The “colonization” schemes, fraudulent registration and all that sort of thing which have attracted public attention lately, are quite startlin’, but they come under King Solomon’s head of “nothing new under the sun.” Ever since New York has been New York and has had a metropolitan status and influence all sorts of ways of gettin’ voters and votes have been started and tried with more or less–generally more–success.
One of the earliest schemes–and simplest and most successful at the time–was that which was called, and has since become known as, “pipe-layin’.” Everybody has a kind of vague idea, I find, that this term, “pipe-layin’,” means schemin’ and puttin’ up jobs, and all that, but very few people, I find, have really any accurate knowledge or recollection of the real origin and meanin’ of the term.
It started over a generation ago in the times when the elections in New York city were not, as now, all carried out through in a single day, between sunrise and sunset, and all the agony over at once; but were spun out through three long days and nights, keepin’ the city and the citizens in a stew and a fret, makin’ a sort of a three days’ fight of each election.
In those times old “Bob” Morris, as his friends styled him, who was afterward Judge of the Supreme Court, ran for a Mayor, and he entered into a sort of combination or alliance with another prominent New York politician, Sam Glentworth. Glentworth was a very popular man in New York political circles just then, and was very influential–especially in Custom House circles. He got into trouble with his party afterward, but seems to have been really a good fellow.
The two men–Morris and Glentworth–made a strong team, and, to use a modern phrase, set to work to “organize victory,” and the Croton water helped ‘em to “organize it.”
The city was layin’ the pipes for the Croton water then, and, just as now, the employin’ of men on the “public works” was made a question of politics. So the laborers, or pipe-layers, for the Croton aqueduct were given distinctly to understand that they must vote as they were bidden by the men who gave ‘em their job.
So far so good–or so bad–just as you may look at it; but the men who controlled the Croton aqueduct works went further yet. Under pretense of employin’ men at pipe-layin’ they got all sorts of men, from the adjacent towns and from Philadelphia, to come to New York, and to take up a temporary–very temporary–residence in it, just about election times, givin’ ‘em, as an ostensible employment, a job for helpin’ to lay the pipe for the aqueduct.
One excuse bein’ as good as another about election time, the pipe-layin’ racket worked well, and there must have been enough men engaged in pipe-layin’ in New York this election to have carried the aqueduct across the whole state of New York, let alone the city.
Several thousands of men were brought on from Philadelphia to lay pipe and vote in New York, and they were lodged or colonized wherever there was a possible chance to put a human bein’ in.
All the cheap boardin’-houses and lodgin’-houses and taverns in the down-town wards were filled, of course. All the hall-ways even were occupied at night by homeless “pipe-layers”–and at last the rush was so great that even the garbage and ash-barrels were utilized.
One night a policeman named Mike Bevans was walking along on his rounds when he heard distinctly a snore–a human and very healthy snore. He looked around him; the street was deserted, all the windows of the houses around were closed; still the snorin’ went on and got louder, healthier and more decidedly human. At last Bevans saw a barrel, and peeped into it. The snore was explained. In the barrel was rolled and twisted up a sleepin’, snorin’ man, who at once awakened, gave his name as Patrick Dogherty, and said he was employed in layin’ pipe for the water works.
That same night another policeman had stumbled across a barrel, and had kicked a man out of it, who also said he was employed in layin’ pipe for the water works. Some cases of this kind got into the papers, and they set the other side in the political fight to thinkin’ about spyin’ into this pipe-layin’ dodge, and before long the politicians began to drop on it, and a big fuss was made.
An alderman nicknamed “Julius Sneezer,” from bein’ bald-headed like Caesar, and fond of the pretty girls, like Caesar, and doin’ things in a lofty magnificent style, like Caesar, took the part of the pipe-layin’ politicians, and came to the front in their behalf, just like a prominent New York politician is doing for his repeaters to-day, but the public wouldn’t stand it. It carried its original projectors through the first time, by the skin of their teeth, and a very small majority, especially as there were three opposition tickets in the field: the Whigs, Native Americans (their first campaign) and the Independents. But once exposed, the pipe-layin’ scheme, though very simple and smart, did its projectors more harm than good, as all such schemes have done, from the first of ‘em up to date.
[Editor’s notes: James B. Glentworth was a city of New York Tobacco Inspector, and a minor Whig Party functionary. He was enlisted to help round up “pipe-layers” from Philadelphia to import to New York in the 1838 and 1839 elections, but had second thoughts and revealed the plan to the Recorder of the City of New York, Robert Morris, a Democrat. Morris, realizing that proof of this “pipe-layers” plot could damage the opposing Whigs, took possession of the documents that Glentworth provided as evidence, even though those documents had already been submitted as evidence for a Grand Jury to consider–Morris feared that they would somehow be suppressed. The fallout was that both Whigs and Democrats were embarrassed.]
