Among these lesser captains I soon struck up a friendship with Joe Murray, a friendship which is as strong now as it was thirty-three years ago.  He had been born in Ireland, but brought to New York by his parents when he was three or four years old, and, as he expressed it, “raised as a barefooted boy on First Avenue.”  When not eighteen he had enlisted in the Army of the Potomac and taken part in the campaign that closed the Civil War.  Then he came back to First Avenue, and, being a fearless, powerful, energetic young fellow, careless and reckless, speedily grew to some prominence as leader of a gang.  In that district, and at that time, politics was a rough business, and Tammany Hall held unquestioned sway.  The district was overwhelmingly Democratic, and Joe and his friends were Democrats who on election day performed the usual gang work for the local Democratic leader, whose business it was to favor and reward them in return.  This same local leader, like many other greater leaders, became puffed up by prosperity, and forgot the instruments through which he had achieved prosperity.  After one election he showed a callous indifference to the hard work of the gang and complete disregard of his before-election promises.  He counted upon the resentment wearing itself out, as usual, in threats and bluster.

But Joe Murray was not a man who forgot.  He explained to his gang his purposes and the necessity of being quiet.  Accordingly they waited for their revenge until the next election day.  They then, as Joe expressed it, decided “to vote furdest away from the leader”—­I am using the language of Joe’s youth—­and the best way to do this was to vote the Republican ticket.  In those days each party had a booth near the polling-place in each election district, where the party representative dispensed the party ballots.  This had been a district in which, as a rule, very early in the day the Republican election leader had his hat knocked over his eyes and his booth kicked over and his ballots scattered; and then the size of the Democratic majority depended on an elastic appreciation of exactly how much was demanded from headquarters.  But on this day things went differently.  The gang, with a Roman sense of duty, took an active interest in seeing that the Republican was given his full rights.  Moreover, they made the most energetic reprisals on their opponents, and as they were distinctly the tough and fighting element, justice came to her own with a whoop.  Would-be repeaters were thrown out on their heads.  Every person who could be cajoled or, I fear, intimidated, was given the Republican ticket, and the upshot was that at the end of the day a district which had never hitherto polled more than two or three per cent of its vote Republican broke about even between the two parties.