The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York. Lewis Alfred Henry
went a cold calculating trader of politics; he never wasted his favors, but must get as much as he gave, and indulged in no revenges except when revenge was needed for a lesson. He did what men call good, too, and spent money and lost sleep in its accomplishment. To the ill he sent doctors and drugs; he found work and wages for idle men; he paid landlords and kept the roofs above the heads of the penniless; where folk were hungry he sent food, and where they were cold came fuel.
For all that, it was neither humanity nor any milk of kindness which put him to these labors of grace; it was but his method of politics and meant to bind men to him. They must do his word; they must carry out his will; then it was he took them beneath the wing of his power and would spare neither time nor money to protect and prosper them.
And on the other side, he who raised his head in opposition to Big Kennedy was crushed; not in anger, but in caution. He weeded out rebellion, and the very seed of it, with as little scruple and for the same reason a farmer weeds a field.
It took me years to collect these truths of Big Kennedy. Nor was their arrival when they did come one by one, to make a shade of change in my regard for him. I liked him in the beginning; I liked him in the end; he became that headland on the coasts of politics by which I steered my course. I studied Big Kennedy as one might study a science; by the lines of his conduct I laid down lines for my own; in all things I was his disciple and his imitator.
Big Kennedy is dead now; and I will say no worse nor better of him than this: He was a natural captain of men. Had he been born to a higher station, he might have lighted a wick in history that would require those ten thicknesses of darkness which belong with ten centuries, to obscure. But no such thing could come in the instance of Big Kennedy; his possibilities of eminence, like my own, were confined to Tammany and its politics, since he had no more of education than have I. The time has gone by in the world at large, and had in Big Kennedy’s day, when the ignorant man can be the first man.
Upon the day following my release, as he had bid me.
I sought Big Kennedy. He was in his barroom, and the hour being mid-morning I was so far lucky as to find him quite alone. He was quick to see me, too, and seemed as full of a pleasant interest in me as though my simple looks were of themselves good news. He did most of the talking, for I sat backward and bashful, the more since I could feel his sharp eyes upon me, taking my measure. Never was I so looked over and so questioned, and not many minutes had come and gone before Big Kennedy knew as much of me and my belongings as did I myself. Mayhap more; for he weighed me in the scales of his experience with all the care of gold, considering meanwhile to what uses I should be put, and how far I might be expected to advance his ends.
One of his words I recall, for it gave me a glow of relief at the time; at that it was no true word. It was when he heard how slightly I had been taught of books.
“Never mind,” said he, “books as often as not get between a party’s legs and trip him up. Better know men than books. There’s my library.” Here he pointed to a group about a beer table. “I can learn more by studyin’ them than was ever found between the covers of a book, and make more out of it.”
Big Kennedy told me I must go to work.
“You’ve got to work, d’ye see,” said he, “if it’s only to have an excuse for livin’.”
Then he asked me what I could do. On making nothing clear by my replies – for I knew of nothing – he descended to particulars.
“What do you know of horses? Can you drive one?”
My eye brightened; I might be trusted to handle a horse.
“An’ I’ll gamble you know your way about the East Side,” said he confidently; “I’ll answer for that.” Then getting up he started for the door, for no grass grew between decision and action with Big Kennedy. “Come with me,” he said.
We had made no mighty journey when we stopped before a grocery. It was a two-store front, and of a prosperous look, with a wealth of vegetables and fruits in crates, and baskets, and barrels, covering half the sidewalk. The proprietor was a rubicund German, who bustled forth at sight of my companion.
“How is Mr. Kennedy?” This with exuberance. “It makes me prout that you pay me a wisit.”
“Yes?” said the other dryly. Then, going directly to the point: “Here’s a boy I’ve brought you, Nick. Let him drive one of your wagons. Give him six dollars a week.”
“But, Mr. Kennedy,” replied the grocer dubiously, looking me over with the tail of his eye, “I haf yet no wacancy. My wagons is all full.”
“I’m goin’ to get him new duds,” said Big Kennedy, “if that’s what you’re thinkin’ about.”
Still, the grocer, though not without some show of respectful alarm, insisted on a first position.
“If he was so well dressed even as you, Mr. Kennedy, yet I haf no wacancy,” said he.
“Then make one,” responded Big Kennedy coolly. “Dismiss one of the boys you have, d’ye see? At least two who work for you don’t belong in my ward.” As the other continued doubtful Big Kennedy became sharp. “Come, come, come!” he cried in a manner peremptory rather than fierce; “I can’t wait all day. Don’t you feed your horses in the street? Don’t you obstruct the sidewalks with your stuff? Don’t you sell liquor in your rear room without a license? Don’t you violate a dozen ordinances? Don’t the police stand it an’ pass you up? An’ yet you hold me here fiddlin’ and foolin’ away time!”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Kennedy,” cried the grocer, who from the first had sought to stem the torrent of the other’s eloquence, “I was only try in’ to think up w’ich horse I will let him drive alreatty. That’s honest! sure as my name is Nick Fogel!”
Clothed in what was to me the splendors of a king, being indeed a full new suit bought with Big Kennedy’s money, I began rattling about the streets with a delivery wagon the very next day. As well as I could, I tried to tell my thanks for the clothes.
“That’s all right,” said Big Kennedy. “I owe you that much for havin’ you chucked into a cell.”
While Grocer Fogel might have been a trifle slow in hiring me, once I was engaged he proved amiable enough. I did my work well too, missing few of the customers and losing none of the baskets and sacks. Grocer Fogel was free with his praise and conceded my value. Still, since he instantly built a platform in the street on the strength of my being employed, and so violated a new and further ordinance upon which he for long had had an eye, I have sometimes thought that in forming his opinion of my worth he included this misdemeanor in his calculations. However, I worked with my worthy German four years; laying down the reins of that delivery wagon of my own will at the age of nineteen.
Nor was I without a profit in this trade of delivering potatoes and cabbages and kindred grocery forage. It broadened the frontiers of my acquaintance, and made known to me many of a solvent middle class, and of rather a higher respectability than I might otherwise have met. It served to clean up my manners, if nothing more, and before I was done, that acquaintance became with me an asset of politics.
While I drove wagon for Grocer Fogel, my work of the day was over with six o’clock. I had nothing to do with the care of the horses; I threw the reins to a stable hand when at evening I went to the barn, and left for my home without pausing to see the animals out of the straps or their noses into the corn. Now, had I been formed with a genius for it, I might have put in a deal of time at study. But nothing could have been more distant from my taste or habit; neither then nor later did I engage myself in any traffic with books, and throughout my life never opened a half-dozen.
Still, considering those plans I had laid down for myself, and that future of politics to which my ambition began to consider, I cannot say I threw away my leisure. If my nose were not between the pages of a book, my hands were within a pair of boxing gloves, and I, engaged against this or that opponent, was leading or guarding, hitting or stopping, rushing or getting away, and fitting to an utmost hand and foot and eye and muscle for the task of beating a foeman black and blue should the accidents or duties of life place one before me.
And