American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [73]
Roosevelt always had a soft spot for the earthy Murray, despite their different backgrounds. Now it was time for the president to return the favor. It is not that Murray had not been adequately compensated for his political work. One historian noted that Murray’s “good luck in picking a winner permitted him to reach offices beyond the limits of his capacity,” which included a series of patronage jobs such as running the food counter at Castle Garden during the 1880s.
Roosevelt felt in the older man’s debt, praising him in his autobiography “as fearless and as staunchly loyal as any one whom I have ever met, a man to be trusted in any position demanding courage, integrity, and good faith.” Roosevelt noted that his friendship with the Irish Catholic politico helped broaden his understanding of other ethnic and religious groups. The only issue on which the two men disagreed was civil service reform: Roosevelt a supporter and Murray most certainly not. Now, his loyalty to Murray was going to force Roosevelt to go against the civil service rules that he so staunchly championed.
Roosevelt not only forced out McSweeney, despite civil service protections; he installed Murray into the spot, circumventing civil service rules. Roosevelt worried that Murray’s previous service in the patronage-ridden Castle Garden might cause a problem. Before appointing Murray, Roosevelt asked him if he had ever been investigated. Satisfied with the answer, the president went ahead with the nomination.
William Williams soon learned that Roosevelt, despite his public persona, played the patronage game almost as well as the Tammany Hall politicians both men despised. Shortly after Williams took office, Roosevelt sent a man named Marcus Braun to meet with him about jobs at Ellis Island. Braun was the leader of a small Hungarian Republican political club in New York. A native-born Hungarian, he was a classic American archetype: the ethnic political entrepreneur. Braun leveraged his ethnicity for patronage jobs for himself and a few friends, in turn giving politicians real or imagined access to ethnic communities and their precious votes. Even a marginal figure like Braun could translate such access into power and prestige.
Williams informed Roosevelt he could appoint one of Braun’s men as a laborer at $2 a day, but that under civil service rules he could not appoint another Braun colleague to a $1,800-a-year job. Williams could get the man a lower-paying job if the other candidates failed their civil service test. Not forgetting about his own needs, Braun wanted a job as supervising inspector at Ellis Island, a job for which Williams believed Braun was not eligible. Despite this, Braun managed to get named a special immigrant inspector at Ellis Island, a move that Roosevelt would later come to regret.
The cases of Murray and Braun show that Roosevelt was never too much of a reformer to play the patronage game. Bending the law was not outside of his comfort zone. Years later, lawyer James Sheffield wrote to Williams:
The extraordinary part of a man like Roosevelt is that he finally comes to the conclusion that anything HE does is right, because HE does it. HE could beat the Civil Service rules on behalf of an utterly incompetent man and because his motives were to serve a friend, no one must criticize him for it. . . . It is strange how the country still believes in the Roosevelt brand of righteousness as against the evidence of his constant use of the very men and methods he denounces in others.
Such behavior was not lost on Terence Powderly, who noted that although McSweeney had been fired effective May 1, he was given an additional thirty days’ paid leave of absence, during which time Murray began work. Since the two men could not be paid for the same job, Powderly was ordered to name Murray