Not long before the war New York’s manners were provincial1, and not long afterwards the city felt itself one of the world’s great centers. In twenty years, 1850–70, the population grew from a half million to a million. Such large groups were enriched by war contracts, the rise of real estate, and the nation-wide business expansion that the increase in luxury struck every observer. A Four Hundred was taking shape, rich shops were arising, the opera was growing more and more gilded3; in 1868, said the Evening Post, the receipts of the score of theaters reached $3,165,000. The Post that year listed ten of the richest men in order—Wm. B. Astor, believed to be worth $75,000,000; A. T. Stewart, Wm. C. Rhinelander, Peter and Robert Goelet, James Lenox, Peter Lorillard, John D. Wolfe, M. M. Hendricks, Rufus M. Lord, and C. V. S. Roosevelt. Their wealth, it told them, had become so great that if they tried they could accomplish enormous benefits for New York—they could sweep away the debasing tenement4 house system, or shatter the Tammany Ring; and the people believed that public services were the best if not the only justification6 for such wealth.
The growth in population emphasized the desirability of many diverse improvements. At the beginning of 1867 the Evening Post was demanding a great art gallery, such as we now have in the Metropolitan7 Museum, and pointing to European collections as models, while later the same year it urged a zoological garden like London’s, there being as yet none in all America. It and the Tribune together in 1871 asked for a single large public library. There were several small ones—the Astor, the Mercantile, the Society Library, and the unfinished Lenox Library—but none was “public” in the sense that it circulated365 books free, while the city would obviously benefit from the union of some of the larger collections. Having been the first to propose Central Park, Bryant applauded the creation of Prospect8 Park in Brooklyn, for which ground was broken in 1866. Theodore Thomas, who had begun to organize his orchestra early in the war, and immediately afterwards had opened his “summer night” concerts, issued a call through the newspaper for a supporting fund of $20,000. In several editorials in the spring of 1868, the first entitled “Can a City Be Planned?”, the Evening Post suggested that a board of engineers be named to lay out a city plan, determining which areas should be used for retail10 trade, manufactures, and residence. It was an Age of Innocence11 in many ways—people wondered at the first concrete sidewalk, laid from Park Row to Murray Street in 1868; they were just learning the use of safe deposit vaults12, and elevators were curiosities; but it was an age of progress.
The problem which most pressed upon New York after Appomattox, as after the World War, was housing. Building had stopped during the conflict, and its resumption was slow, but Manhattan had kept on growing at the rate of 30,000 people a year. In the winter of 1866–7 the Evening Post pronounced New York the most costly13 place of residence on earth. “Houses are so scarce that landlords see tenants14 running around, like pigs in the land of Cockaigne, with knives and forks in their backs, begging to be eaten; it is a favor to get a decent house at a preposterous16 rent—at almost any sum, in fact; and we know of families living comfortably in Europe from the rent of a house on one of the favorite avenues.” That spring a great open-air mass meeting was held in protest, and petitions were sent the Legislature for a law basing rents upon the assessed valuation. Those of moderate means suffered more than the rich or the poor tenement dwellers17. “Bank clerks, bookkeepers, and salesmen are compelled to go to New Jersey18, Staten Island, Long Island, or Westchester to secure attractive and comfortable homes,” said the Post. “New York is practically366 losing the best part of its population.” The practice of sub-letting parts of single houses waxed common.
From this demand for housing there arose an unprecedented19 real estate boom. Thousands of homes were placed on the market at high prices, and land auctions20 took place daily. The Evening Post reported that lots in Manhattan and Brooklyn were eagerly bought at unheard-of rates. The neighborhoods of Central and Prospect Parks had become popular for residences, while merchants were purchasing sites for stores on union Square and Fifth Avenue. Lots that fronted upon what is now Central Park West had sold in 1850 for a few hundred dollars apiece, and in 1860 for from $2,000 to $3,000, but in 1867 they were bringing from $8,000 to $15,000. High up on the East Side, at 91st Street, lots now sold at $3,000. When Bay Ridge21 Terrace was created in 1868 the journal commented upon the rapid growth of that fine part of Brooklyn, which it had already noted22 to be spreading eastward23 rapidly. Brownsville and East New York before the war had been quiet farming communities, but now the former had a hundred houses, and the latter had grown with a rush to 5,000 souls.
The northward24 march of business, causing the demolition25 of hundreds of old residences, increased the need for new residential26 construction. When Ex-Mayor Opdyke’s house on Fifth Avenue near Sixteenth Street was sold to James A. Hearn & Son in 1867 for $105,000, and a milliner established herself on the Avenue at Twenty-second Street, the Evening Post devoted27 an editorial to the transformation28. It predicted that all Fifth Avenue to Twenty-third Street would soon be engrossed29 by business, the new Fifth Avenue Hotel having given the movement impetus30. Higher up, residential property had reached amazing prices. A brownstone house at Thirtieth Street had just been purchased for $114,000, while P. T. Barnum had bought one at the corner of Thirty-ninth for $80,000. A fine light brownstone mansion31 on the corner of Fortieth, building for W. H. Vanderbilt, would cost at least $80,000, the stable and lot included. At Forty-third367 Street a wealthy Jewish congregation was building a synagogue at an outlay32 of fully33 $700,000, while ten blocks farther up, where St. Thomas’s was about to be erected34, $100,000 had been offered and refused for a plot 100 by 125 feet. Seven houses with brownstone fronts had just been finished on the west side of the Avenue, between Forty-third and Forty-fourth, and were so finely furnished that the front doors had cost $700 each, and the staircases $4,000.
The most serious aspect of the housing shortage was that as yet respectable New Yorkers knew but two modes of residence: one must either take a full single house, or consent to a dismal35 boarding house. The apartment building was known only to travelers in Europe, and was mistrusted as not being adapted to American individualism.
The possibility of utilizing37 the multiple-unit type of housing, however, was unceasingly expounded38 by the Evening Post from the time peace returned, for the editors had lived in the “Continental flat” abroad. An early editorial (Feb. 6, 1866) was called “How to Gain Room.”
It has been suggested frequently that tenement houses scientifically built would be profitable in New York, and a great boon39 to the working people. But they would be no less an advantage to the wealthier classes, and we wonder that the attempt has not been made first in the best part of town, and with houses calculated to accommodate families of the wealthier citizens, at a somewhat more moderate rent than is attainable40 now.
Many a family which now occupies a whole house uptown would be content to rent a floor, suitably fitted up after the manner of the houses of Paris and other European cities. Such an arrangement would spare the women of the family the endless and often painful toil41 of going up and downstairs, from the kitchen to the top of a three-storied house, three or four times a day. It would be far more convenient, and the rents might well make a considerable saving.
The inertia42 of New Yorkers was to blame, the Post said a little later. “Such a thing as hiring a suite43 of rooms368 and having meals sent in from a restaurant at a fixed44 and moderate charge is, we believe, almost if not quite unknown here. As for the ‘flats’ in which thousands of families conveniently and comfortably keep house in France and Germany, they require an arrangement of house architecture not known to our builders.” In the summer of 1867, when the congestion45 was at its worst, the editors gave publicity46 to the design of an architect for an apartment house for the “middling classes.” Upon two ordinary city lots, 20 by 100 feet, he proposed erecting47 a four-story building, containing eight distinct suites48 of rooms, all as completely isolated50 from each other as though they were detached houses. There was to be a central stairs, each landing giving entrance to two homes; but every visitor would have to ring below for admission precisely51 as at the front door of any other houses. Each suite was to contain a parlor52, dining room, four bedrooms, bath, and kitchen. For some time the newspaper carried on a veritable crusade.
When the first apartment house was ready, in 1870, one designed by Richard M. Hunt and erected at 142 East Eighteenth Street, the Evening Post rejoiced in it as the harbinger of a new housing era. It was said to be better than most of those in Paris, though the Post thought it lacking in light and ventilation. Each of the sixteen suites had six rooms and a bath, and rents ranged from $1,500 on the lower floors to $1,080 on the upper—G. P. Putnam, the publisher, and others of means lived in it. There was no elevator, but a dumbwaiter enabled the tenants to bring coal up from the basement. The close of 1870 saw the new movement in full swing, with eight houses built or building, and a strong demand for more.
An apartment house on Forty-eighth Street boasted a porter, who lighted the halls, removed garbage, and sent up fuel; the rents were only $40 to $75 a month. A block of flats overlooking Central Park from the east at Sixty-eighth Street gave each tenant15 eight rooms and a bath, elevator service, black walnut53 floors, and his own369 kitchen range and hot water heater for $75 to $150. The most pretentious54 house, however, was building at Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. It was costing a round million, and was to be 125 feet high. “Each suite will have ten rooms, four closets, and eight washbowls,” announced the Evening Post, and rents were to run from $2,000 to $3,000 a year. The journal advised builders to install elevators, and charge as much for the upper as for lower floors.
For several years a marked prejudice against flats persisted. Most New Yorkers believed that in this land of democratic sociability55 it would be impossible to isolate49 the apartments and obtain privacy, and that they would soon sink to the level of tenements56. The Post did its share in ridiculing57 these fears, and in pointing out the ugliness of the monotonous58 blocks of brownstone houses. It denied the common remark, “No house is big enough for two families.” But as it later said, one of the cardinal59 reasons for the rapid dissipation of the prejudice and popular success of the apartment houses was the building, in the first instance, of costly structures as pioneers in the movement.
By 1874 it thought that the new houses “may now be considered almost perfect.” The Haight Building, at Fifteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, offered thirty flats at $2,000 to $3,000 a year each, with an elevator, an internal telegraph, and a restaurant. Among the notables living here were Henry M. Field, the traveler; Col. W. C. Church, editor of the Galaxy60; Prof. Youmans, founder61 of the Popular Science Monthly, and the Spanish Consul62. But the last word in luxury was an apartment building in Fifty-sixth Street, where “the whole house is warmed by steam, and hot water is supplied to all the tenants at the expense of the owner.” The paper’s prediction that ten-story houses with elevators would be more popular than smaller buildings had been completely justified63.
Even before the rise of the apartment house came the first sharp attacks upon tenement evils. New York City had no lack of this particular kind of multiple-family370 dwelling64, for in 1864 they numbered 15,511, and housed 486,000 persons. They were far from being what we mean by tenements to-day: not until about 1879 was the first tenement house of the now familiar type, five, six, or more stories high, erected. The earlier buildings were comparatively low barracks, many of them converted mansions65, shops, and stables, and others “rear houses” in the back yards of old mansions; all without airshafts, and with no complete provision for separating families. The Evening Post fitly called them “The Modern Upas,” for they breathed upon the city the poisons of cholera66, typhus, smallpox67, and crime. As early as April, 1860, six years before the first legislative68 inquiry69 into the housing of the poor, the editors had called shocked attention to police records showing that some 18,000 New Yorkers were veritable troglodytes70, dwellers in cellars. It spoke71 out at the same time against the horrible congestion of the slums. One “rear house” on Mulberry Street had 222 persons huddled72 together; in Cow Bay, one of the colored quarters, one house held 230 persons; while the notorious Old Brewery73 at Five Points had sheltered 215 people before it burned. In the Sixth Ward2, surrounding the Five Points, sixty-three small structures housed 4,721 persons.
An indignant editorial attack upon the deplorable tenement-house conditions appeared in the Evening Post six months after Lee’s surrender, inspired by a report of the Citizens’ Association. Half the people of New York lived in tenements, and on the East Side they were packed in at the rate of 220,000 to the square mile. The Post estimated that more than 25,000 dwelt in unfit cellars, shanties74, or stable-lofts. Of the 15,000 tenements, almost 4,000 had no connection with the sewers75. One in three was a perpetual “fever nest,” in which typhus was endemic, while not one in fifteen was what a tenement house ought to be. A single “fever nest” on East Seventeenth Street, almost within a stone’s throw of the Mayor’s home, had sent thirty-five typhus patients during 1864 to the municipal fever hospital, while nearly371 a hundred more had been treated in the building. The public, repeated the Post early in 1867, was astonished to awake from the war to the vast extent of the tenement system, the immense numbers inhabiting such places, and the horrid76 evils of filthiness77, immorality79, and sickness engendered80 by them. “No man has a right to establish a nest of fever and vice5 in the city,” it said, arguing for new laws and a government agency to regulate the construction and use of tenements.
Simultaneously81, the newspaper kept up its old complaints, dating from Coleman’s day, of the lack of due sanitary82 regulations and activity. Slaughter-houses continued to abound83, there being twenty-three in the northern half of the Twentieth Ward alone, some of them draining blood and other refuse for long distances through open sewers. In Forty-sixth Street on the East Side, a single neighborhood was blessed with one slaughter-house, six tripe84, three sausage, and two bone-boiling establishments, and in the summer was almost uninhabitable (Sept. 2, 1865). A little later the Post took notice of the nastiness of the harbor. Many sewers emptied into the slips and under the piers85, and there being no movement of the water, the sewage decayed until it had to be dredged out. These facts help explain an editorial of 1866 defining the typhus area block by block. It extended in irregular strips from the Battery up the West Side to Cortlandt Street, and up the East Side to Thirty-sixth. Smallpox was endemic throughout a rectangle bounded by Broadway, the Bowery, Chambers86, and Bleecker, and in so many additional spots in the lower part of the city that a man could hardly get to his work downtown without crossing infected areas.
In the spring of 1867 the Legislature hesitatingly passed the first act to regulate the erection and management of tenements. Though it was, as the Evening Post said, “much less stringent87 and particular” than the English laws on which it was modeled, it placed important powers in the city Board of Health organized shortly before, for which the Post had also struggled. All tenants372 of cellars were required to vacate them unless they could obtain special permits, and within two years the Post was rejoicing over a drastic order for the cutting of 46,000 windows in interior rooms. Of course this legislation was only a beginning. In 1878–79 we find the Evening Post vigorously agitating89 for its extension, and publishing articles upon “The Homes of the Poor” which give a horrifying90 picture of Mulberry Court and other slum sections. Half of the city’s 125,000 children lived in tenements, and nine-tenths of the deaths among children occurred there. In May, 1878, the “Evening Post Fresh-Air Fund” was founded for the purpose of sending slum children to country homes for summer rest and recreation. The business office collected and disbursed91 the money raised by almost daily appeals in the newspaper, and the Rev92. Willard Parsons took charge of the work of finding farmers to take the children, and of transporting them. Some years later the Tribune took over the Fresh-Air Fund, and still maintains it. In 1879, after a mass-meeting upon the tenement problem at Cooper union, addressed among others by Parke Godwin, then editor of the Evening Post, new regulatory legislation was passed at Albany.
Every one saw that evils in housing could not be corrected without expanding the city’s area, and in the decade after the Civil War the city press paid little more attention to them than to the twin perplexity of transportation. The first talk of a subway had been heard in the early fifties, and was thin talk indeed, although the London underground railway dates from 1853. The Evening Post used to boast that it had been the first journal to propose a steam subway, Bryant having brought the idea home from England. But the real solution of the transit93 problem, for a period which had no electric traction94, lay in the elevated railways which Col. Robert L. Stevens had suggested as long before as 1831. The need grew more and more urgent. When the war ended, transportation was furnished by the horse railways and by eight omnibus companies. The horse-cars were slowly driving373 the buses out of business, the great Consolidated95 Company, which operated a half-dozen lines, having gone bankrupt in 1864; but there remained 250 of the vehicles, or enough to impede96 other traffic seriously. The capital invested in them was $1,600,000, for each had six $200 horses, while wages and stabling costs had risen fast.
To find room for the growing population, and to ease the streets of their intolerable burden—these were the two chief arguments for rapid transit. As the Evening Post said in the closing days of 1864, the most desirable parts of the island, the sections abreast97 of and above Central Park, were largely given up to pigs, ducks, shanty-squatters, and filth78. A railroad under Broadway, it thought, would soon change all that. “When a merchant can go to Central Park in fifteen minutes he will not hesitate to live in Seventieth or Eightieth Street; and a resident of One Hundredth Street could reach the business section of the city as quickly by the underground railway as those who live in Twentieth Street do now.” Better live in Yonkers than Harlem, it remarked later. As for the streets, it declared in 1866: “Broadway is simply intolerable to the man who is in a hurry; he must creep along with the crowd, no matter how cold it is; he crosses the street at the risk of his life; and when he journeys up and down in an omnibus, he wonders at the skill with which a wheeled vehicle is made so perfectly98 uncomfortable.”
A multitude of suggestions for better transit had been brought forward by this time. Some men proposed one or several subways; the Evening Post modestly thought that five were needed, several beginning at the Battery and the rest at Canal Street, and all running to the Harlem. Others favored elevated roads mounted on single pillars in the streets, and still others called for such roads running over the housetops. Sunken railways in the middle of certain streets were proposed, and one powerful intellect devised a scheme for two railways, one on each side of Broadway, running “through the cellars”! To lessen99 the traffic congestion in Broadway, a college374 professor suggested that the city buy the ground floor of all buildings for a space ten or twelve feet deep on each side, and form an arcade100 there for foot passengers, yielding the entire street to vehicles. Another professor thought that horses should be banished101 altogether, and the freight and passenger traffic in Broadway restricted to steam trains. To all the plans objections were made, and were frequently as wonderful in their way. Thus Engineer Craven of the Croton Board demonstrated at length in February, 1866, that no subway could ever be built, because it would interfere102 with the water supply; and even the Post called his argument “a knockdown blow.”
In the spring of 1867 the Evening Post was regarding hopefully two schemes before the Legislature, one for a “three-tier railroad” (subway, surface, and elevated), and one for a metropolitan underground line. In 1868 the Legislature actually authorized103 a steam subway from City Hall to Forty-second Street, the incorporators of which included such substantial men as William B. Ogden, William E. Dodge104, and Henry W. Slocum, but the enterprise did nothing more than demonstrate the immediate9 impracticability of the plan. Three years later the Post had swung to the sensible view that an elevated would be better than a subway, for it had been shown that the latter would cost $30,000,000, and no one was ready to invest. Elevated construction had then already begun, and when Bryant died in 1878 there were four lines.
Subordinate to the two main subjects of housing and transit, a great variety of comments upon city affairs can be found in the post-bellum columns of the newspaper. One of the most frequent topics of editorial complaint in the years 1866–68 was the dirty and broken condition of the streets, which New York was paying a former Tammany Judge, James R. Whiting, $500,000 a year to neglect. Just before the war the Post had contended energetically for the introduction of sweeping105 machines, and now it objected to the contract system. Some city officer, it held, should be responsible. It anticipated Col.375 George F. Waring when it suggested that the city might well “engage an army officer used to drilling and handling a large number of men and accustomed to discipline, and put the streets in his charge, with a simple injunction to keep them clean, constantly, under all circumstances.” Early in the seventies we find the paper defending Henry Bergh, founder of the S. P. C. A., against journals which attacked his efforts to protect dumb animals as fanatical; applauding (February, 1873) the first stirrings of the movement to unite New York and Brooklyn under one government; and raising an agonized106 outcry over the postoffice which Mullet, the supervising architect of the Treasury107, was building at City Hall Park.
That greater city toward which public-spirited men then looked was sketched108 in an editorial of 1867 entitled “New York in 19—.” The Evening Post hoped that before the twentieth century was far advanced Central Park would be really central, and the upper part of the island as populous109 as the lower. Brooklyn would have been united governmentally with New York, and physically110 by several bridges thrown across the East River. There should be a great railway station in the heart of the city, near the chief hotels, and freight stations only on its borders. Retail trade would be scattered111, and “the Stewarts of that day will be found on broad, clean cross streets near the Central Park”; while spacious112 markets would have supplanted113 “the filthy114 sheds” in which provisions were then sold. “The streets of New York will be no longer rough and dirty; they will be covered with a smooth pavement like that ... now laid on a part of Nassau Street or covered with asphaltum, like some of the pavements of Paris.” Whoever wrote the editorial might to-day call this much of the prophecy fairly realized. But he went on to picture an adequate system of tenements, comfortable, sanitary, and cheap, managed by public-spirited corporations; a rapid transit system sufficient for all needs; and a shore line equipped with fine piers and basins, modern warehouses115, and the best376 loading and unloading apparatus—all of which still belongs to a Utopian vision.
II
The most important municipal questions, however, arose from Tammany politics; and the city which was so sluggish116 and blundering in sheltering itself and transporting itself was more so in governing itself. The history of the most memorable117 years of New York’s administration was condensed by the Evening Post in the seventies into a short municipal epic118:
In eighteen hundred and seventy
The Charter was purchased by W. M. T.
By eighteen hundred and seventy-one
The Tweed Ring’s stealing had all been done.
By eighteen hundred and seventy-two
The amount of the stealing the people knew.
By eighteen hundred and seventy-three
In eighteen hundred and seventy-four
Tweed was allowed his freedom no more.
This epic starts, as it should, in medias res. An enormous amount of stealing had been done before 1870, and the disclosures of the summer of 1871 were by no means so unexpected as we are likely to think. When A. Oakey Hall was elected Mayor in 1868 on the Tammany ticket, intelligent citizens knew that there existed a Ring of dual36 character—a corrupt120 combination of leading Democratic politicians in New York, and a corrupt alliance between them and Republicans at Albany. They knew that the city Ring regularly levied121 tribute on accounts for supplies, construction, and repairs; and that its head was William M. Tweed, with Peter B. Sweeney, the Chamberlain, and Richard B. Connolly, the Controller, completing its guiding triumvirate. No paper had insisted so constantly upon these facts as the Post. It may claim to have been the leader in the fight against the Ring until the close of 1870, when, with the resignation of Charles377 Nordhoff as managing editor, it relaxed its efforts, and the Times stepped to the front.
Tweed was a familiar figure to all interested in city affairs—an enormous, bulky personage, his apparent ponderosity122 belied123 by his firm, swift step and his piercing eyes, grim lips, and sharp nose. He was a man of inexhaustible energy, a fighter as fresh at midnight as at noon. From his little private office on Duane Street, where a faded sign proclaimed him an attorney-at-law, he would sally out on an instant’s notice to City Hall, to Albany, or to some ward headquarters where a revolt was brewing124, and assert his authority with despotic effectiveness. By his untiring activity, his imposing125 physique, and his combination of cruelty, shrewdness, and audacity126, he had risen in fifteen years from his original calling of chair-maker to be a multi-millionaire and dictator of the city. The office on which he chiefly founded this success was his seat on the County Board of Supervisors127, which he held continuously after 1857.
His lieutenant128, Sweeney, or “the Squire,” was later called by an Aldermanic Committee “the most despicable and dangerous, because the best educated and most cunning of the entire gang.” Nast’s cartoons have made us familiar with his villainous look—his low forehead, heavy brows, thick lips, and bushy hair. Yet he was quiet, retiring, cold, averse129 to mingling130 with the crowd or with other politicians, and in a measure cultured; he was a ready writer, his mental operations were keen and quick, and he was held in awe131 by the Tammany satellites, whom he would pass in the street without recognizing by even a nod. Connolly was the most respectable of the three in appearance, looking, with his trim black broadcloth, close-shaven face, and high, narrow forehead, the very part of a business or municipal treasurer132. He was really an ignorant Irish-born bookkeeper, who brought to the Ring plenty of low cunning, the product of a mixture of cowardice133 and greed, and the quadruple-entry system of bookkeeping which it found so useful.
As early as the municipal election of 1863, when the378 Evening Post supported Orison Blunt as a reform candidate against the nauseous F. I. A. Boole, the editors were denouncing “that army of scamps which has so long fattened134 upon the city treasury.” The paper clearly understood how the Ring had originated. For ten years preceding the war, the Republicans had exercised general control of the State government, and the Democrats135 of the city. The Legislature step by step had reduced the powers of the municipality by entrusting136 them to State boards and commissions. As a climax137 to this process, in 1857, it established the powerful New York County Board of Supervisors, a State body composed of six Republicans and six Democrats. But the grafters of the two parties conspired139 to defeat these ill-planned efforts at reform, and by 1860 discerning men saw that the net result of the transfer of authority had been simply to create two centers of corruption140 instead of one, and to implicate141 both parties. Tweed and his fellow-Democrats on the Board of Supervisors quickly gained control by bribing142 one of the Republicans, and at Albany—
a bargain [said the Evening Post of Aug. 12, 1871] was made between the most prominent factions143 in the two parties, the Seward-Weed Republicans and the Tammany Democrats, by which the offices were divided between them, and all direct or personal responsibility for official conduct was destroyed. Tammany managed the city vote, in accordance with this bargain; Mr. A. Oakey Hall, the counsel of the combination, drew up the laws which were needed to carry it out; Mr. Thurlow Weed and his lobby friends passed them through the Legislature, and the New York Times gave them all the respectability they could get from its hearty144 support, in the name of the Republican party.
Immediately after the war the Evening Post asked for a new Charter as the best cure for the evil. The city should again be allowed to rule itself, the editors believed, and this self-government should be exercised through one party, which could be made to answer directly for all acts of the municipal authorities. “Make the Democratic party clearly responsible in this city for all its misgovernment, corruption, and waste, and the379 people would drive it from power in less than three years.” The existing Charter had four great defects, said the Post in January, 1867: the lack of home rule, the division of the city legislature into two bodies, which impeded145 business, the failure to withdraw all executive functions from these bodies, and the fact that the Mayor had little real authority or responsibility. “All the successive changes since 1830 have been made upon the same principle of limiting or withdrawing powers that are abused, instead of enforcing an effective responsibility for the abuse. This policy ... has produced the evils which it feared. Never was the administration so ineffective, never was there so much corruption, and never were the people so little interested in choosing their officers with any hope that one class or set will do better than another.”
The charges made by the paper were all general—no guilty men or departments were specified146. But it had a pretty clear conception of the extent of the stealing. In April, 1867, it alleged147 that the city was being robbed of hundreds of thousands in “the monstrous148 court house swindle”; robbed by the politicians in collusion with the twenty horse railways of the city, of which only three paid the full license149 tax imposed by law; robbed in the cleaning and repair of the streets; and robbed in the renting and sale of the city’s real estate. In April, 1868, it estimated that the Ring during the previous year had made a half million upon the contracts for the building, repair, and furnishing of the city armories150. The failure to name the criminals arose from the inability of even so able a managing editor as Nordhoff to trace the peculations. Since the district attorney, sheriff, courts, aldermen, and even the Legislature were under the Ring’s influence, the secrecy151 of its transactions seemed impenetrable. Give the city a new government, was the view of the Post, and reform, though not necessarily punishment of the criminals, would follow. “Is New York a colony?” was the title of an editorial in June, 1867. Moreover, the paper was the less concerned to be specific in380 that it believed mere152 general denunciation of the Ring was having a much greater effect than was the case. “Thieves Growing Desperate,” ran another editorial caption153 of April, 1868:
The vampires154 of the city treasury are well aware of the growing determination of the people to make away with them. They must choose between two alternatives. They must either aim at prolonging their privilege of plunder155 by moderating and disguising their use of it, or they must steal so enormously for the short time remaining as to compensate156 them for soon losing their chance.
If Tweed saw this utterance157, he must have dropped a contemptuous chuckle158 over it. He was quite resolved to steal “enormously,” but the “short time” which the Post gave him proved a good three years. Far from being desperate, the Ring was just getting its hand in. The graft138 on the armories, which the Post accurately159 estimated at already a half million, ultimately reached three millions, and the graft on the courthouse, which the paper had put at hundreds of thousands, rose steadily160 until it totaled $9,000,000. Tweed was attaining161 more and more power as the year 1869 opened. He had just been elected to the State Senate, and could now personally superintend every item of the Ring’s machinations at Albany, while his friend A. Oakey Hall was just taking his seat as Mayor.
The Evening Post was quite likely right in its contention162 that a new and truly good Charter would even at this date have awakened163 a new interest in city affairs, and a spasm164 of reform; but a good Charter it was impossible to get. With his usual shrewdness, Tweed at once prepared to use the movement for a better form of city government to make his position secure.
When the legislative session of January, 1870, began—the first Legislature in twenty-four years to be controlled by the Democrats—it was generally agreed that the city would be given another Charter. The Tweed Ring was preparing one; the Young Democrats, an unsavory group who opposed Tweed on strictly165 selfish grounds,381 were preparing one; and the reform element represented by the union League Club, the Evening Post, the Tribune, and the World, wanted one. “The true democratic doctrine166 of city government,” insisted the Post, “is that power ought to be simple, responsibility undivided and direct.” The proposed Charter of the anti-Ring Democrats, the so-called “huckleberry Charter” of the “hayloft-and-cheesepress” up-Staters, was defeated. Then, at the beginning of February, Tweed and Sweeney suddenly sprang their own instrument, and made it clear that they would push it rapidly through. It was patently vicious. As early as Feb. 3, the Evening Post attacked it sharply. It pointed167 out that it embodied168 none of that simplification of powers and responsibility which the Post had long advocated; that too many city departments would be governed by boards, not single heads; that the Common Council retained its executive functions; and that the four-year term which it gave the Mayor and his lieutenants169 was, under the circumstances, dangerous.
But four days later a far more powerful attack was published. The Evening Post would in any event have kept up its campaign with growing vigor88, but it had found an unexpected helper and adviser170 in Samuel J. Tilden. Bryant later wrote:
It was in February of the year 1870 that Samuel J. Tilden came and desired an interview with the senior editor.... He seemed moved from his usual calm and quiet demeanour. His errand, he said, related to the Charter which Tweed and his creatures were trying to get enacted171 into law. If that should happen, it would give the city, with all the powers of its government, into the hands of men who felt no restraint of conscience and who would plunder it without stint172. The city would be ruined, he said, if this Charter, conceived with a special design to make speculation173 easy, passed, and it was altogether important that the Evening Post should resist its passage with all the power of argument which it possessed174, and prevent it if possible. He then, with his usual perspicacity175, pointed out the contrivances for misusing176 the public funds which were embodied in the bill.... The Evening Post did not require Mr. Tilden’s exhortations177 to oppose382 the bill, but we proceeded, by the help of the additional light given us, to hold up the Charter to the severest censure178.
The Post in a series of editorials absolutely riddled179 the Tweed Charter. It aimed its main fire, however, at the heart of the document—its creation of a Board of Special Audit180 with financial powers so huge that millions could be stolen by the mere nod of four or five men, and so well entrenched181 that only by new State legislation could these men be reached. This Board was to be composed of the Mayor, Controller, Chamberlain, and Presidents of the Supervisors and Aldermen, so that Tweed, Oakey Hall, and Connolly were certain of places on it. It would seem that those who ran might have read the perils182 concealed183 in the Tweed Charter; while the bribery184 employed to pass it was so colossal185 that it is hard to understand how it was even temporarily concealed. It is believed that a million was spent in corrupting186 legislators; the chairman of the conference committee on the Charter admitted later that he took $10,000; and it was shown that Tweed bought five Republican Senators for $40,000 each. Yet many of the best people of New York looked on complacently187 while the Republicans joined hands with the Democrats, and the Charter passed both houses by enormous majorities.
The Evening Post was powerfully aided in combating this iniquity188 by Manton Marble of the World and Dana of the Sun. The Tribune was upon the same side, though Greeley did not fail to indulge his unsurpassed faculty189 for wabbling; he went to Albany and said that if he could not get the Charter amended190, he would take it as it was, while his journal continued attacking it. The union League Club energetically opposed it. But the Citizens Association, under the universally esteemed191 Peter Cooper, was convinced that the Ring had become conservative, and would now stop stealing and take the side of the taxpayers192. The Times, with similar blindness, hailed the passage of the Tweed Charter as a signal victory for reform, saying (April 6):
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If it shall be put into operation by Mayor Hall, with that regard for the general welfare which we have reason to anticipate, we feel sure that our citizens will have reason to count yesterday’s work in the Legislature as most salutary and important.
And Tweed saw that Oakey Hall lost no time in appointing him head of the Department of Public Works, and otherwise putting it into operation.
Indeed, the Boss now stood at the apex193 of his career. One of his creatures, John T. Hoffman, was Governor, another was Mayor, and he, Hall, and Connolly formed a majority of the Board of Special Audit, with authority, as the Post said, “to do almost what they please.” Almost penniless ten years before, Tweed now had a fortune of more than $3,000,000, and his career had entered upon a period of dazzling splendor194. He acquired a fine mansion at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, and at his summer home at Greenwich, Conn., the very stalls of his horses were mahogany. He had flashing equipages and gave glittering dinners; he and his retainers fitted up the Americus Club, in Greenwich, where each member had a private room, in princely style; and when his daughter was married that summer her gown cost $4,000 and she received gifts worth $100,000. The voters most impressed by all this were the poor voters among whom in winter Tweed scattered gifts of coal, provisions, and money. The Ring did not forget its family connections. Not even President Grant, remarked the Post, had such a taste for nepotism195. One of Tweed’s sons was Assistant District Attorney and another was Commissioner196 of Riverside Drive; while four of Sweeney’s relatives had fat places.
As Samuel J. Tilden later sarcastically197 noted, the Times was unlucky enough on May 5, 1870, to boast of “reforms made possible by the recent legislation at Albany.” That May 5 was the day on which the Board of Special Audit ordered payment of $6,312,500 on the Court House, ninety per cent. of it graft.
But such barefaced198 looting of the city as had now been carried on for years could not be continued without arousing384 public anger, and the storm soon burst. The share of graft which the Ring exacted from public contractors199 had already been shoved up to 85 per cent. The frauds perpetrated in the city election of May 17, 1870, were so flagrant that observers gasped200. A suspicion that the city’s debts were rising by leaps and bounds grew into conviction. The Evening Post and Tribune continued their warnings and attacks, and early in the fall the Times fully joined them.
How long these assaults would have continued essentially201 futile202, had it not been for a dramatic episode, it is hard to say. This episode grew out of the fact that the Ring, being greedy, made enemies in its own camp. One of the chief was James O’Brien, who was sheriff 1867–70, and had a large personal following. O’Brien distributed his money lavishly203 while he held office, and retired204 from a post worth $100,000 a year as poor as when he entered it. To recompense himself, he presented a claim for $200,000 to the Board of Special Audit, and this body, which did not fear him now that he was out of office, rejected it. Tweed knew that it was a mistake, but was overruled. It happened that in December, 1870, the County Auditor205, a loyal servant to Tweed, was fatally injured in a sleigh accident, and as a result of some transfers which followed, one of O’Brien’s friends obtained a position in the County Bookkeeper’s office. There he discovered the bogus accounts used in stealing millions during the erection of the Courthouse, and placed transcripts206 of them in O’Brien’s hands. In vengeful spirit, the ex-sheriff in the early summer of 1871 brought them to the office of the latest recruit to the anti-Tweed ranks, the Times, and the Times made admirable use of them.
It would be pleasant for historians of journalism207 to record that one of the great New York newspapers itself conducted an investigation208 into Tweed’s looting of the city and fully exposed him. If any managing editor could claim the credit which has to be given an overturned sleigh and a jealous ex-sheriff, he would be immortal209. Why, when the Evening Post and Tribune had been attacking385 the régime of graft for years, did they not cut into the tumor210? We may lay part of the blame on journalistic timidity, and the lack at that time of a tradition of investigative enterprise in journalism; but the chief answer lies in the care with which the Ring guarded its secrets. It had seemed for a moment the previous fall to invite inquiry. Connolly, with a parade of injured virtue211, asked six eminent212 business men—William B. Astor, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and others—to inspect his books, and these six, who commanded public confidence, had reported on Nov. 1 “that the financial affairs of the city, under the charge of the Controller, are administered in a correct and faithful manner.” But the Ring’s real misdeeds were kept under cover.
The vigor with which the Post attacked the Ring slackened during the early months of 1871. Bryant was engrossed in his translations from Homer. Nordhoff quarreled with Isaac Henderson over what the latter thought the undue213 violence of his denunciation of Tweed, was offered a long vacation with pay on the understanding that he should look for another place, and resigned the managing editorship to Charlton Lewis, who for a time was more cautious of utterance. But by the 1st of July we find the Evening Post as vehement214 as ever.
It was particularly aroused against the Ring by the bloody215 Orange Riot of July 12, 1871, one of the most disgraceful of the city’s outbreaks. The previous year an unprovoked attack had been made upon an Orange picnic at Elm Park by some Irish Catholics who broke down the fence, assailed216 men, women, and children with revolvers and stones, killed three outright217, wounded eleven mortally, and seriously injured forty or fifty. The Orangemen in 1871 prepared to celebrate Boyne Day by a parade, as they had a perfect right to do, and by July 10 it was rumored218 that the hooligans meant to attack them again. That day the Post published a warning editorial, saying the city authorities must prepare to quell219 the mob “by the quickest means.” But Mayor Hall and Superintendent220 of Police Kelso issued orders that the386 police should disperse221, not the assailants, but the Orange procession; and this made the Post furious. It meant that the Tammany Ring, “with a cynical222 contempt for law and order, have taken the part of the mob.” Very properly, Gov. Hoffman overruled Mayor Hall, and directed that the Orangemen be protected in any lawful223 assemblage. On the 12th the parade formed, and began its march under a strong escort of police and militia224. The more turbulent Irish element was out in force, lining225 the route threateningly. As the parade passed along Eighth Avenue near Twenty-sixth Street, a shot was fired by an Irishman from a second story window at the Ninth Regiment226, and was the signal for other shots and a shower of brickbats and stones. The order to fire was given, the Eighty-fourth Regiment—according to the Post—was the first to respond, and before the mob was dispersed227 the street was full of the dead and dying. The Evening Post had nothing but praise for the militia, nothing but abuse for the city government. Bryant penned a ringing editorial upon Tweed:
New York, like every great city, contains a certain number of idle, ignorant, and lawless people. But these classes are not dangerous to our peace, either by their numbers or by their organization. They are dangerous and injurious only because they are the tools of Tweed, Sweeney, Oakey Hall, Connolly, and the Ring of corruptionists of whom these four persons are the leaders. Depose228 the Tammany Ring and all danger from the “dangerous classes” will cease. It is because these know themselves to be supported by the Ring, because they are employed when they want employment, salaried when they are idle, succored229 when they commit petty crimes, pardoned when they are convicted, and flattered at all times by the Tammany Ring, that they have become so audacious and restless....
The Tammany Ring purposely panders230 to the worst and most dangerous elements and passions of our population. It cares nothing for liberty, nothing for the rights of the citizen, nothing for the public peace, for law and order; it cares only to fasten itself upon the city, and chooses to use, for that end, the most corrupt and demoralizing means, and the most lawless and dangerous part of our population. It is the Head of the Mob. It387 rules by, and through, and for the Mob; and unless it is struck down New York has not yet seen the worst part of its history.
It was soon struck down. The Times began the verbatim publication of O’Brien’s evidence on July 22, 1871, with a masterly analysis of it. The Evening Post’s editorial that afternoon took the view that the Times’s evidence was in all probability valid231 to the last figure, that the Ring could not disprove it, and that it made the refusal of the authorities to show their accounts intolerable. During the seven days that the Times required for publishing all of O’Brien’s transcripts the Post carried half a dozen editorials pressing this opinion.
However, the “secret accounts” so courageously232 brought out by the Times offered little more than the starting point of the exposure. They consisted of the dates and amounts of certain payments by Controller Connolly, their objects, and the names of the men who received them. The enormous sums disbursed, taken in connection with the brevity of the time, the inadequacy233 of the objects, and the recurrence234 of the same names as recipients235, made the public certain that the Ring had stolen on a colossal scale. A single carpenter, for example, had been paid $360,000 for one month’s repairs on the new Courthouse. But as yet there was no legal proof against any one official. There was no evidence, sufficient to sustain a civil or criminal action, which disclosed the principals behind the bogus accounts. Moreover, redress236 could not be sought from the Aldermen, who were allies of the Ring, and powerless under the new Charter anyway; from the District Attorney, who was Tweed’s friend; from the grand juries, which were packed; or from the Legislature, which was not in session. Tweed might well exclaim, “What are you going to do about it?”
The Times, the Post, and other papers could do no more than continue their attacks on the Ring, call for exhibition of the city’s books, and express their faith that in the November election punishment would be made certain by the choice of a reform Legislature and a zealous388 Attorney-General. Several journals did less. The World, for example, was so far misled by Democratic partisanship237 as to assume an attitude of apology for the Ring. But the work of the Times and O’Brien bore its first fruit when on Sept. 4 a great city mass-meeting was held at which a Committee of Seventy was appointed; and a more important result followed ten days later when Controller Connolly, after an interview with Tilden, turned traitor238 to the Ring, and tried to save himself by resigning and deputing the reformer, Andrew H. Green, to take his place.
For the fight was won, as the Evening Post recognized, when the party of good government gained the Controller’s books. Tilden obtained the legal opinion of Charles O’Conor, whose name carried the greatest weight, affirming the right of Mr. Green to hold the office, and gave it to the Evening Post of Sept. 18 for exclusive publication. It caused Mayor Hall to abandon instantly his intention of trying to eject Mr. Green. With the Controllership in their hands, the reformers were able to protect the city records from destruction, to undertake their careful examination, and to find the clues to judicial239 proofs lying in the Broadway Bank and elsewhere—clues of which Tilden made admirable use. “New York will carry down through the memory and history of the coming years,” said the Post, “the fact that Mr. Tilden threw a flood of light into the widened breach240 of this fortress241 of fraud, and that he and Mr. Havemeyer, as the only means of saving the city from bankruptcy242, thrust perforce ... Mr. Andrew H. Green, whom they knew to be of stern and honest stuff, into the charge of the depleted243 treasury.” It was only a few months before the leading Ring members were in jail or exile.
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1
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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metropolitan
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| adj.大城市的，大都会的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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vaults
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| n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 )；地下室；撑物跳高；墓穴 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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auctions
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| n.拍卖，拍卖方式( auction的名词复数 ) | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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demolition
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| n.破坏,毁坏,毁坏之遗迹 | |
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residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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engrossed
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| adj.全神贯注的 | |
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impetus
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| n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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outlay
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| n.费用，经费，支出；v.花费 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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dual
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| adj.双的；二重的，二元的 | |
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utilizing
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的现在分词 ) | |
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expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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boon
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| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
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attainable
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| a.可达到的，可获得的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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congestion
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| n.阻塞，消化不良 | |
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publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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erecting
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| v.使直立，竖起( erect的现在分词 )；建立 | |
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suites
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| n.套( suite的名词复数 )；一套房间；一套家具；一套公寓 | |
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isolate
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| vt.使孤立，隔离 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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walnut
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| n.胡桃，胡桃木，胡桃色，茶色 | |
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54
pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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sociability
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| n.好交际，社交性，善于交际 | |
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tenements
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| n.房屋，住户，租房子( tenement的名词复数 ) | |
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ridiculing
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 ) | |
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monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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consul
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| n.领事；执政官 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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mansions
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| n.宅第，公馆，大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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smallpox
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legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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troglodytes
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| n.类人猿( troglodyte的名词复数 )；隐居者；穴居者；极端保守主义者 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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72
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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73
brewery
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| n.啤酒厂 | |
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74
shanties
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| n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌 | |
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75
sewers
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| n.阴沟，污水管，下水道( sewer的名词复数 ) | |
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76
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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77
filthiness
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78
filth
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| n.肮脏，污物，污秽；淫猥 | |
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79
immorality
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| n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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80
engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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81
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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82
sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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83
abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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84
tripe
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| n.废话，肚子, 内脏 | |
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85
piers
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| n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 )；（常设有娱乐场所的）突堤；柱子；墙墩 | |
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86
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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87
stringent
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| adj.严厉的；令人信服的；银根紧的 | |
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88
vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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89
agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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90
horrifying
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| a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的 | |
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91
disbursed
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| v.支出，付出( disburse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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92
rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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93
transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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94
traction
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| n.牵引；附着摩擦力 | |
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95
consolidated
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| a.联合的 | |
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96
impede
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止 | |
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97
abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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98
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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99
lessen
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| vt.减少，减轻；缩小 | |
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100
arcade
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| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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101
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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102
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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103
authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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104
dodge
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| v.闪开，躲开，避开；n.妙计，诡计 | |
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105
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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106
agonized
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| v.使（极度）痛苦，折磨( agonize的过去式和过去分词 )；苦斗；苦苦思索；感到极度痛苦 | |
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107
treasury
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| n.宝库；国库，金库；文库 | |
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108
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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109
populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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110
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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111
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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112
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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113
supplanted
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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114
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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115
warehouses
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| 仓库，货栈( warehouse的名词复数 ) | |
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116
sluggish
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| adj.懒惰的，迟钝的，无精打采的 | |
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117
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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118
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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119
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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120
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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121
levied
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| 征（兵）( levy的过去式和过去分词 )； 索取； 发动（战争）； 征税 | |
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122
ponderosity
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| n.沉重，笨重；有质性；可称性 | |
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123
belied
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| v.掩饰( belie的过去式和过去分词 )；证明（或显示）…为虚假；辜负；就…扯谎 | |
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124
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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125
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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126
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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127
supervisors
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| n.监督者，管理者( supervisor的名词复数 ) | |
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128
lieutenant
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| n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员 | |
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129
averse
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| adj.厌恶的；反对的，不乐意的 | |
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130
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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131
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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132
treasurer
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| n.司库，财务主管 | |
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133
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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134
fattened
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| v.喂肥( fatten的过去式和过去分词 )；养肥（牲畜）；使（钱）增多；使（公司）升值 | |
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135
democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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136
entrusting
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的现在分词 ) | |
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137
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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138
graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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139
conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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140
corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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141
implicate
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| vt.使牵连其中，涉嫌 | |
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142
bribing
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| 贿赂 | |
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143
factions
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| 组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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144
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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145
impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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146
specified
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| adj.特定的 | |
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147
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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148
monstrous
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|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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149
license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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150
armories
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| n.纹章( armory的名词复数 )；纹章学；兵工厂；军械库 | |
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151
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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152
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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153
caption
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| n.说明，字幕，标题；v.加上标题，加上说明 | |
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154
vampires
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| n.吸血鬼( vampire的名词复数 )；吸血蝠；高利贷者；（舞台上的）活板门 | |
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155
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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156
compensate
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|
| vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消 | |
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157
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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158
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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159
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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160
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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161
attaining
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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162
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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163
awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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164
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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165
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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166
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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167
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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168
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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169
lieutenants
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| n.陆军中尉( lieutenant的名词复数 )；副职官员；空军；仅低于…官阶的官员 | |
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170
adviser
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| n.劝告者，顾问 | |
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171
enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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172
stint
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| v.节省，限制，停止；n.舍不得化，节约，限制；连续不断的一段时间从事某件事 | |
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173
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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174
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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175
perspicacity
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| n. 敏锐, 聪明, 洞察力 | |
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176
misusing
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| v.使用…不当( misuse的现在分词 )；把…派作不正当的用途；虐待；滥用 | |
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177
exhortations
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| n.敦促( exhortation的名词复数 )；极力推荐；（正式的）演讲；（宗教仪式中的）劝诫 | |
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178
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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179
riddled
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| adj.布满的；充斥的；泛滥的v.解谜，出谜题(riddle的过去分词形式) | |
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180
audit
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| v.审计；查帐；核对；旁听 | |
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181
entrenched
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| adj.确立的，不容易改的(风俗习惯) | |
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182
perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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183
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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184
bribery
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| n.贿络行为，行贿，受贿 | |
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185
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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186
corrupting
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|
| （使）败坏( corrupt的现在分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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187
complacently
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| adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地 | |
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188
iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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189
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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190
Amended
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| adj. 修正的 动词amend的过去式和过去分词 | |
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191
esteemed
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| adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 )；敬重；认为；以为 | |
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192
taxpayers
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| 纳税人，纳税的机构( taxpayer的名词复数 ) | |
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193
apex
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| n.顶点，最高点 | |
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194
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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195
nepotism
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| n.任人唯亲；裙带关系 | |
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196
commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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197
sarcastically
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| adv.挖苦地，讽刺地 | |
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198
barefaced
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| adj.厚颜无耻的，公然的 | |
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199
contractors
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| n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 ) | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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201
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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202
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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203
lavishly
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| adv.慷慨地，大方地 | |
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204
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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205
auditor
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| n.审计员，旁听着 | |
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206
transcripts
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| n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本 | |
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207
journalism
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| n.新闻工作，报业 | |
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208
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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209
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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210
tumor
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| n.（肿）瘤，肿块(英)tumour | |
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211
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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215
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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216
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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218
rumored
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| adj.传说的，谣传的v.传闻( rumor的过去式和过去分词 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷 | |
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219
quell
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| v.压制，平息，减轻 | |
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220
superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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221
disperse
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| vi.使分散；使消失；vt.分散；驱散 | |
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222
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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224
militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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225
lining
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| n.衬里，衬料 | |
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226
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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227
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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228
depose
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| vt.免职；宣誓作证 | |
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229
succored
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| v.给予帮助( succor的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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230
panders
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| v.迎合（他人的低级趣味或淫欲）( pander的第三人称单数 )；纵容某人；迁就某事物 | |
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231
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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232
courageously
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| ad.勇敢地，无畏地 | |
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233
inadequacy
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| n.无法胜任，信心不足 | |
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234
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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235
recipients
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| adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器 | |
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236
redress
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| n.赔偿，救济，矫正；v.纠正，匡正，革除 | |
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Partisanship
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| n. 党派性, 党派偏见 | |
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238
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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239
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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240
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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241
fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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242
bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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243
depleted
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| adj. 枯竭的, 废弃的 动词deplete的过去式和过去分词 | |
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