Read The Epic of New York City Online
Authors: Edward Robb Ellis
It is difficult to explain Gaynor's behavior. Maybe he really didn't want to become President. Perhaps he indeed wanted this exalted office but felt he couldn't get it. There is even the possibility that Gaynor forsook a try for the Presidency to avenge himself upon William Randolph Hearst. Gaynor and Hearst always fought bitterly. The Hearst papers had published a story saying that Gaynor was going to Texas to address the legislature. Maybe Gaynor chose this way of making a liar out of Hearst. In any event, Colonel House became disenchanted with the mayor, saying, “I wiped Gaynor from my political slate, for I saw he was impossible.” Like Diogenes, lantern hunting for a man he could admire, Colonel House continued his search.
Meantime, an attempt was made to assassinate Mayor Gaynor. After having worked for seven months on municipal affairs, Gaynor decided to vacation in Europe. On August 9, 1910, accompanied by his son Rufus, he boarded the S.S.
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse
at Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson from Manhattan. A natty dresser, his outfit topped with a black derby, the mayor stood on deck, chatting with friends, three city commissioners, his corporation counsel, and his male secretary. A New York
World
photographer, William Warnecke, raised his camera to take a picture of the group. At that moment an untidy little man stepped up behind the mayor. This intruder turned out to be James J. Gallagher, who had been fired from his job in the city docks department and who blamed the mayor for his trouble. Gallagher pressed a gun to the back of
Gaynor's neck. He pulled the trigger. The bullet entered behind the mayor's right ear. Gaynor later wrote to his sister:
My next consciousness was of a terrible metallic roar in my head. It filled my head, which seemed as though it would burst open. It swelled to the highest pitch, and then fell, and then rose again, and so alternated until it subsided into a continuous buzz. It was sickening, but my stomach did not give way. I was meanwhile entirely sightless. I do not think I fell, for when I became conscious I was on my feet. I suppose they saved me from falling, and they were supporting me. My sight gradually returned, so that after a while I could see the deck and the outlines of the crowd around me. I became conscious that I was choking. Blood was coming from my mouth and nose and I tried all I could to swallow it so those around me would not see it. But I found I could not swallow and then knew my throat was hurt. It seemed as though it were dislocated. I struggled to breathe through my mouth, but could not, and thought I was dying of strangulation. I kept thinking all the time the best thing to do. I was not a bit afraid to die if that was God's will of me. I said to myself just as well now as a few years from now. No one who contemplates the immensity of Almighty God, and of His universe and His works, and realizes what an atom he is in it all, can fear to die in this flesh, yea, even though it were true that he is dissolved forever into the infinity of matter and mind from which he came. In some way I happened to close my mouth tight and found I breathed perfectly through my nose. I then believed I could keep from smothering. But I kept choking and my mouth kept opening to cast out the blood. But much of it went down into my stomach.
The
World
photographer, who clicked his camera two or three seconds after the would-be assassin fired, got one of the most notable pictures in journalistic history. Blood gushed down the mayor's beard. More blood mottled his neck and dripped onto the front of his neat suit. At the time the
World
's city editor was Charles E. Chapin, a brilliant but cynical man, who later murdered his own wife. When Warnecke's print was developed in the
World
office, Chapin grabbed it and exulted: “What a wonderful thing! Look! Blood all over himâand exclusive, too!”
Aboard the liner at Hoboken, “Big Bill” Edwards, the New York street-cleaning commissioner and a former Princeton football player, grabbed Gallagher and held him until the police arrived. The mayor was urged to lie down on the deck but refused. He couldn't bear to
have people see him in this horrible condition. He was led to his stateroom and lifted into bed. Because he was choking, they had to prop him up. The ship's doctor washed Gaynor's face and beard and bandaged his wound. An ambulance came to take the mayor to St. Mary's Hospital in Hoboken. He remained there for about three weeks.
When Mayor Gaynor returned to City Hall on October 3, a crowd of 10,000 people gathered to cheer him. Although the mayor looked haggard, he was as crusty as ever. Hearing an officious policeman bellowing at people around his car, Gaynor poked his head out a window and snapped, “None of that, now! None of that!” The next day the mayor resumed his habit of walking from his Brooklyn home across the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall and then back again in the evening. But surgeons had been unable to extract the bullet from his throat, and he was a sick man the rest of his life. When he didn't want to talk about an unpleasant subject, Gaynor would croak, “Sorry, can't talk today. This fish hook in my throat is bothering me.” His temper, always brittle, now shattered at the slightest touch.
Former Mayor George B. McClellan wrote in his memoirs:
I doubt if Gaynor was ever quite normal, certainly not after he was shot at the base of his brain by a lunatic. I was told by an employee of the Harriman Night and Day Bank that about two o'clock one morning a bearded face appeared at his window, and the owner asked him to cash a check for ten dollars. The employee recognized the mayor and cashed the check. Whereupon the mayor, evidently intending to return the courtesy, said “Wouldn't you like to feel the bullet in my throat? If you will stick your finger into my mouth you will be able to do so.” He seemed rather hurt when my informant politely declined to accept his offer. I was told that during the last months of his life Gaynor was in the habit of appearing at the City Hall at all hours of the night, routing out the night watchman, and sitting for hours in his office with his eyes fixed on vacancy.
*
The mayor quarreled with nearly everyone. When he couldn't force his iron-willed police commissioner to do his bidding, Gaynor replaced him with Rhinelander Waldo. A hero of the Spanish-American War and a socialite with high ideals, Waldo was so naïve that veteran
policemen regarded him as a glorified Boy Scout. Unable to believe that any cop could be corrupt, Waldo was slow in catching onto the nefarious activities of Police Lieutenant Charles Becker. This officer commanded the so-called Strong Arm Squad, charged with suppressing gambling and vice. Becker was as handsome as he was venal. On the sly he became a partner of Herman Rosenthal, an influential underworld figure. After opening one gambling joint after another, only to have them raided by the police, Rosenthal decided to pay protection money by tying in with Lieutenant Becker.
This partnership worked well for a while, but soon Mayor Gaynor and Commissioner Waldo received anonymous complaints about Becker's link with the underworld. The police commissioner habitually referred complaints about cops to the police themselves for investigation. Naturally, they would report that there was nothing to the accusations. Becker's connections with Rosenthal and other crooks were so profitable that he banked about $100,000, although his salary was a mere $2,250. Even Waldo finally became suspicious and ordered Becker to crack down on gambling. To protect himself and to allay suspicion by doing as ordered, Becker made the gesture of raiding one of Rosenthal's gambling dens. Along with two other men, he arrested Rosenthal's nephew. When Rosenthal heard the news, he flushed with anger and asked Becker what the hell he thought he was doing. Becker tried to soothe his furious partner by saying that it was a token raid and by assuring him that his nephew would be released.
The grand jury took the charges seriously, however, and indicted Rosenthal's nephew and his companions. Rosenthal felt that he had been doublecrossed. Eager for revenge, he went to District Attorney Charles Whitman and tried to swear out a citizen's complaint against Becker. The D.A. told the gambler that he didn't have enough evidence to indict the police lieutenant. Given the brush-off by Whitman, Rosenthal told his story all over again to the New York
World,
then in the midst of a gambling exposé. He was taken seriously by Herbert Bayard Swope, one of the
World
's top reporters. The newspaper published articles that goaded the district attorney into action, and finally Whitman summoned Rosenthal to his office. They agreed that Rosenthal would testify before the grand jury on July 16, 1912.
Becker realized that his vice empire would topple the moment Rosenthal took the witness stand. The officer got in touch with his bagman, a Polish immigrant, named Jacob Rosenschweig, but known
as Billiard Ball Jack Rose because he didn't have a hair on his body. Becker ordered Rose to hire some gunmen for $1,000 and have Rosenthal murdered. The bagman had no stomach for this kind of crime, but under pressure from Becker he hired four thugs: Frank Muller, alias Whitey Lewis; Harry Horowitz, alias Gyp the Blood; Louis Rosenberg, alias Leftie Louie; and Frank Ciroficci, alias Dago Frank.
At 2
A.M
. on the day Rosenthal was to appear before the grand jury, these hoodlums shot him down on the sidewalk in front of the Metropole Hotel on West Forty-third Street just east of Broadway. Although 7 policemen were within 500 feet of the spot, one of them only 50 feet away, the gunmen escaped in a gray sedan.
Well aware of the enmity between Rosenthal and Lieutenant Becker, other police tried to cover up the crime so that it couldn't be traced to their fellow officer. However, Swope got District Attorney Whitman out of bed within an hour of the shooting, and Whitman launched a thorough investigation of the case. Billiard Ball Jack Rose later swore that he had asked Becker if Becker had seen the corpse. Rose quoted Becker as replying, “Sure! I went to the back room and had a look at him. It was a pleasing sight to me to look at the Jew there. If Whitman had not been there I would have cut his tongue out and hung it somewhere as a warning to other squealers.”
When Whitman promised Rose immunity from prosecution, the bagman confessed full details of the crime. The case was the talk of the town. Mayor Gaynor tried to shrug it off by saying:
The case of Becker did not surprise me at all. Although we had done much to remove grafting and make it impossible in the Police Department, I knew very well that it would in all probability crop out in more places than one. The instance which has cropped out has enabled the degenerate press to characterize the whole force as a band of grafters. But I am certain that the intelligent community still have in mind, and have had in mind all along, what we have done in the way of reform in the Police Department.
Despite the mayor's defiant words, New Yorkers grumbled about this latest evidence of police corruption. The four gunmen and Lieutenant Becker were electrocuted at Sing Sing. The Rosenthal case drove gamblers out of town, made Swope's reputation as a crusading newspaperman, and elevated Whitman to the office of governor of New York State.
While still holding office, Mayor Gaynor died in 1913 aboard a
ship a few miles off Liverpool, England. The New York
Sun,
once bitterly hostile toward Gaynor, now mourned that “first and foremost, he was, as no other Mayor ever was, the people's champion, the actual father of the city.” The New York
Times
described Gaynor's funeral as the greatest public demonstration since Lincoln's death; this seems highly unlikely.
Gaynor was gone, but Colonel Edward House had found his heroâWoodrow Wilson. After the colonel's disenchantment with Gaynor the Texas politician had considered and rejected others he might promote for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Wilson, like Gaynor, had been elected to office with the help of political bosses and had then declared himself free of them. Now he was governor of New Jersey. Wilson had trimmed his sails in another way, too, by switching from being a conservative before his election to being a progressive after taking the oath of office. As Wilson won national attention by denouncing boss rule and the vested interests, Colonel House began to study his personality and career.
In August, 1911, some prominent Texans launched a Wilson for President campaign. William Jennings Bryan still dominated the national Democratic organization despite his three defeats as a Presidential candidate. Now Bryan, the progressive, told friends that Governor Wilson of New Jersey was making speeches that sounded mighty progressive. Colonel House himself began to believe that Wilson might be just the man the Democrats needed for the 1912 campaign.
Wilson spoke at the Dallas Fair, but Colonel House was in New York at the time and did not hear him. It was just as well. A master strategist, who thought through every tactic, House had not cared to meet Wilson for the first time amid the tumult of a Dallas reception. He preferred a quiet private meeting. Wilson, for his part, had begun to hear about Colonel House, who was represented as a man of great political influence. Furthermore, House was close to Bryan, and Wilson wanted Bryan's approval before announcing for the Democratic nomination. So William F. McCombs, general manager of the Wilson for President movement, asked Colonel House to invite the New Jersey governor to New York to confer with him.
At four o'clock on Friday afternoon, November 24, 1911, Wilson and House met alone in the swanky Gotham Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street. Wilson was fifty-five years old, and House was fifty-three. New Jersey's governor had broad shoulders and a narrow
waist, stood half a head taller than Colonel House, wore pince-nez that made his long face look even longer, and had a pointed chin. Despite the flinty features of his clean-shaven face, Wilson broke into a crisp smile when he chose to turn on the charm. His laugh revealed horsy teeth. Virginia-born Wilson spoke in a mellow tenor voice with overtones of a Southern drawl. Colonel House was a meek-looking fellow with sloping shoulders, a receding chin, big ears, and a mustache. His catlike eyes peered in cool calculation over high Mongolian cheekbones. He spoke slowly and huskily. Wilson, when alone with his family, was given to high jinks and did an amusing imitation of a drunk. Colonel House, even in private, was far more reserved than Wilson, indulging only in a thin smile or, at most, a half chuckle.