But shameful as this record is, it is one which, viewed in the light of present practises and present ideals, gives the basis for a robust faith in the future. The hiding of vice and the employment of indirect methods in cheating and plundering, are themselves an evidence of the existence of moral standards; and it is unquestionable that Tammany to-day outwardly conforms to ethical demands which would have been scoffed at a half century ago. No one can read the details of political history without acknowledging a growing betterment in political methods.

“Hardly a man [before the Civil War] could be found,” says Jesse Macy in his recent History of Political Parties in the United States, “who felt himself too virtuous to go into politics. The sensitively moral were not repelled by political methods which to-day are regarded as disgraceful.” And further along he says: “It is easy to forget that, from the very nature of moral progress, it often happens that intelligent moral leaders of one generation will in all good conscience say and do things which only the conscious hypocrite or the knave of a later generation can do.” Pessimism as to political progress secures no support from real research.

It may be asked, and with some show of reason, how it has been possible for New York City to achieve its present rank in population, in wealth, in commerce and in transportation facilities; how it has acquired its splendid libraries, its magnificent buildings, its museums, its parks, its benevolent institutions, in the face of this continued dominancy of corruption, violence and fraud. The answer is simple: the city has grown despite these adverse influences. The harbor of New York is one factor; the Erie Canal (constructed notwithstanding the opposition of the dominant political party of the city) is another; the tremendous growth of the nation, and the thousand external influences that determined the location of the nation’s metropolis, are yet other factors. The city has grown to magnificence and world-wide influence; but it has paid dear tribute for every forward step it has taken. Imagination fails at picturing the metropolis that might have been, could the city throughout the century have been guided and controlled in the light of present-day civic ideals.

* * * * *

The difficulties of securing the publication of this work by any of the regular publishing houses proved insurmountable. Two of the best known firms wrote that they could not encourage me to submit the manuscript to them for consideration. Four others considered its publication “inadvisable,” though their readers had returned favorable recommendations. One other declined it without giving reasons. More recently, when the offer of certain responsible persons who had read the manuscript, to guarantee the expense of its publication, was made to a certain house, the firm replied: “… we should hardly feel warranted in locking horns with Tammany Hall.…” It was thought that perhaps an out-of-town house might issue it, but here again declinations were forthcoming. Finally it was decided to attempt its publication by private subscription. To this end I solicited individual advances to a publication fund, from a number of the city’s public-spirited citizens. The appearance of the work at this time is due to the kindly interests of these men.

Acknowledgments for the courtesies tendered me, and for material aid rendered in the project of issuing the work, are due to a number of persons: To the public-spirited citizens of different political faiths, who, while familiar with the scope of the work, contributed the funds for its publication without insisting upon a censorship of the manuscript or its alteration in any way for political purposes; and particularly to Mr. James B. Reynolds, Mr. James W. Pryor and Milo R. Maltbie, Ph. D.

GUSTAVUS MYERS.

New York City, January, 1901.

FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION (1917)

Since the original publication of this work, a large number of inquiries have appeared in the Publisher’s Weekly and have come from other quarters requesting information as to where copies of The History of Tammany Hall could be obtained. For the last ten years this work has been in continuous demand but unavailable. For reasons fully set forth in the preface to that issue, the edition of 1901 was brought out in the face of difficulties. Not the least of these was the self-expressed dread of certain publishing houses to bring out a work which (as some of them frankly admitted in their letters of declination) might bring reprisals to them in some unexplained form or other.

Hence to all intents and purposes, that edition was in the nature of a restricted private edition. Denied the usual and almost indispensable publication and distribution facilities by the publishing houses, the work necessarily was subject to obvious disadvantages, and, so far as circulation went, practically took rank as a suppressed book--not, it is true, suppressed by any particular agency, but by the circumstances of the case.

In 1913 Mr. Edward Kellogg Baird, a public-spirited attorney in New York City, kindly undertook, in behalf of the author (who was absent in another country at the time) to see whether some one of the publishing houses would not bring out a new edition of The History of Tammany Hall, brought down to date. In his letters to these publishers, Mr. Baird pointed out that there never had been any lack of general interest in this work, and referred to the extremely large number of reviews in important publications in many countries treating the book at length and commending its purpose and scope. Mr. Baird also called the attention of publishers to the fact that the book was recognized as the only authority on the subject; that it had been tested by time; that there had never been a libel suit arising from any of the statements made therein; and that, therefore, there could be no valid objection on the part of any publisher that publication of further editions would lead to any legal trouble.

With such possible objections thus disposed of in advance, Mr. Baird confidently expected that he would find at least one of the old-established publishers who would not be deterred by such considerations as influenced them to refuse publication in 1901. But the replies were virtually repetitions of those received twelve years previously. One of the first replies, dated February 24, 1913, from the senior member of a New York publishing house, read as follows:

“For the very same reason that the author of The History of Tammany Hall was unable to obtain a publisher for the original edition, leads us to decide unfavorably so far as we are concerned. The policy of publishing the book was the first question raised by one of my partners, before he had a chance even to read the preface, and we as a firm have decided that the objection is too strong to permit us to bring the book out over our imprint. I am sorry that we must be so cowardly, for the book itself is worthy of reissue, and I personally should be glad to see it published by my firm.…”

At about the same time, the head of another prominent and older New York publishing house--a citizen, by the way, who had served as foreman of a noted grand jury exposing Tammany corruption--wrote this reply:

“I have given due consideration, with my partners, to the suggestion you are so kind to submit to us in regard to the publication of a new edition of The History of Tammany Hall brought down to date.… I must report that our judgment is adverse to the desirability of reissuing such a book with the imprint of our house. I should be individually interested in obtaining a copy for my own library in case you may be able to secure for the work a satisfactory arrangement with some other house.”

An equally well-known New York publishing house sent this declination: “We have looked over with interest The History of Tammany Hall, which you were good enough to submit to us, but are sorry to say that after a careful examination we are unable to persuade ourselves that we could successfully undertake its publication.” The head of still another old-established New York publishing house wrote, on March 4, 1913, a long apologetic letter giving his reasons for not caring to undertake the publication of the work, the principal of those reasons being the plea that there was not sufficient prospect of gain “to compensate for some of the unpleasantness its publishers would have to endure.” Yet a year later a magazine published by this identical house contained a laudatory reference to “Myers’s excellent History of Tammany Hall.”

On April 10, 1913, Mr. Baird wrote to a prominent Boston publishing house. “Before offering the book,” Mr. Baird wrote in part, “I want to tell you frankly that it has been turned down by other publishers, not because of any lack of excellence or authenticity, but simply because, as several of the publishers have frankly acknowledged, they ‘are afraid of reprisals from Tammany Hall.’