ATTACKING MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
THE TWEED RING RULED NEW YORK CITY IN THE 1860S AND EARLY 1870s like no political machine before or since. Payoffs, kickbacks, padded contracts, extortion, election fraud—they were all part of what came to personify corruption by errant public “servants.” William Marcy Tweed and the band of political henchmen who did his bidding ultimately stuffed their pockets with some $200 million taken from city taxpayers.
This crime against democracy was finally exposed by an unlikely antagonist: cartoons. Thomas Nast’s illustrations in Harper’s Weekly attacked municipal corruption with a vengeance. By defying “Boss” Tweed, Nast provided a dramatic example of the power that journalistic images can wield.
A year after Nast began attacking Tweed in Harper’s, the New York Times joined the crusade, putting into words the accusations that Nast was communicating through pictures. When the Times published secret documents laying bare the extent of the ring’s illegal activities, the series hastened the end of the corruption.
Nast deserves the most credit. The passion and impact of his unrelenting visual attacks stand alone in the annals of American editorial cartooning. Even Tweed himself ultimately came to acknowledge that Nast had destroyed him, saying, “I didn’t care a straw for the newspaper articles—my constituents didn’t know how to read. But they couldn’t help but see them damned pictures.” This crusade by a journalistic David against a political Goliath stands as a stunning example of how the news media have shaped history.1
Heyday of Corruption
After the Civil War, the United States underwent fundamental changes at a dizzying pace. Many of the changes had their roots in the confluence of three phenomena of immense dimension—urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. These powerful forces opened the door to wholesale corruption in politics as well as business, and an army of opportunists took advantage of the fluid situation for their personal gain.
William Marcy Tweed was born in New York City in 1823. After working briefly as a city fireman, Tweed entered politics and a career in the public realm. His rise up New York’s political hierarchy between 1864 and 1869 was boosted by his membership in Tammany Hall, a powerful political organization. The Society of Saint Tammany had been founded soon after the American Revolution as a social and patriotic club that vowed to oppose New York’s moneyed interests. By 1850, however, Tammany Hall had created its own Democratic Party power base and had mushroomed into a potent force in city politics that skillfully manipulated the electorate.
Tweed, at the height of his control, from 1869 to 1871, wielded enormous influence because of his many political connections. He was simultaneously the highest official of Tammany Hall, chairman of the New York Democratic Party Central Committee, a member of both the New York County Board of Supervisors and the New York State Senate, director of New York City’s Department of Public Works, and construction supervisor for the New York County Court House. Also, in a blatant example of conflict of interests, Tweed was one of the city’s largest property owners and real estate developers.
Boss Tweed’s actions were supported by his cronies led by New York Mayor A. Oakey “Elegant Oakey” Hall, City Controller Richard B. “Slippery Dick” Connolly, and City Parks Director Peter B. “Brains” Sweeny. These four men were involved in every facet of New York government, using their political muscle to make the city treasury their own.
Tweed maintained his position by handing out payoffs that came from the city treasury. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to lobby the state legislature to ensure the laws it approved were those that the Tweed Ring wanted, and lesser sums bought votes at the ballot box and “judicial” decisions in the courtroom. Most of the payoffs for his constituents, who were overwhelmingly from the city’s immigrant poor, came in the form of city jobs. The number of patronage positions Tweed doled out to keep the city’s political machine well lubricated ultimately totaled some 60,000.
Tweed also developed an intricate kickback system to support this political organization and amass an obscene quantity of wealth for himself and his associates. The unwritten procurement policy was that the ring received 65 percent of all city contracts. The contractors learned to take this policy into account when bidding for city projects.
Though Tweed’s abuse of the city coffers was an open secret in political circles, no one had the power and courage to stop it. His control over the newspapers as part of his success in averting public clamor was insidious as well. In 1862, New York aldermen passed a resolution to pay individual reporters $200 a year for “services” to the city. And, in the expansive manner of Tammany Hall, this figure increased tenfold. Even more fundamental to the administration’s ability to influence the editorial content of the papers was the city advertising budget. Tweed subsidized the largest dailies in New York City—the World, Herald, and Post—by annually placing some $80,000 worth of city advertising in each. During the ring’s reign of corruption, the city funneled $7 million to the papers in exchange for their silence.2
Thomas Nast was born in Germany in 1840, and his family immigrated to America in 1846, drawn by the dual appeals of personal freedom and economic opportunity.
Young Nast showed an early talent for drawing and joined the staff at Harper’s Weekly in 1862. The New York–based magazine aimed its content at common laborers, following the motto, “Never shoot over the heads of the people.” This philosophy lifted circulation to 100,000, making it the largest publication in the country. As a social and political cartoonist for Harper’s, Nast soon proved himself to be an artist whose social commentary could move vast audiences. In 1864, the most important American art critic of the day, James Jackson Jarves, wrote, “Nast is an artist of uncommon abilities. His works evince originality of conception, freedom of manner, lofty appreciation of national ideas and action, and a large artistic instinct.”3
During a Harper’s Weekly career spanning more than two decades, Nast crafted some 3,000 drawings. Perhaps the most legendary symbols to emerge from his pencil were the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey. Another image he created was the classic Santa Claus with his rosy cheeks and jolly demeanor.
In the early 1860s, Nast focused on capturing the tragedy of the Civil War. After the fighting had ended and Ulysses S. Grant was asked to name the person most responsible for saving the country, the general responded, “Thomas Nast. He did as much as any one man to preserve the Union and bring the war to an end.” President Lincoln praised Nast as well, saying, “His cartoons have never failed to arouse enthusiasm and patriotism, and have always seemed to come just when those articles were getting scarce.”4
By the late 1860s, Nast was well positioned to begin an assault on the most corrupt city administration in American history. He launched his crusade in September 1869, with his initial caricatures aimed at Tammany Hall. One depicted New York Governor John Hoffman, a stalwart Tammany Democrat, above the slogan “‘Peter the Great’ Chief of the Tammany Tribe.” The cartoon suggested that Tammany leaders were taking on the tyrannical bearing of Russian czars. Tweed remained in the background of those early cartoons. In a scene showing self-righteous Catholic bishops giving the Pope huge trunks labeled “Tax Payers’ and Tenants’ Hard Cash,” Tweed was depicted only as one of the many bishops—albeit one of the most overweight.5
Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
As Nast’s campaign evolved, however, Tweed’s profile rose. In particular, Nast used Tweed’s ostentatious symbols of power to redefine the corrupt politician’s public image. Nast took the very marks of respectability and success that Tweed cherished, such as a $15,000 diamond stickpin, and made them emblems of greed and vulgarity. The cartoonist also sometimes dressed Tweed in suits with broad horizontal stripes, outfits reminiscent of prison uniforms. He consistently mocked Tweed as bloated and gluttonous—a man who feasted on the richest of foods while the city’s poor went hungry.
Through the relentless strokes of Nast’s pencil, the dignity and spoils of political office were rendered liabilities. Nast made it first possible and then popular for the citizens of New York to laugh at the man whose iron grip controlled every element of their lives. Through the journalistic artwork that appeared week after week in Harper’s, the public began to see Tweed as a rapacious scoundrel.
The New York Times Joins the Crusade
The fall of 1870 marked a turning point in the journalistic campaign against the Tweed Ring. Until that time, James B. Taylor had been a member of the board of directors at the New York Times. Because Taylor’s New York Printing Company received hefty advertising contracts from city hall, Taylor kept the Times editorial staff from speaking out against Tweed. Instead, the Times joined other New York papers in reaping the financial profits of a cozy relationship with the ring. Late in the summer of 1870, however, Taylor died. A month later, the Times ran its first anti-Tweed editorial.
That piece began with the request, “We should like to have a treatise from Mr. Tweed on the art of growing rich.” It then shifted to a personal narrative style that readers could relate to, “Most of us have to work very hard for a subsistence, and think ourselves lucky if, in the far vista of years, there is a reasonable prospect of comfort and independence. But under the blessed institution of Tammany, the laws which govern ordinary human affairs are powerless. You begin with nothing, and in five or six years you can boast of your ten millions.” The editorial ended with a sweeping indictment: “There is foul play somewhere.”6
Meanwhile, Harper’s kept up its barrage. Nast created one of his most inspired cartoons by translating into a compelling image the rumors that Tweed had bought his influence in the Democratic Party—using money from city taxpayers, of course. The caption read, “The ‘Brains,’” and the cartoon showed Tweed’s rotund body with his head replaced by a bag of money marked with a huge dollar sign where his facial features should have been.7
The harsh depictions angered Tweed. He was particularly unhappy with how Nast’s cartoons were affecting the working class that represented his political base. Tweed told his cronies, “The people get used to seeing me in stripes, and by and by they grow to think I ought to be in prison.” Tweed knew that for his despotic methods to continue, Nast had to be persuaded to end his crusade. He ordered his hired thugs to “stop them damned pictures.”8
Reprinted from Harper’s Weekly.
First, Tweed sent a banker to tell Nast that local art benefactors so admired his work that they were offering him $100,000—twice his annual salary at Harper’s—to travel to Europe and study art. Recognizing the offer as a bribe to get him out of New York, Nast declined. The banker then upped the offer to $500,000. At this point, Nast ended the discussions, vowing to put Tweed in jail. Before departing, the banker warned Nast, “Dead artists don’t draw.” Not long after hearing that statement, Nast noticed strangers loitering near his Manhattan home. So, for safety’s sake, he moved his family to suburban New Jersey.9
After the New York Times joined Harper’s in the crusade, Tweed also tried to silence that publication. When Times publisher Henry J. Raymond died, his estate put a third of the company’s shares on the market. In 1871, Tweed representatives tried to buy the shares, hoping to quiet the opposition. The new publisher, George Jones, rejected the offer and found another buyer. When the Times turned up the heat even further, the ring went to Jones and offered $1 million in exchange for the paper’s silence. Jones refused, telling his readers, “The public may feel assured that the Times will not swerve from the policy which it has long pursued, but that it will hereafter be more persistent than ever in its efforts to bring about those political reforms which the people require and expect.”10
Help from an Insider
The Times made good on that promise in July 1871 when it entered into a secret arrangement with James O’Brien, a former supporter of the Tweed Ring who’d served as city sheriff but held a grudge against the ring for not treating him as he thought he deserved. The vengeful defector obtained copies of hundreds of documents and gave them to the Times, which used the material in a blockbuster series that exposed a variety of criminal acts.
The first articles showed that the city was paying exorbitant rents for two dozen buildings purportedly used as National Guard armories. The Times reported not only that the city was paying $190,000 a year to rent buildings that went unused but also that the properties had a fair-market rental value of only $46,000. The Times reproduced documents that showed the profits were being funneled to James Ingersoll, Tweed’s brother-in-law.11
Later and even more explosive stories focused on Tweed’s fraudulent activities related to constructing the new county court house. In 1854, an architect estimated the building would cost $250,000. Anyone involved in construction expects cost overruns, but no one foresaw that by 1872 the price tag would have skyrocketed to an incredible $12.5 million—a startling fifty times the original estimate.
Every day for a month, the Times exposed one misappropriation after another. Ingersoll’s bill to the city for three tables and forty chairs: $180,000. A month’s work by a single carpenter: $360,000. Carpeting: $566,000. Light fixtures: $1.2 million. Cabinets: $2.8 million. Furniture: $5.7 million.12
The Times pulled no punches in either the terms it used to describe the greedy lawbreakers or the headlines it placed above the stories. The paper called the men “thieves of the ring,” “swindlers,” and the “city’s plunderers.” Headlines ranged from “Proofs of Theft” and “More Ring Villainy” to “The Betrayal of Public Liberties” and “How the Public Money Is Embezzled by the Tammany Rulers.”13
Such hard-hitting news didn’t remain a local story for long. Within days of the first revelation, the nation’s newspapers began reprinting the stories, many of them adding words of praise for the Times. The Philadelphia Press said, “The wholesale robbery practiced by the Democratic government of New York city is being clearly shown us by the Times.” The Daily Advertiser in Boston began its summary of the disclosures with approval, saying, “The New York Times is doing New York and the whole country excellent service by its bold warfare on Tammany.” The Providence Daily Journal also weighed in on the positive side by commenting, “The exposure of the Times will have a wholesome effect upon State and Nation.”14
New York newspapers that received substantial advertising revenue from the city responded to the Times investigation very differently. The New York Herald published little about the exposé except to criticize the Times as being “sensationalistic” and “over-excited.” The Herald went on to accuse the Times, which generally supported the Republican Party, of being driven by the political harm the scandal would cause Democrats, saying, “We are led to the opinion that its case is vastly exaggerated.” The New York Tribune questioned whether the Times had acted with professional integrity in publishing financial accounts that it had secured “surreptitiously.”15
The strongest defense of Tweed and his allies came from the Democratic New York World, which reprinted none of the accusations. In fact, two days after the Times began its bruising exposé, the World thanked Tammany Hall for bringing “energy” and “order” to the city. The World also chastised Times editors for being “slanderers” who were overstating the negative aspects of the city’s Democratic administration in an effort to divert attention away from the “monstrous corruption” being carried out by President Ulysses S. Grant and other Republicans in Washington.16
The Times responded to the rival papers by accusing them of being bought off by Tweed. It wrote, “We voluntarily rejected the City advertising when we found that it could only be had at the cost of gagging the paper. We demand to see a list of the amounts the city has paid to all newspapers during the last three years.” To questions regarding the veracity of the material it reported, the Times challenged city officials to sue for libel if the information was incorrect. When no suit materialized, the Times argued that Tweed and his cronies had, thereby, admitted their guilt. “The Tweed Ring admits the truth of our charges and the accuracy of our figures,” the newspaper said. “Let the public judge between us.”17
Reaching the Masses
The only regret the august Times expressed was that it wasn’t reaching the New York laboring class. So the paper took a big step toward speaking to that group when it printed 200,000 copies of a news supplement summarizing the charges against city officials. The extraordinary aspect of the special section was that, in hopes of reaching the city’s huge immigrant population, it was written both in English and in German, marking the only time in the paper’s history that it was produced in a foreign language.18
That Times special supplement notwithstanding, Thomas Nast’s work in Harper’s Weekly was more successful at reaching a broad readership. Although the Times’s work was unparalleled in its detail and documentation, articles weren’t easily accessible to New Yorkers of lower educational levels. Indeed, the mind-numbing lists straight from account ledgers were difficult even for the most learned readers to comprehend. For many people, Nast’s images, therefore, were much more effective because the cartoons translated the Times’s complicated accounting and numerical evidence into indictments that appealed to a citizen’s basic sense of right and wrong. Because he relied on images rather than huge blocks of words, Nast also was able to overcome the language difference and high illiteracy rate—and even people who didn’t buy Harper’s saw Nast’s images being hawked by newsboys on street corners throughout the city.
Nast picked up the major themes in the Times charges and brought them to life in a way that only images could. An August 1871 Times editorial said, “What the public wants to know is who stole the money?” Nast’s next cartoon showed Tweed and his chums standing in a circle, each pointing to the man to his right. The caption read, “‘Who Stole the People’s Money?’—Do tell N.Y. Times.”19
Triumph of the Press
As state and municipal elections approached in the fall of 1871, Harper’s and the Times combined forces in an all-out campaign to remove the Tweed Ring from office. One Nast cartoon showed a crowd of laborers looking into a safe labeled “N.Y. Treasury” but finding only pieces of paper marked “debts,” while behind the safe Tweed and his cohorts toasted each other with glasses of champagne. The caption asked, “What are you going to do about it?”20
Meanwhile, the journalistic crusade had aroused the New York citizenry to organize against the ring. When a public meeting was called to discuss the accusations that Harper’s and the Times had made, 3,000 men and women packed the hall. A committee evolved from the meeting, charged with investigating city officials. The group’s first act was to petition one of New York’s few honest judges for a court order to prevent officials from spending any more public funds. Based on the cartoons and articles, the judge granted the request.
The journalists maintained their pressure. On the eve of the 1871 city election, Nast co-opted Tammany Hall’s signature emblem to his purposes. For years, corrupt politicos had used a ferocious tiger as a symbol of the Democratic administration’s power. But now Nast transformed the mascot, the “Tammany Tiger,” into a symbol of the Tweed Ring raging out of control. In a double-page drawing distributed two days before the election, Nast drew the tiger—with eyes glaring and jaws distended—in the Roman Coliseum. The arena was strewn with the mangled bodies that were labeled “the law,” “the republic,” and “the ballot.” While the savage tiger ripped the bodies apart, Tweed and his comrades in crime, dressed in togas reminiscent of the final days of the Roman Empire, looked on from their thrones high above the fray. The caption asked New York voters, “The Tammany Tiger Loose—‘What are you going to do about it?’” The image was one of Nast’s most influential. Tweed’s opponents reprinted it and distributed it broadly on election day, taking particular care that the image was widely seen in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.21
Reprinted from Harper’s Weekly.
Harper’s reinforced the message in a dramatic editorial printed next to the drawing. It began, “The contest in New York is that of the whole country. It involves a great deal more than the punishment of individual swindlers and the recovery of more or less money. The question is whether free institutions can rescue themselves from corruption.” The editorial ended, “Forward, then, and God speed the right!”22
When the votes were counted, the ring had been swept from office. Tweed was the only Tammany candidate who won reelection, thanks to massive ballot fraud. Regardless of what illegal means Tweed had used, the victory was a hollow one because he was left without a single ally. Nast’s next cartoon showed Tweed as a naked Roman soldier surrounded by crumbling columns—the empire had fallen.23
Late in 1871, Tweed was indicted on fraud-related charges and named conspirator in a multimillion-dollar civil suit filed by the citizens of New York. In 1873, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison. Several of his political accomplices were tried as well, although most of them fled to foreign countries.
Tweed’s final years unfolded with a series of bizarre twists. In 1876, he bribed his way out of jail and escaped to Spain. His plan was foiled, however, because of his long-standing nemesis—Thomas Nast. American law enforcement officials, in hopes of locating Tweed, circulated an image of the fugitive to law-enforcement officials in countries around the world. The particular image they chose was one from Harper’s that showed Tweed, dressed in horizontal stripes, grabbing two young boys and shaking the pennies from their pockets. Spanish officials didn’t read English, but arrested Tweed based on Nast’s image, assuming the fat man in prison stripes was a kidnapper.24
Spanish officials deported Tweed to New York, where he was returned to jail. The powerful kingpin didn’t fare well behind bars. Because Tweed had grown grossly overweight from indulging in too much alcohol and rich food, his health went the way of his power. He died in 1878, at the age of fifty-five.
Reprinted from Harper’s Weekly.
The Journalistic Legacy
Harper’s Weekly and the New York Times both received praise for the leading role they played—by combining compelling visual images with relentless verbal attacks—in destroying William Marcy Tweed and his band of disreputable rogues. Ministers across the country showered the publications with flowery blessings from the pulpit, and rising star Theodore Roosevelt was among the many elected officials who sought to enhance his political fortunes by claiming close allegiance to the press heroes.
For Harper’s, one of the most eloquent commendations came from its closest competitor, the Nation magazine. The progressive publication wrote, “To Mr. Nast it is hardly possible to award too much praise. He has carried political illustrations to a pitch of excellence never before attained in this country.” In particular, the magazine praised the power of the images to reach the masses, saying that Nast “brought the rascalities of the Ring home to hundreds of thousands who never would have looked at the figures and printed denunciations.”25
Readers also expressed exuberant appreciation for the heroic feat the publications had accomplished on their behalf. During the two years that Harper’s pummeled Tweed, its circulation tripled, rising from 100,000 to 300,000. In that same period, not only did the Times circulation increase 40 percent and the value of a share of its stock soar from $6,000 to $11,000, but the paper was set firmly on its course to becoming the country’s most highly respected newspaper.
Far more important than what the destruction of the Tweed Ring meant for the individual publications, however, was what the victory said about American journalism. In a Harper’s Weekly editorial praising not itself but the Times, the magazine wrote, “The significance of the political victory in New York can scarcely be exaggerated. The result is the triumph of a free and fearless press.”26
The crushing defeat of the Tweed Ring showed the world that democracy could—when kindled by a free press—cleanse itself of an evil so pervasive that it infected all three official branches of government. History recorded an unequivocal example of the Fourth Estate fulfilling its role as watchdog, as well as a stunning example of the news media helping to shape history.
