CHAPTER EIGHT

The Collector

NOT LONG BEFORE Conkling humiliated Fenton on the floor of the Senate, Arthur’s Union College friend Silas Burt visited him at his law office on shadowed Nassau Street in Lower Manhattan. Burt was a year younger than Arthur, and after college the two had lost touch until the summer of 1861, when they ran into each other at the state capitol in Albany. Burt remembered that at Union, Arthur was slender and affable and liked to wear a green frock coat to signify his support for Irish independence. The Arthur he met at the capitol “had grown stout” but “exhibited the same genial countenance and pleasing manners as when a collegian.” When Arthur became quartermaster general he had added Burt to his staff.

But after the war Burt noticed a change in his friend. The collegiate Arthur was earnest and idealistic, and as quartermaster he had been a conscientious steward of the state’s money. This new Arthur was different. Republicans and Democrats were clashing over Reconstruction, taxes, and trade. New industries were transforming the American economy, and giant trusts were beginning to dominate it. But Arthur no longer viewed politics as a struggle over issues or ideals. It was a partisan game, and to the victor went the spoils: jobs, power, and money.

Burt also was troubled by Arthur’s deepening involvement with Tom Murphy, and by both men’s connections to the Tweed Ring. New York City’s population was exploding, from 300,000 in 1840 to nearly 943,000 in 1870, and honest municipal officials were unable to provide housing, sanitation, health care, and employment for the growing multitudes. Between 1866 and 1871, William Tweed and his henchmen stepped into the breach—while plundering the city coffers of millions of dollars. Public works contracts and franchises for horse car lines and ferry companies offered ample opportunities for graft. Boss Tweed and his accomplices also made fortunes in printing and advertising by creating their own companies and then handing them lucrative city contracts. Members of the Tweed Ring were the main shareholders in the Manufacturing Stationers’ Company, which sold $3 million worth of stationery supplies to city offices and schools in 1870. For six reams of notepaper, two dozen penholders, four bottles of ink, a dozen sponges, and three dozen boxes of rubber bands, the firm charged the city $10,000 (about $185,000 in today’s dollars).

The Tweed Ring seized power and held onto it by mobilizing an army of thugs and corrupt election officials to stuff ballot boxes, intimidate voters, and miscount votes. But Boss Tweed also won the genuine support of many immigrants and downtrodden New Yorkers by doling out city jobs, bowls of soup, and beds in cheap boarding houses, while good-government types prattled on about civic responsibility, government efficiency, and lower taxes. Though not quite six feet tall, Tweed weighed nearly three hundred pounds, and he had an outsized personality that matched his appearance. He was a jolly rogue who collected friends from every stratum of society.

It was true, as Fenton alleged on the Senate floor, that Murphy was close to Tweed. The erstwhile hatter and the New York City boss were friends of more than a decade, and they owned real estate together. (As Murphy’s attorney, Arthur played a part in these deals.) Murphy also sat on a three-member commission overseeing a project to widen Broadway between 34th and 59th Streets. He used that position to help members of the ring buy some of the affected properties and to secure generous assessments and damages when the city had to buy them to complete the project.

In 1869, Murphy asked Boss Tweed for a favor: would he create a job for Chester Arthur? The new post was “counsel to the New York City tax commission,” and it paid Arthur $10,000 a year. It isn’t clear exactly what Arthur did to earn that money, but Tweed and his accomplices regularly raided tax collections to pad their personal treasuries, and Tweed would not have fulfilled Murphy’s request without asking for something in return. As counsel for the tax commission, Arthur certainly was in a position to provide favors to the boss.

To reformers, Tweed and Murphy were both “greedy adventurers” who pursued politics not for the public good, but “for the same reason that other men pick locks and forge bills—to avoid honest labor, fill their bellies with rich food, and adorn their bodies with rich clothing.” As Murphy’s attorney and close friend, Arthur had more than a whiff of the Tweed taint.

As for the Custom House, Arthur and Murphy agreed that Republicans should use it to keep their stranglehold on state politics. On the spring day in 1870 that Burt called on Arthur at his law office, he nearly collided with a departing Murphy, who was “jubilantly sarcastic concerning the fate of Fenton and his followers.” As Burt shifted uncomfortably in his seat, Arthur proceeded to explain what he would do if he were collector of the Custom House. His scheme was to give each county in the state a certain number of Custom House jobs, based on the rate of its Republican vote. The party committee for each county would choose the men to fill the allotted slots, and would be responsible for ensuring that they remained loyal—and contributed a portion of their salaries—to the Republican machine. In this way, Arthur boasted, “the whole party machinery could be consolidated, unified and concentrated for any purpose; this would prevent all the scandalous and injurious contests in primaries and conventions and make the party so compact and disciplined as to be practically invincible.” In other words, any independent-minded Republican who dared to challenge the machine would be crushed. Burt was appalled but not surprised by Arthur’s plan, judging it “a fair exposition of Arthur’s political creed which favored the substitution of management and discipline for principles and convictions.”

As collector Murphy devoted almost all of his time to politics, while leaving the day-to-day operation of the Custom House to his underlings. He collected “voluntary” campaign contributions from Custom House employees; organized pro-Conkling delegations to the Republican state convention of 1870; and offered Custom House positions to Tammany politicians, who were urged to distribute the jobs to like-minded Republicans who could be counted on to follow Conkling’s lead as delegates to the state convention. Murphy also paid a ward politician to defeat Greeley in his district, denying the crusading Tribune editor a voice at the convention.

To their delight, Murphy and his associates soon “found more profit in running the Custom-House than in feeding on the crumbs which fell from the Tammany table.” Their swindle was simple. When a vessel arrived in the harbor, it unloaded its goods on the pier, where Custom House authorities weighed or gauged them. Sometimes the importer paid the appropriate duties and took immediate possession of his property. But often, the importer presented a bond for payment, and the Custom House workers moved the goods to a warehouse. This was where casks of wine mysteriously sprung leaks and bottles of gin vanished from cases, replaced by wood shavings. Importers complained that they frequently lost between 5 and 25 percent of their property while it was under the supervision of Custom House officials. Murphy shared the wealth with his good friend Arthur: together they sold $10,000 worth of whiskey—apparently tax free—during Murphy’s time as collector.

Sometimes the thieves did their work while the goods were still sitting on the pier. Even “taking the extra precaution of delegating a person to follow and watch the goods in transit and on the pier, we have not been able to stop thieving,” complained Charles Schultz of Clarke & Schultz, importers of ales, wines, and condiments. “In one case where our watcher left the pier only 20 minutes in order to apprise us of the arrival of the Custom-House carman, he discovered on his return that two casks were missing, and no person could give any information in regard to them, yet during the entire time they were in the charge of the Government officials.”

Murphy ingratiated himself with the Grant administration by spooning out some of the Custom House drippings to two of the president’s corrupt cronies, George Leet and Wilbur Stocking. If a merchant failed to take possession of his goods and pay taxes on them within 48 hours of a ship’s entry into port, the collector could issue a “general order” to unload the cargo and transfer it to a warehouse. The importer had to pay for the transfer and a minimum of a month’s storage rate to retrieve his property. Murphy gave Leet and Stocking exclusive control over the general-order warehouses along the Manhattan shore of the Hudson, and they used their monopoly to hike cartage and storage fees and block merchants from retrieving their goods, thereby costing them even more money. When a hundred importing firms signed a letter of complaint, Grant ordered Murphy to cut ties with Leet. But the president backed off when Murphy insisted that Leet and Stocking were being unfairly maligned.

In the fall of 1871, Horace Greeley’s Tribune, the source of many of Fenton’s charges against Murphy during the nomination fight in the Senate, went on the attack again. Murphy had “a record as rotten as his hats” and had been “proved guilty of the worst practices of the worst shoddy contractors, to say nothing of party treason, official relation to Tammany, and personal affiliation with its leaders,” Greeley thundered.

Robert Murray, who had served as US marshal for New York during the war, sparked the Tribune’s renewed crusade against Murphy. In a letter published in the newspaper, Murray claimed that Murphy, facing an investigation into his military contracting practices, came into the marshal’s office and “began to cry and sob like a child” as he offered Murray a $10,000 bribe to make the charges go away. Murray said he declined the money, but he admitted that out of sympathy for Murphy’s plight, he arranged for the hatter to meet with the investigating detectives. Murray hinted in his letter that Murphy had bribed the detectives to escape justice. “We mean to make his standing so plain that our skirts at least shall be clear of the guilt of his retention in power,” Greeley wrote. “He is an enemy whose power for harm must be destroyed.” Newspapers from around the country hailed the Tribune’s coverage and echoed its call for Murphy’s removal.

Finally Grant gave in to the political pressure, and in November of 1871, he accepted Murphy’s resignation. But Murphy’s departure was a hollow victory for reformers, because Grant allowed the disgraced collector to name his successor: Chester Arthur. The Tribune reported that according to people close to Murphy, “he intended only nominally to relinquish the Collectorship of the Port for the sake of appearances, and that his successor was to hold office through him and by him, and was to obey his dictates.” One disgusted citizen grumbled to a Tribune reporter that Arthur was merely “Tom Murphy under another name.” Grant chose Arthur over more qualified merchants and jurists because “he can ‘run the machine’ of party politics better than any of them,” the Tribune groused.

On the night he got the job, Murphy led a group to the new collector’s Lexington Avenue brownstone to offer personal congratulations to Arthur, who feigned surprise at his selection. Now Arthur could implement his political schemes and prove his loyalty to Conkling—and get rich doing it.

The ground was frozen and the wind whipped through Lower Manhattan on December 1, 1871, Arthur’s first day as collector. He reported for work in a building befitting his enhanced stature: the solid granite Custom House was “one of the handsomest structures in the city.” It occupied an entire block, with a colonnaded main entrance on Wall Street and a central dome that rose 124 feet above the sidewalk. Inside, a four-faced clock stood at the center of a majestic rotunda crowded with merchants, brokers, and ships’ captains. Deputy collectors and clerks scribbled and stamped at desks arranged in rows around the clock. Arthur’s grand office was at the end of a long corridor, past a secretary in an anteroom, beyond an assistant collector sitting in a reception room, at the far end of an anteroom thronged with office seekers.

Arthur took the helm the day after New Yorkers celebrated Thanksgiving. He had much to be thankful for: his loyalty and striving had landed him the most lucrative job in the entire federal government. In addition to his regular salary, Arthur received a cut of the fines and forfeitures levied by frequently overzealous customs inspectors. In total, he grossed more than $50,000 a year (about $1 million in today’s dollars)—more than cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, the vice president, or Grant himself. Arthur also took advantage of his position to diversify his investment portfolio. In 1872, the state legislature chartered the Gilbert Elevated Railroad Company to help meet New York City’s growing need for rapid transit. Arthur secured a seat on the five-member commission charged with mapping out the route, then bought heavily discounted stock in the Gilbert. He bought more discounted railroad stock through the Wall Street brokerage Morton, Bliss & Company, headed by two Conkling loyalists.

Arthur had to hand over some of his growing fortune to the Republican Party, but he had plenty left over to support a luxurious life. He and Nell employed five household servants, and paid for private schooling for their children. (A daughter named Ellen but called Nell, like her mother, was born on the day Arthur was named collector.) They hired a French tutor for Alan, and made sure he became an accomplished horseman and sailor. Arthur was a dandy: during one eight-month period as collector, he spent $125 just on hats—about $2,600 in today’s dollars.

In the New York City of the early 1870s, a contemporary guidebook archly observed, society “stands not as it should upon the personal merits of those who compose it, but upon a pile of bank-books.” The Arthurs’ newfound wealth launched them into the upper echelons of New York society, and they eagerly embraced the privileges and obligations of their elevated status. The names in Nell’s address book were organized by street, and included most of the prominent Republicans of the period, from William Vanderbilt to Theodore Roosevelt, father of the future president. Hosting such distinguished company in the appropriate style was expensive, and the Arthurs did so regularly. At many such events, the hosts rolled out a carpet from the front door to the curb and covered the walkway with a temporary awning, so that guests alighting from their carriages would not have to tread on the sidewalk or be exposed to the elements. Once inside, French servants wearing black swallowtail coats and pants, with immaculate white vests, cravats, and gloves were “as active as a set of monkeys” in fetching food and drink. To Nell, a social climber like her mother, all this was a dream come true. “Mrs. Arthur was a very ambitious woman,” a friend recalled. “There was no happier woman in the country than she when her husband was made collector of the port of New York.”

But Nell soon saw the dark side of her husband’s new role. Arthur liked to linger late into the night—or into the early morning—with “the Mikes, Jakes and Barneys of politics,” eating, drinking, smoking Havana cigars, and dreaming up ways to strengthen the machine. On most days, the collector didn’t show up at the Custom House until 1 p.m., three hours after it opened. One of the machine boys who participated in the festivities later recalled that “Arthur was always the last man to go to bed in any company and was fond of sitting down on his front steps at 3 a.m. and talking until anyone dared to stay.”

According to Burt, Arthur “could drink a great deal without any visible symptoms of intoxication,” though he and his companions often drank so much Bordeaux wine and whiskey that “all but one or two absolutely succumbed and fell prone from their seats.” The collector also “was much addicted to the game of ‘poker’ which strangely has strong allurements for professional politicians.”

Often Arthur and his machine buddies ventured beyond the front stoop for more stimulating entertainment at what Burt discreetly called “very questionable resorts.” One of the agents later assigned to investigate the Custom House alluded to “the many nefarious places visited at night time, by Arthur, in company with ‘Clint’ Wheeler & others.” Those “nefarious places” almost certainly included concert saloons, where patrons drank and sang surrounded by fluttering “waiter-girls” wearing low bodices, short skirts, and high-tasseled red boots. Many of the girls had been camp followers during the war, and were available for assignations in an upstairs room or nearby brothel. New York had about 80 such saloons in the early 1870s, but gentlemen like Arthur and his friends tended to favor the higher-class establishments such as the Gaiety, on Broadway near Houston, which attracted a crowd that was “respectable, though by no means stilted in manner,” or the marble-columned Louvre, on Broadway and 23rd.

A favorite haunt for New Yorkers of all types and classes was Harry Hill’s, “known the world over in sporting circles.” A gigantic blue-and-red glass lantern hung outside the two-story brick building at 25 Houston Street, along with a sign promising “Punches and juleps, cobblers and smashes, to make the tongue waggle with wit’s merry flashes.” Harry was an English immigrant and former boxer who won a medal of valor for helping the police in the draft riots of 1863. He proudly welcomed members of Congress, judges, lawyers, merchants, doctors, and other well-to-do professionals along with dockworkers and the racetrack crowd. Harry graciously provided a private sobering-up room for his more respectable customers, to reduce their chances of being waylaid by his rougher patrons once they ventured outdoors.

Harry’s had a bar downstairs, but the real action was the dance hall on the second floor, which male customers could reach by slipping through a narrow opening between the counters and paying twenty-five cents. (Women, who entered through a separate entrance, were admitted free.) Here, in a dingy, low-ceilinged room, shop girls frolicked with state legislators and the wives of prominent lawyers twirled through the sawdust with gangsters from the Bloody Sixth Ward. There were runaway teenagers and wives who had fled their husbands, bar maids and bankers, politicians and prostitutes, and prizefighters and pickpockets, all jumbled together in a maelstrom of gaudy crimson silks and sparkling jewels and stifling cigar smoke. The well-dressed crowd at Harry’s contrasted with the shabby surroundings, “as if upper New York, in their best outfit, had taken possession of a low dwelling in Five Points.” Some of the men and women were dressed as if going to the opera; others would not have looked out of place sitting in a church pew.

One scold had to admit that the women at Harry’s were far more attractive than those at lesser concert saloons, since “most of them have just begun their life of shame. The crimson hue has not left their cheeks.” Nevertheless, he warned, “out of one hundred girls and women present, not one can be found who has not started on the road to ruin.” A gentleman’s guide to the city’s erotic pleasures, published in 1870, put a more positive spin on Harry’s offerings: “An hour cannot be spent more pleasantly than at this celebrated establishment.”

Nell resented Chester’s frequent absences, and his nighttime activities put a strain on their marriage. But she mostly suffered in silence, taking solace in family vacations and visits to the opera on the arm of an elderly friend. Meanwhile, all the late-night eating and drinking swelled the already hearty collector, and he started wearing a corset.

Arthur’s limited hours at the Custom House were fruitful ones. His charm and elegance played well with the wealthy merchants and importers who had business at the Custom House, even though many continued to grumble about the money they lost there. Arthur’s college education and membership in the prestigious Union League Club distinguished him from Murphy and other less-sophisticated party hacks. Arthur was no expert on mercantile issues, but he knew the law and held business-friendly views on tariffs and trade.

Arthur also was popular with his Custom House employees. He demanded personal and party loyalty from them, but he fiercely resisted efforts to reduce their salaries. Because his predecessors had removed nearly 1,700 employees during the previous five years, and because Murphy had filled the ranks with Conkling loyalists during his short tenure, Arthur could concentrate on keeping employees and adding new ones, rather than thinning the ranks.

Unlike the outgoing Tweed, Conkling succeeded as boss despite his personality. The supercilious senator happily left the day-to-day management of the state machine to his loyal collector. It was Arthur who had the social skills, and Conkling leaned heavily on him to lubricate the relationships that kept the machine humming. Arthur exerted his influence in the nominations and campaigns of hundreds of office-seekers, and he took an interest in even the smallest public jobs. When New York City aldermen were considering nominations for police justices, for example, Arthur wrote them letters instructing them how to vote. He forged alliances with both Tammany and anti-Tammany Democrats to build Republican strength in the city. Whenever possible, he performed small favors for leading Republicans, such as personally shepherding through customs 205 cases of champagne for Grant, cabinet members, and Murphy.

In the fall of 1872, Arthur faced an unexpected challenge: the application of new civil service rules to the Custom House. The regulations barred mandatory campaign contributions by government workers and required the use of civil service exams in hiring them. But in Arthur’s Custom House, the new rules were “treated with a jocular indulgence,” according to Burt, who witnessed Arthur’s attitude as deputy naval officer at the Custom House. Arthur “gave outward respect to the law but never concealed his contempt for the principle the law was intended to enforce.”

The collector certainly had no intention of halting campaign assessments—especially not when Grant was running for reelection. In a mendacious letter to the chairman of the new, largely toothless civil service commission, Arthur claimed that some of his subordinates, “wholly without my knowledge or communication with any other than their own members, voluntarily raised a sum of money to be devoted towards paying the legitimate expenses” of Republican campaigns. However, he said, “until after the receipt of your letter none of these facts were known to me. Since they became known, I have not thought it either my duty or my right to interfere with such contributions or solicitations, or the use which my subordinates voluntarily make of their own money.”

In the past, Burt had dutifully paid his campaign assessments, but now he believed in civil service reform. When, along with other Custom House employees, he received the circular asking him to contribute a portion of his salary to support Republican candidates in 1872, he ignored it. Word of Burt’s defiance soon reached Arthur, and he called his old friend into his office. The collector calmly explained that by accepting a government job, Burt had entered into a contract, albeit an unwritten one, to donate a portion of his salary to help keep his party in power. Refusing to do so was ungrateful and selfish. Burt listened politely to his friend and boss, but he didn’t back down. He pointed out that while he had contributed in the past, the new civil service rules now made it illegal to do so. At this, Arthur lost his patience, accusing Burt of “treachery against the very politicians to whom he owed his job.” Burt left, but Arthur didn’t give up. A few days after the argument, the chief clerk of the naval office approached Burt with a proposition. If Burt was reluctant to compromise his reform principles by publicly pledging a certain portion of his salary, the Custom House could quietly deduct 4 percent from his paycheck and leave it at that. Burt angrily refused. “I learned later that it had been considered important to break down the influence of my example which might be followed by others and materially reduce the amount of ‘contributions.’”

As for the required civil service exams, Arthur made sure they were a farce. Under the rules, he was supposed to create a three-member board to formulate questions for the exams, administer the tests, grade them, and issue certificates of appointment. To fill the spots he tapped three good friends, all of them party workers loyal to Conkling. One soon became postmaster of New York and did not have time to participate in the proceedings; Arthur kept him on the panel anyway. Arthur’s second selection was so adamantly opposed to reform he refused to show up for meetings—he, too, was retained. The remaining board member, assisted by a drunken clerk and a messenger, was left to run the examination process himself.

It wasn’t a very difficult job. The only applicants who were allowed to take the test were ones Arthur had already decided to hire. The exam questions never changed, and were widely circulated. Even so, many of the candidates who became Custom House employees did not ace the test. Asked to name the three branches of the US government, candidate Charles F. Meserole answered, “the army and the navy.” What were the executive departments of the federal government? Candidate George M. Logan wrote, “Publick stores, Navy Yard.” Logan apparently misread the question, “By what process is a statute of the United States enacted?” Thinking he was being asked about statues, he answered frankly, “never saw one erected and don’t know the Process.”

When the board began meeting, Burt attended out of curiosity—until Arthur sent word that he should stay away. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Burt believed he could steer Arthur back to a righteous path. So when he learned Arthur’s chief deputy was corrupt, he went to his old friend to share the information. Receptive at first, Arthur soon grew exasperated with the hectoring Burt. “You are one of these goody-goody fellows who set up a high standard of morality that other people cannot reach,” he snarled.

Burt was amazed at Arthur’s “double life.” Publicly, he was “bland and accommodating to merchants who were deferential or did not worry him; courteous and agreeable to all strangers, genial and ‘cultured’ at the clubs and in other social relations; a fastidious connoisseur in art and taste.” But as Conkling’s chief lieutenant, Arthur was “the leader of a corps of partisan mercenaries; intimate and jovial with Mike, Steve, Jake and their fellows; cajoling and trading with the vulgar gang of aldermen; arranging those moves at the primaries or trades at the polls that would best suit the purposes of his own clique.” The Republican Party, Burt lamented, had become “a mere stalking horse for as corrupt a band of varlets as ever robbed a public treasury.”

Conkling ruled the most populous state in the Union, but he wasn’t the only Republican boss. With Grant’s approval, Senators Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, John A. Logan of Illinois, Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, and Matthew Carpenter of Wisconsin all wielded similar patronage power. Like Conkling, they controlled nearly all of the elected and appointed offices within their states, and those who filled the jobs were expected to contribute time and money to sustain the machine. In 1872, they were ordered to work for the reelection of President Grant. “The whole civil service of the country from the Cabinet minister down to the meanest postmaster, is converted into a vast political agency to secure the president’s re-election,” Missouri Senator Carl Schurz, a leading reformer, declared several months before the election. Arthur made sure that Custom House employees did their part.

Reformers backed Tribune editor Horace Greeley as a Republican alternative, but Grant easily won the party’s nomination. Desperate Democrats adopted Greeley as their standard-bearer, but Grant swamped him in November, winning 286 out of 352 electoral votes. Republican machines around the country looked forward to another four years of solidifying their rule.

Grant was inaugurated for the second time on March 4, 1873. That evening, revelers gathered in a temporary wooden structure in Judiciary Square. An enormous American eagle suspended from the center of the 25-foot ceiling gripped a US shield in its talons. Red, white, and blue streamers a hundred feet long stretched to 37 state seals mounted on the walls. The room was draped in white muslin, and dozens of birdcages dangled in the air, filled with hundreds of canaries expected to sing joyously in the glare of thousands of gas jets. Architects feared the vibrations of thousands of dancing feet might shake the building, so the floor was not connected to the walls. The organizers had thought of everything—except heating. That night the temperature plunged to 4 degrees, a record low for Washington, and a wet, biting wind added to the misery. The champagne and wine froze solid, the coffee turned to slush, and the canaries did not sing—because many of them were dead. The room emptied quickly when the stiffened birds began toppling off their perches and landing on the heads of the dancers below.

It was a fitting beginning to Grant’s second term. For the next four years, politicians from Washington to New York to the Pacific Ocean engaged in an orgy of venality and corruption unmatched before or since.