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To their central plank of opposition to bossism, Citizens Union leaders, aware of the need for outreach, held out an olive branch to respectable laborers (a group its City Club predecessors had ignored in 1894) by gingerly supporting an eight-hour law for city workers and for employees in private businesses with city contracts. Low was chosen in part for his work with the Church Association for the Advancement of the Interests of Labor—he had won plaudits as a labor mediator—and his chairmanship of the board of trustees of the University Settlement Society, which had developed close connections with East Side labor organizations.

The Citizens Union’s chances were given an unexpected lift by the startling return to politics of Henry George. Nominated by a coalition of dissident Democrats, union leaders, single taxers, and social reformers, the old warrior, despite a recent heart attack, launched a wrathful campaign, promising to throw Croker in jail if he won. Low’s backers were thrilled, thinking the maverick effort might siphon off Tammany support; George himself admitted he would be satisfied if he threw the election to Low.

This possibility was torpedoed by George’s death. With less than a week to go in the campaign, the fragile reformer had maintained a strenuous pace. One night he spoke four times; the next day he succumbed to a stroke. One hundred thousand filed past his bier in Grand Central Palace, while an equal number thronged outside. The World described the massive crowds as comparable only to those for Lincoln. Father McGlynn gave the eulogy, to tumultuous applause, and then a catafalque drawn by sixteen blackdraped horses drew the coffin down Madison Avenue to City Hall, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and on to burial in Green-Wood Cemetery. Over him would be erected, by popular subscription, a granite monument engraved with a quote from Progress and Pover-ty. George’s son picked up his father’s fallen banner, but he lacked dynamism and would garner few votes.

Labor had nowhere to turn but to Tammany, and Boss Croker made it easy for them. He nudged the Democratic Party slightly to the left, pledging not to use the police or courts against strikers, agreeing to grant the eight-hour day to city workers, promising fair treatment for municipal employees (in lieu of Waring’s paternalism), and guaranteeing opportunities for local boys to work their way up in city jobs (unlike TR’s reliance on out-of-towners). Croker also affirmed the Democrats’ long-standing commitment to moral laissez-faire and proclaimed the common people’s ability to run New York City without the aid of the “better element.”

As its candidate, Tammany chose Robert A. Van Wyck, an obscure municipal court judge. With no independent base, no money, no personal pizazz, indeed nothing much more going for him than a venerable city name, Van Wyck was a perfect Croker creature. District leaders rallied their troops behind him at a rousing ratification meeting to fireworks and the strains of a band booming out “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-Night.”

Tammany swept Van Wyck into office, outpolling the other three candidates combined. Still, Low and the Citizens Union did creditably well on the Upper East and West sides and in Central Harlem. Low remained hopeful about the future. “If 10 righteous men could save Sodom,” he argued, the thousands in his corner “will yet bring about good government in the City of New York.” For now, however, the day belonged, as it had back in 1886, to Tammany Hall, and its partisans marched through the streets joyously chanting, “Well, well, well, Reform has gone to Hell!”

68

Splendid Little War

“This country needs a war,” proclaimed Theodore Roosevelt in 1895 as, against a background of unremitting depression, he and others among the New York elite began clamoring for imperial expansion. Though war was touted as a way to end unemployment, it was emphasized even more as a way to scour away the barnacles of corruption and money-grubbing that had