously than during the campaign, vowing to put those who had participated in vote fraud behind bars. Though in the first few days after the election Hearst was confident that the results would be thrown out, if not immediately in a recount, then through court action, he was wrong. There was no recount. While newspaper editorials and reformers prattled on about the sanctity of the ballot box, Tammany got away with robbery. On December 27, 1905, George Brinton McClellan was officially reelected as mayor of New York City. His plurality, in an election in which almost 600,000 votes had been cast, was 3,472. Though Hearst continued to contest the election, in the end, neither the courts nor the state legislature were willing to overturn an election, unseat a sitting mayor, and replace him with William Randolph Hearst.

  Even if one accepted the final returns as accurate, which few did, it was clear that Hearst had turned a political miracle. Running for mayor as the candidate of a third party that had not celebrated its first anniversary, he had polled almost twice as many votes as the Republicans, robbed the Socialist party of half the votes it had polled in the previous election, and beaten Tammany in its own backyards. The most dramatic defections were on the Lower East Side, where Jewish and German voters deserted to Hearst in large numbers. Hearst had also, as McClellan would acknowledge in his autobiography, done extremely well “among what has since become known as the white-collar proletariat, the clerks, small employees, and small shopkeepers.”30

  “Whether or not Mr. Hearst is to be seated as mayor,” the editors of Current Literature had concluded in December 1905, “the vote he received has startled the country and is variously interpreted.” Was the vote primarily a protest against Tammany, a statement in favor of municipal ownership, a sign of support for Hearst, or some combination of all three? It didn’t quite matter. William Randolph Hearst, Harper’s Weekly declared without equivocation, had become “a force to be reckoned with.”31

  New York City politics would certainly never be the same. Until Hearst came along, Tammany had, for the most part, been able to ignore the Republicans and third-party reformers. Despite their occasional success in municipal elections, the reformers were, as Boss Plunkitt so eloquently put it, no more than “mornin’ glories—looked lovely in the mornin’ and withered up in a short time, while the regular machines went on flourishin’ forever, like fine old oaks.” Hearst was different. He and his newspapers spoke in a language New York City’s voters listened to. The attention he paid to immigrant communities, combined with his support for striking workers and his demand for reforms that would lower the price they paid for milk, ice, gas, and local transit, had paid off handsomely on Election Day.32

  Even before the campaign was over, Hearst's call for municipal ownership of public utilities had aroused so much public support that his opponents had no choice but to agree with him. McClellan, recognizing the effectiveness of Hearst’s attack on Tammany, had to distance himself from Boss Murphy during the campaign and declare his independence after Election Day. Boss Murphy was so disturbed by Hearst’s strength in the wards that Tammany had always controlled, that from this point on he nominated reform-minded candidates like Judge William Gaynor of Brooklyn and championed political and social reforms similar to those Hearst advocated. According to John Buenker, the author of Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform, much of the important reform legislation of the Progressive Era was supported, if not introduced, by city machines and bosses. In New York City, this did not occur until—and, it is safe to say, because of—the Hearst challenge.33

  11. Man of Mystery

  HEARST HAD LOST the mayoral election of 1905 because he had not been ruthless enough. He had been taken to school by Boss Murphy, but he was a good student. In defeat, he had witnessed the use of a new set of dirty tricks. Never again would he be caught by surprise.

  He was, ironically, more venerated as a politician and candidate after defeat than before. He had run a comparatively clean campaign, built a political organization from the ground up, polled well over 200,000 votes, and transmuted a constitu
ency of readers into voters. His organization remained intact, as did his newspaper empire and Phoebe’s fortune.

  There were no doubts as to his next move. Tammany’s theft of his election had confirmed his belief that the political system was hopelessly corrupt and required a savior. He had entered the election with a protean messiah complex which was now fully developed. He was no longer just another candidate running for office; he was the “movement’s” candidate, the people’s candidate, the hero on the white horse who had come to town to clean up the mess and drive out the bad guys.

  In a letter to Arthur Brisbane on the first of December, he characterized his defeat not in personal terms, but as “a tragedy to the people.” Fortunately, as he reminded Brisbane, “the laborers and immigrants became involved—really involved” in the campaign, which meant that next time around he was sure to be successful: “I believe more than ever that our movement will succeed.... Our next effort will be the most important thus far ... We will run for Governor as planned.”1