The Seamen’s Barber Shop & Hotel, in the last decade of the 19th century, was located on Pike Slip in New York’s Lower East Side, one block from the East River water front. Pike Slip is a continuation of Pike Street, which runs south from Division to Cherry Street, where it broadens out and becomes Pike Slip.

In 1894 a double floating dry dock was moored at the foot of Pike Slip. This dry dock and kindred industries catering to it-chandler shops, forge shops, loft rigging, and the like—gave employment to hundreds of workers, mostly Irish immigrants. It was the last of the many shipbuilding and ship-repairing enterprises which had operated along the East River water front since Colonial days, when the “slips” were natural inlets where ships found haven. The shipyards, which built wooden vessels, went out of existence when iron steamships began to displace schooners, clippers, and frigates on the seven seas.

The owner of the Seamen’s Barber Shop & Hotel was one Alter Schmulevitz. On his way to New York from his native Kalaverie in Russia, he had spent a year in Berlin. There he learned the barbering trade. His short sojourn in Berlin de-Russianized him completely, and for the rest of his life he behaved toward the despised “Polacks” with the pomp and condescending airs of the Yahudi. He considered himself worldly and well informed, though he read no newspapers, not even the Tageblatt, for the simple reason that he could neither read nor write. The only periodical he perused from time to time was the Police Gazette, a fixture in all barber shops—not for its reading matter, but for the pictures of prizefighters and the “naughty” photos of burlesque queens in tights and bloomers.

Alter considered himself far superior to the more recently arrived “greenhorns” who were invading the last bastion of the Irish slums in the Fourth Ward—Cherry Street. In fact, the invasion had now reached all the way to Pike Slip, the frontier beyond which the Jewish immigrants had never yet ventured. The Jews called Pike Slip the grenitz, the “border.” West of the Slip, Cherry Street became part of the Second Ward in the Second Assembly District. The Fourth Ward was part of the Fourth Assembly District. Aldermen to the city alder-manic chambers were elected by wards; assemblymen to the state legislature at Albany by assembly districts. There were not many Jews in the Second, except on upper Henry Street where a newly built synagogue stood. In the same latitude, south of Henry Street and as far as the river, it was solidly Irish, except for the presence of a few Greek peanut and chestnut venders on upper Madison Street.

The Second boasted the notorious Cherry Hill and Whyo gangs, the most vicious in New York history. These gangs, along with the remnants of the Bowery Boys and White Rabbit gangs, dated back to the Civil War draft riots. It was no place for a timid and peaceful immigrant just off the boat to live. Any Jew with a beard who strayed into the Second Ward left it without a beard and without breaking tradition—it was plucked out.

Alter was known all over the East Side as “Alter der Deitch.” He considered it beneath his dignity to speak mamma-loshen— Yiddish, his native tongue. Instead he used a strange lingual concoction which the East Siders termed deitchmerish. Others, because of Alter’s provenance, called it Kalaverier deitch. It consisted of a conglomeration of mispronounced German superimposed on mispronounced Yiddish.

Alter came to New York in 1886, and after working in several East Side barber shops, opened his own establishment on Pike Slip. There were many Kalaverier landsleute in the vicinity of Pike Street—on Monroe, Madison, and Henry Streets, and also on East Broadway. When the uppish Yahudim moved away from the Lower East Side in the early 80’s, the newly founded Kalaverier Chevra took over their spacious synagogue on upper Pike Street and renovated the building, façade and all. There they installed the famous Cantor Cooper, and the synagogue became one of the leading orthodox shuls in New York, second only to the Beth ha-Medrash ha-Godol on Norfolk Street. It is still there. Cantor Cooper’s sons, who also had fine voices, did not follow in their father’s footsteps; they became famous in vaudeville and on the legitimate stage.

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Alter’s barber shop was located on the first floor of the “hotel,” a three-story building. A high stoop with ornate iron grill railings led up to the shop. Below the shop itself were two basement stores. The larger of the two was occupied by the Fourth Ward Tammany Club; a big crowing rooster flap ping his wings was emblazoned in red on its painted windows—the symbol of the Democratic party and of Tammany Hall. The smaller store—much smaller—bore a sign in tiny letters, “Fourth Ward Republican Club.” The bald eagle, symbol of the Republican party, was absent.

The president of the Tammany Club was a man named Hughey Mahoney; the president of the Republican Club was Tommy Mahoney, Hughey’s younger brother. Hughey was one of the stalwarts of the Honorable John F. Ahern, leader of the Fourth Assembly District, a Sachem and a power in Tammany Hall. The Republican Club under Tommy gave no support to the Jefferson Club on East Broadway, though it was the recognized Republican organization in the district and loyal to the state leader Thomas Collier Platt. But after all, it was said of “Boss” Platt that he played “footsie” with Tammany Hall.

Never in the history of Hughey’s district had a non-Democratic vote appeared on a ballot—but that was before the Russian Jewish invasion. With the coming of Russian Jewish voters into Cherry Street, this record was broken by one Yussel Tunick, who opened a candy and tobacco store right next door to the barber shop. A wooden Iroquois Indian, in war paint and full regalia, holding a bunch of tobacco leaves in one hand and an upraised tomahawk in the other, guarded the store entrance. Yussel paid open allegiance to the Socialist Labor party, and when a Socialist ballot turned up in an election everyone in the district knew that the heretical vote had been cast by Yussel. But Yussel was a man of character, afraid of no one, not even Hughey. He dared to flaunt the brooding and bearded countenance of Daniel de Leon in his store window.

As a matter of principle he carried Kropotkin, Karl Marx, Lassalle, Engels and other such “revolutionary” brands of cigarettes. Since he had little call for them, he had to smoke most of them himself. What could these baytzimer, these Irish, know about world revolution! Give them “Svitt Koppel” (Sweet Caporal) and chewing tobacco, plug-cut for the poor, Piper Heidsieck for the elite! Of course, the “enlightened” among the new East Siders, the genossen, did buy the “revolutionary” cigarettes. And as they puffed they could envisage the capitalist system going up in smoke. A small tobacconist on Division Street became a wealthy man by putting out brands with names that catered to the nationalistic and radical trade: Zola, Dreyfus, Lassalle, Bebel, Bakunin, Herzl.

Yussel Tunick became something of a legend to the East Siders of that day for his exploits in taming the Irish. It was said that he was the only Jew ever to have served in the Czar’s Life Guard regiment. He was over six feet tall, built like a giant, and, because of his flaming red hair and beard, was called Samson. The Irish, especially those of the Second Assembly District, across the grenitz, also had a lot of respect for Yussel, and for a very good reason. He had knocked three of their best fighters unconscious, one after the other, when they came to harass him after he first opened the store. This created quite a sensation. It was something new for a Jew to fight back. But the Irish were good sports. Yussel’s victims conceded that they were knocked out in fair fight. Thomas McMahon, a well-known promoter, offered to put Yussel in the ring, promising to make a second John L. Sullivan out of him—a champion. But Yussel would not hear of it. Despite his flair for radicalism, he was an Orthodox Jew who closed shop Friday at sundown and kept it closed until after sundown on Saturday. To fight for money, without provocation! What was he, a bondit, a hoodlum? Ai, America! The sporting fraternity of the Fourth and the Second made it a practice to drop in on him for their “chaws” and “Svitt Koppel.” They loved listening to the bearded Yussel, in broken English, tell of his exploits in the Russian army, where he had served eight years, and retell how he knocked out the three mischief-makers.

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The barber shop had three chairs, the first tended by Alter himself. He barbered only the most important patrons: men of distinction—the aldermen, the assemblymen, and the politicians who owned the fourteen saloons which lined Pike Slip, mostly on the west side, in the Second. The Tammany leader of the Second was Paddy (Patrick) Dever, an old man whose reign went back to pre-Tweed days and who was now fighting the younger Tim Foley for leadership. Tim’s ablest adherent was a tobacco-chewing young blade who sported loud haberdashery topped by a brown derby and worked in the nearby Fulton Fish Market. He was Alfred Emanuel Smith—an Irish lad with a silver tongue who was called the Chauncey Depew of the East Side, Chauncey being the greatest Tammany orator of the day and a Tammany Sachem. It was the victorious Tim Foley who, along with John F. Ahern and the powerful Sullivan clan, kept Tammany going when the Lexow Committee’s disclosures of graft and corruption forced “Boss” Richard Croker into shortlived exile.

The second chair was tended by “Frenchy” Gaston, brother of the “Frenchy” Louis who was a steward on a liner plying between New York and Le Havre, France. They were the native-born sons of Alsatian Jews. Gaston barbered the foremen and executives who worked on the dry dock and, because he knew German and French, also took the officers of the foreign vessels docked at nearby piers.

The third chair was presided over by Viktor Prager, a Vienna-born Jew quite advanced in years who had fallen on evil days. Viktor wore Napoleon the Third chin whiskers and a longhorn mustache, once blond but now gray, which was well waxed and curled up at the ends. He had the manners of a nobleman, and was a specialist on mustachios and whiskers, an important skill in those days. It was on Viktor that Alter the Deitch improved his “German.”

When younger, Viktor had worked in a “fancy” barber shop on Grand Street where the prosperous German, Austrian, and Hungarian Jewish merchants and professional men—the Yahudim—had their hair, mustaches, and beards trimmed. The Austro-Hungarian favored the bi-sectional long beard with shaved chin made famous by Kaiser Franz Joseph. The Germans preferred the Bismarck walrus, or the Kaiser Wilhelm upswing crescent with its feather-edged waxed points—depending upon their politics. This was just after the Civil War when Viktor, a few years past his teens and a veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic, came home and began practicing his art. But the Yahudim moved uptown, the “fancy” barber shop folded, and Viktor was reduced to practicing his art among the Irish. But what did these Irish know about art? Could they appreciate an artist like Viktor? He was wasted on them.

The shelves lining the side wall of the shop were full of expensive shaving brushes and gaudy shaving cups with gold-encrusted initials. Among the gaudiest were those belonging to the Jewish ward politicians of the Fourth. It was a mark of distinction to walk into the shop, flop down nonchalantly into Alter’s chair, and without saying a word have him take down the right cup and go to work. Despite the fact that the “woiks”—haircut, shave, shampoo, massage, and Viktor’s art—only cost thirty-five cents, the shop was run with all the pomp and ritual of a modern “sporting” barber shop. After the massage many aromatic lotions were poured on face and head, creams rubbed in, hot steaming towels applied, until the customer began to look like a boiled lobster and smell like a combination of stale rose and withered lilac.

For the elect there was one special—imported—lotion of which Alter was justly proud. For a long time, as long as Gaston worked for him, Alter held a monopoly of this lotion. It was brought over in gallons by Frenchy Louis, then put into smaller containers for shop use. Frenchy Louis had labels specially printed in color, featuring sprigs of lilies with the brand name “Eau de Latrine” superimposed. Frenchy Louis had a fine sense of humor, and so had Gaston and Viktor. No one ever gave the secret away.

Eventually Frenchy Louis took his brother out of the barber shop and set him up in the barber supply business on Grand Street. Eau de Latrine became popular and available in all East Side barber shops. Some years later Louis abandoned the sea, became a landlubber, and moved Gaston, Inc. to upper Fifth Avenue. There Eau de Latrine became “Eau de Paris,” in fancy crystal bottles at fancy Fifth Avenue prices. In time Eau de Paris—neé Eau de Latrine—was splashed over full pages of slick magazines under yet another exotic name. The label still boasted sprigs of lilies, and the expensive lotion was still concocted from Frenchy Louis’s “secret” formula.

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Although the Seamen’s Hotel contained only ten small cubicles, with iron bedsteads, on the upper floors, it had more registered guests than the Astor House or the Waldorf-Astoria further uptown. Over sixteen hundred people claimed the hotel as their legal residence. They were, presumably, all seamen scattered over the seven seas. The hotel register was kept, for “security” reasons, in a small safe at the Tammany Club under the barber shop. In the same safe there lay a similar register of the Sailor’s Haven, situated on the west side of the Slip, in the Second, almost directly opposite the barber shop. The Sailor’s Haven had six cubicles and bedsteads and some sixteen hundred registered guests, all of them, by a curious coincidence, likewise working seamen.

Twice a year both hotels received postcards addressed to each registered guest. This legally established their right to vote on Election Day. Hughey gathered together all these postcards and put them in the safe. A stickler for making sure that the election laws were not infringed, it was his proud boast that no unregistered vote had ever been cast in his district.

The summer preceding the municipal elections of 1894 was a very sad and troublesome time for the Democratic party in general and for Tammany Hall in particular. The inauguration of Grover Cleveland (der Grober Cleveland to the East Siders) as President in March 1893 had ushered in an economic “crisis,” as depressions were called in those days. But Tammany’s troubles started before the depression.

One Sunday morning in the spring of 1891, a lanky and bewhiskered crusading minister, the Reverend Charles Henry Parkhurst, preached a sermon on a text from the Sermon on the Mount, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” He told of vice and political corruption, the iniquities of the modern Sodom called the City of New York under the “proprietorship” of Tammany chieftain Richard Croker, his lackey mayor, the highly respectable Hugh Grant, and the easygoing and tolerant district attorney of New York County, the socialite De Lancy Nicoll. (Having profited by the Tweed revelations in the 70’s, Richard Croker always surrounded himself with highly respectable front-men.) Reverend Parkhurst’s denunciations were based mainly on newspaper reports.

When the Tammany rulers, against the astute advice of Big Tim Sullivan (“Suppose he proves it?”), challenged these accusations, the Reverend Doctor set out to prove them. He suddenly brought the long dormant Society for the Prevention of Crime, of which he was president, to life. He hired investigators, accompanied them to the sinks of iniquity, received tips from disgusted and disgruntled Tammanyites, and came up with sheaves of affidavits testifying to corruption, graft, boodle, bribery, and police protection.

The disclosures were sickening. Public resentment rose to so high a pitch that Thomas Collier Platt, the Republican boss, had to take note. This led to the Lexow Committee investigation early in 1894. Dr. Parkhurst refused to cooperate with the Committee on the ground that it was formed as a political move. To placate the Reverend, the committee appointed a staff of investigators who were absolutely beyond suspicion. The group was headed by John W. Goff and assisted by William Travers Jerome and Frank Moss, who was counsel for Dr. Parkhurst’s anti-crime society.

The Lexow Committee report uprooted the police department, and early in the spring of 1894 sent Richard Croker and other important Tammanyites into exile. Before leaving for England, Croker appointed his deputy leader, Thomas F. Gilroy, to pilot Tammany until the storm of reform blew over. The Hall had not been in such dire straits since the Tweed scandals. An aroused citizenry organized an independent political party—the Fusion party—and put a slate into the field for the November municipal elections with William L. Strong as candidate for mayor. Mr. Strong was a banker, an independent Republican, and well known for his philanthropic activities.

Tammany was in trouble. The cry went out to all loyal members to come to the aid of the party. Only the solid downtown districts under Ahern, Dever, Finn, and the Sullivan clan could hold Tammany together and salvage something from the imminent catastrophe. The Tammany politicians, ever realists, knew that the moment public indignation flared up, they were licked. But even if they lost the mayoralty, it was important that their aldermen be returned to office.

(They also knew from past experience that the reform wave would soon spend itself. It had been so after the Tweed scandals, and it came to pass this time too. Three years later the five boroughs became Greater New York, and after Tammany’s victory in the 1897 elections, Richard Croker returned from exile to be hailed as a conquering hero. With the slogan, “To hell with Reform”—first uttered by a Sullivan henchman, Max Hochstim, in the Fourth Ward Tammany Club under Alter Schmulevitz’s barber shop—the reformers were thrown out, and Tammany Hall, aided by Brooklyn’s Democratic Boss McCooey, returned to power.)

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But just now, on a hot night in June 1894, Tammany’s Jewish politicians were holding a special session in the rooms of the Fourth Ward Tammany Club. Max Hochstim, the drive-wheel of the Sullivan clan in the Jewish wards of the Sixth, Eighth, Second, Fourth, and Twelfth Assembly districts—the whole Lower East Side south of Houston Street and east of Broadway—was to give them a pep talk. They had to deliver more than the usual vote in the coming election “or your names will be mud.”

The Fourth had received a fairly clean bill of health, except for one or two “cribs” on lower Front Street where it was alleged, though never proved, that sailors had been shanghaied. The Sixth, with its Bowery “institutions,” and the “Ate” (Eighth), home of the Essex Market Magistrates Court, a real sink of iniquity featuring shyster lawyers, fixers, and professional ready-made witnesses, did not come off so well. In the “Ate” could be found the openly immoral “institutions” of Christy and Allen streets—a stink in the nostrils of the decent—as well as the Eldridge Street Police precinct, presided over by notorious Captain “Big Bill” Devery, who had to leave the force after the Lexow revelations. But worse than anything in the Eighth was the Second’s upper Cherry Street—in the opinion of all a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah.

Only two blocks away from Old Cherry Hill (now Franklin Square), which in post-Revolutionary days had been New York’s finest residential district where Washington, Hancock, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, and other national heroes lived, were located the most nauseating dives in the city. On Cherry Street, only a block away from the barber shop, stood the saloon of the notorious Tom Summers, a meeting place for all the thieves, pickpockets, second-story and confidence men in town. The Lexow Committee had proved that Summers was the most active “fence” in New York, and that he had paid thousands of dollars to the police for this “privilege.” Things did not look too well for Tammany even in these “safe” districts. It was up to Max Hochstim to keep the Tammany voters in line. He depended on the election district captains, all city employees, to deliver the vote—by hook or by crook. Their livelihoods were at stake.

There was Sigmund Oppenheim, a leftover Yahudi, who worked in the Tax Department and, not being under civil service, was afraid to move away. There was Sam Krakauer, a postal clerk who officially belonged to the Republican Club but was really part of the Tammany organization. There was “Limey” Joe Jacobs, a product of London’s East End, who spoke high cockney and ended all his sentences with “dunch-erknaow.” Joe was a checker on a nearby pier. And there was Julius Melkin.

Julius was a process-server and “key-hole peeper” for the ill-famed law firm of Howe and Hummel. He looked a bit like the junior partner of the firm, Abe Hummel—short and thin, with a rather elongated hooked nose. Aping his boss, Julius sported narrow trousers, a sack coat, a fancy vest, a pearl-gray derby, and high heels. He was addressed as “counseller” and overawed his fellows with ipse-dixits, caveats, and subpoenas duces tecum. His was the shrewd brain behind Hughey Mahoney—or so Julius thought. It was rumored that his brother Aaron acted as East Side representative for Al Adams, the infamous policy king. On several counts, then, Julius was a very valuable member of the district, particularly since his connection with Howe and Hummel gave him an open sesame to the Essex Market and Jefferson Market Magistrates courts, where fixing was an extremely important art.

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Among the lesser lights was Abraham Holtzman, president of the Downtown Pushcart Peddlers Association. Abe’s duties were to obtain annual license renewals and to “square” police summonses for his poverty-stricken members. Each and every morning that court was in session Abe appeared with a bunch of summonses and had them cleared—“fixed” was the word, and still is. In return for this service Abe had to deliver the vote “right.” Every pushcart peddler, along with his relatives and friends, was expected to vote a straight ticket—an “X” marked under the flapping wings of the Tammany rooster. If not, as Abe used to warn them, “vet zein az och un vay tsu eich!”—(“You’re in for it”).

The clubroom under Alter’s barber shop was packed that June evening. After all, it was not every night that so important a figure as Max Hochstim, accompanied by the alderman of the different wards—“the Essex Street crowd”—paid a visit to these humble Tammany workers.

Hochstim spoke the language of the district, not the high-falutin English of the Fusion agitators who came downtown to address outdoor meetings. “Boys,” said he, “we’re in trouble. If we lose the election we lose our jobs. And jobs, you know, are hard to get right now.” This was language the assembled could understand. “Them reformers have given us a bad name.” Max had no use for reformers, nor was he afraid of them. (He had stepped down from the witness stand at the Lexow Committee hearings and tried to punch interrogator Frank Moss in the nose.) “We have to elect our aldermen to hold our jobs, or we don’t eat.”

Max stopped to drink a glass of water, letting his comments sink in. Then he resumed: “We need an issue and we need a slogan that will give us the aldermen. The Second Assembly has come up with the slogan, ‘A glass of beer on Sunday for the workingman.’ This is all right for the Irish. It is not a slogan for Jews. We need a good issue, a good slogan to get out the Jewish vote. Anyone got ideas?”

The “counseller,” Julius Melkin, arose in all his diminutive dignity. He pushed his pearl-gray derby to the back of his head (it wasn’t safe to leave your hat lying about), and addressing the visiting statesmen as “your honors,” he cleared his voice and said: “I have a slogan. Jews have not been getting political jobs. Everything goes to the Irish. Where do you see a Jewish copper, a Jewish fireman, a Jewish street-cleaner, a horse-car driver or conductor? To get out the vote we must demand our rights. What kind of blokes are we to keep taking it on the chin? I have the slogan which will get out the vote for Tammany: ‘Jobs for Jews.’ “

Everyone applauded. Julius was encouraged to proceed. “Why,” he shouted in the best manner of his boss Mr. Howe declaiming to a jury, “we could even get Yussel Tunick next door to go along with us and get the radical vote. I have already discussed this with Mr. Chaim Rabinovitz and he agreed to help. You all know what the name of Chaim Rabinovitz means among the Orthodox voters. He is a good friend of Kathriel Sarahssohn, the owner of the Tageblatt, and you all know what influence the Tageblatt has among conservative voters. With the slogan ‘Jobs for Jews—A Glass of Beer on Sunday,’ the voters will flock to Tammany. Subpoena duces tecum—it can’t fail.”

Prolonged applause. Mr. Hochstim shook hands with Julius and congratulated him. Said Max: “Counseller, you are an asset to the party. We won’t forget you.” And then Max delivered the famous line which won the municipal elections for Tammany three years later and brought Richard Croker back from exile. “Boys,” said Max, “we will beat them uptown bums yet. Get busy, go out and scratch. To hell with Reform!”

The hectic campaign began. The Tageblatt came out with two separate editorials. One posed the question why workingmen should be denied a glass of beer on Sunday. The other relayed a promise from the Tammany leaders that if their local candidates were re-elected, Jews would receive the same preference for jobs as the Irish.

True to his word, Julius Melkin, a most energetic person, convinced Yussel Tunick that he would not delay the world revolution by enlisting in the holy cause of equal rights for Jews. Tunick got busy among his radical friends, every one of whom had a relative or dependent eager for a political job. The leader of the Fourth personally promised to make sure that Yussel’s father-in-law would be among the first to find a job. This would take a heavy load off Yussel’s shoulders, for his father-in-law, Tevel Turetzky, had a hard time making a living. Tevel was a member of the Minsker synagogue on Henry Street. In a short time he and Yussel had visited the meetings of all chevras, synagogues, lodges, and landsmanshaften in the vicinity, exhorting their members to enlist in the holy cause.

Alter Schmulevitz, the “Deitch,” belonged to the Kalaverier chevra, and he also campaigned among the Kalaverier landsleute. And, of course, Abraham Holtzman saw to it that every pushcart peddler did his part.

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The professional politicians put great hopes in the influence of Reb Chaim Rabinovitz. Reb Chaim, reputedly a great scholar, devoted all his time to communal affairs and yet had no political axe to grind. He had been instrumental in persuading the Rav Ha-Kolel, Rabbi Jacob Joseph, to come to the East Side. Reb Chaim was head of the kashruth committee (the Rav Ha-Kolel’s faction), which controlled the plumbes, those leaden seals clamped on the legs of slaughtered fowl certifying to the chickens being kosher. Reb Chaim also placed the shochtim in the slaughterhouses and appointed the mashgichim who saw to it that all proceeded in accordance with the Shulchan Aruch. His name appeared on the hechsher placards displayed in every kosher food store, butcher shop, and restaurant. He was, moreover, one of the founders of the Yeshiva Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan on Henry Street, and himself taught Mishnah there. To top it all off, Reb Chaim enjoyed the close friendship of Kathriel Sarahssohn, owner of the Tageblatt, and cooperated in the paper’s drive for teheresha-mishpochoh (the sanctity of the family), which, according to editor Johan Paley, was being subverted by the laidakes (infidel-scamps) who wrote for the then rather weak radical press. For the Tageblatt this campaign was a circulation stunt; for Reb Chaim it was a sacred movement.

There was only one drawback. Reb Chaim—who was tall and slender with a long reddish beard—when decked out in his formal Prince Albert, his tsillender (high silk hat), and his gold-handled steck (cane), resembled the Reverend Parkhurst a bit too closely (l’havdil). Despite this resemblance, however, the Jewish politicians made it a point to have him seated on the speakers’ platform at every major meeting, in Valhalla and Turn Halls on Broome Street, in the two large halls on East Broadway, and at important outdoor rallies. He made no speeches, but his very presence lent respectability to the meetings. If a reputable scholar and klal-tuer (communal worker) like Reb Chaim Rabinovitz associated himself with the Tammany candidates, who could believe what the reformers, those “uptowners,” said about Tammany Hall? Did they ever show up except around election time? (As a matter of fact, Reb Chaim was unaware of the Lexow rev-elations, as he read only the Tageblatt, which sided with Tammany, and was busy with his many activities.)

The Tammany orators shouted: “Do the uptowners get licenses for the poor pushcart peddlers? They are against peddling altogether. Elect them and they will take the bread out of the mouths of hundreds of East Side families.

“When there’s trouble does a man go to the uptowners? Who gives out free coal in the cold winter? Tammany. Who gives out baskets of food at Thanksgiving and Christmas? Tammany. Who arranges the free river excursions for children in the hot summer? Tammany. Why, the uptowners, the reformers, even advocate tearing down the tenements—slums they call them, an insult to all East Siders—so they can put up playgrounds and parks instead! And where will the East Siders move to when that happens? In with Vanderbilt, with Gould, with Morgan, or maybe in with the reform candidate, the millionaire, Mr. Strong? So argued the East Side politicians. “Vote for a glass of beer for the poor workingman on Sunday. Vote for jobs for Jews. Vote under the crowing rooster. To hell with Reform.”

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On the eve of Election Day the campaign flamed to a white heat. In the usual torchlight parade, there were, besides the perennial Tammany stalwarts, hundreds of marchers from the various chevras with their flags and banners. A kleinikeit: equal rights for Jews! The paraders converged on the rather narrow Rutgers Square (narrow because Seward Park was in the future and the old tenements still stood), where a huge meeting, with torches and flares and a brass band blaring out Sousa marches, was in progress. All the important Jewish Tammany politicians were collected on the platform. In their midst sat Reb Chaim wearing his tsillender, and at his side Yussel Tunick, his red beard gleaming in the torchlight. The speeches were all in Yiddish. Tammany did not have to worry about the Irish voters: Hughey would tend to them.

As far as the Fourth and Second Assembly districts were concerned, the two issues of a glass of beer on Sunday and jobs for Jews completely overshadowed the revelations of the Lexow Committee, which the speakers did not so much as mention. Nor did they mention the Democratic candidates for mayor and district attorney, who Tammany knew were licked. The important thing was to return the aldermen.

The Fusion party also held open-air meetings, but their speakers knew only English. Most of them were hooted down by organized hoodlums and their meetings disrupted. On the night before election there was veritable hysteria among the Tammany supporters. Give the workingman a glass of beer on Sunday! Jobs for Jews! To hell with Reform! Victory is in the bag if we only get out the vote tomorrow!

Harvesting of the local vote was in the hands of the election-district captains, while the “absentee” vote fell to Hughey Mahoney and his brother Tommy, the nominal Republican. Before midnight of election eve, a number of barges tied up along the wharfage between Pike Slip and Rutgers Slip. Below decks waited the more than sixteen hundred registered guests of the Seamen’s Barber Shop & Hotel, all eager to exercise the right of franchise like the good citizens they were. By coincidence they always arrived in port on Election Day—and always by barge.

At the same time that Hughey was welcoming these citizens with food and drink-mostly drink—his brother Tommy and the election inspectors and clerks, aided by volunteers, began to put up tables and voting booths in the Tammany Club. By two in the morning all was ready including the registration lists. The officials who were to conduct the election did not go home.

While they were having an early morning snack, Tommy took it upon himself to correct the clocks in the barber shop and the polling place by moving their hands two hours forward. The officials synchronized their watches accordingly. (The jokers called this “P.S.T.”-Pike Slip Time.) When the clocks showed 6 a.m. (“P.S.T.”), the inspectors, clerks, and watchers took their posts. One of the Tammany watchers—no other watchers were present—had the hotel register before him. On the dot of six (“P.S.T.”), the polling place was declared open. Lined up outside was a long string of voters reaching two blocks back to the barges. The voting proceeded according to law.

“Your name is Thomas Jones? You live at the Seamen’s Barber Shop & Hotel? You are a merchant seaman? You cannot write? Here is your ballot. Make a mark next to your name on the register. As soon as Thomas Jones came out of the booth and deposited his ballot in the box, he was hustled across the street to the Sailor’s Haven, and the same process was repeated. In the Fourth, Thomas Jones and his more than sixteen hundred fellow seamen were “floaters.” In the Second they became “repeaters.” No one was allowed to vote twice in the same polling place. That was against the law.

Two hours later the Fusion and Socialist watchers arrived. When they protested the vote, the Tammany and the Republican officials sympathized with them. It was too bad. Apparently the clocks were fast. What did they expect them to do now? Break open the ballot box and desecrate the sanctity of the secret ballot? But they did correct the clocks.

Throughout the day the polling place was surrounded by groups of ward-heelers, at fifty feet of distance, with lists of voters. In the Republican Club next door, Hughey and Tommy checked off the lists of registered voters from corrected rosters which the Tammany watchers sent down to them. Tardy voters were rounded up, and for those who did not appear by mid-afternoon, substitutes were produced. Fusion and Socialist watchers shouted fraud and challenged votes, but to no avail.

Your name is Simon Cohen? You live at 138 Cherry Street? You are a pushcart peddler? You are a naturalized citizen of the United States? Ballot 17,987.

See, he answered the questions correctly; would you deprive a citizen of his vote? You say Simon Cohen looked Italian? So what? There are lots of Jews who look like Italians. Look at me. I look as Irish as Paddy’s pig and my name is Moishe Yekelchick. What? He spoke with an Italian accent? Don’t you know that Simon Cohen stands with his pushcart on Mulberry Street? Where do you suppose he learned to speak English, in Columbia College maybe? You blokes pipe down, twenty-three skidoo! Stop scaring the voters.

It was dark in the streets when the voting ended at seven o’clock. A great bonfire fed by fuel which the young people had been assembling for weeks—they had raided all the storage cellars for laid-away furniture—was now blazing outside the polling place. By eleven the count was in: 100 per cent for the Tammany candidates. There had been twenty-five Republican, three Socialist, and one Prohibition vote, but they were invalidated when Tommy Mahoney, the “Republican” guard, accidentally turned an inkwell over on them. Accidents will happen.

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At midnight the lights on the dome of the World Building, then the second tallest edifice in the city (the St. Paul Building, twenty-two stories high, at Park Row and Ann Street, right opposite Saint Paul’s Church, was the tallest) proclaimed a sweeping victory for Fusion. The newspaper headlines announced the end of Tammany Hall. The morning American and the Evening Journal owned by that radical, that near-Socialist, William Randolph Hearst, ran cartoons picturing the Tammany leaders in prison stripes. Tammany was defeated, crushed, ousted, on the run. Corruption had received its death blow. Crokerism was finished. But in all the traditionally Tammany wards the Tammany aldermen had been re-elected.

Since it was up to the Republican state legislature to grant the workingman a glass of beer on Sunday, the workingman, sad to relate, never got it. He still had to sneak into a saloon through the side door—“family entrance”—and drink his Sunday glass of beer with the blinds down. But on the promise “Jobs for Jews,” Tammany came through handsomely.

Tevye (Tevel) Turetzky, Yussel Tunick’s father-in-law, had been a tregger (porter) in his native Turetz, in the province of Minsk. All his life he had known nothing but heavy loads and hardship. The loads he carried would have strained the back of his competitor, the horse. When Tevel first came to the East Side with his family, he found himself in desperate straits. In America, horses took the bread out of the mouths of willing workers. Through Alter Schmulevitz’s acquaintance with the waterfront bosses he might have obtained work as a longshoreman, the nearest thing to a tregger’s job, but being a Shomer Shabbos made that impossible. To labor on the Sabbath? That’s what he came to America for? It was bad enough that the tsitsilisten, the anarchistlach on East Broadway, and other laidakes openly smoked on the Sabbath; some even worked, may they be rooted out. Ai Tateh zieser (“dear God”). Ai, America.

He tried working in a laundry, as a presser in a sweatshop, and as a rag-sorter, but he did not excel in any of these callings. Most of the time he was unemployed. Having worked outdoors all his life, he could not stand indoor confinement. Just before the Passover following the election, rumors began to float on Monroe Street—in Lekow-sky’s grocery, in Mishkin’s drug store, in Horowitz’s saloon, in Bushelovits’s butcher shop—that Tevel was slated for a political job. When the Tammany leader of the Fourth promises, he delivers.

That Passover, Reb Tevye, an insignificant man hardly ever noticed in shul, received honors. For the first time, he was called up to the Torah. True, the aliya was a humble one, only revii, nothing to rave about, but still an aliya. On the day after Passover Tevel was duly inducted into the service of the City of New York. He became a member of the reorganized Department of Sanitation, formerly the Street Cleaning Department.

In a brand new, spotlessly white uniform and a white helmet, carrying a broom and short-handled spade in one hand and pushing a portable garbage-can with the other, Tevel began “following the horses” on the cobblestones of Monroe Street—to the great admiration of his neighbors and landsleute who lined the sidewalks to watch him. At last the Jewish politicians had done something for their people. Not much, but a start. At last there was a Jewish streetcleaner in New York, and he wouldn’t have to work on the Sabbath. Leben zol Columbus! Where else could this happen but in Columbus’s medinah? In time, when Tammany was back in power, Jewish policemen, firemen, conductors would follow. Just be patient until we get rid of the reformers.

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For Yussel Tunick the victory was a tragedy. His old comrades, the genossen, the radicals, ostracised him. They called him a farkaifte neshoma, a bartered soul. He had sold out to the capitalists, to Wall Street, for a measly job. But out of spite Yussel joined the Fourth Ward Tammany Club. De Leon’s picture disappeared from his shop window. As soon as he ran out of the “radical” cigarettes, he replaced them with stogies. Before long he began to patronize Alter’s barber shop, but only for haircuts. He did not shave—God forbid—but he did allow the artist, Viktor, to trim his beard—no more than the edges—and his mustache. A new shaving cup with Yussel’s initials emblazoned on it in gold letters appeared on Alter’s shelves. Just for importance and not for use.

But Viktor Prager smiled knowingly behind his Napoleon Third mustache. In his prime he had seen similar transformations on Grand Street. If the Lord would only grant him a few more years, what he could do with Yussel’s full red beard! An artist’s dream!

Yussel became an East Side legend; there was talk of running him for alderman. But in his secret heart he was not happy. Every time he went into his store he walked through the door with downcast eyes. It seemed to him that the Iroquois Indian, in his war paint and regalia, tobacco leaves in one hand and upraised tomahawk in the other, looked down upon him with ill-concealed contempt.

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