RICHARD CROKER

There’s a mayor and a council and judges—a hundred men to deal with … and you can’t do business with a lot of officials, who check and cross one another and who come and go …. A business man wants to do business with one man.

Politics are impossible without spoils.... You have to deal with men as they are ... you must bribe the masses with spoils.

Tammany Hall had taught me to be kind to those in trouble, to look after the sick in the tenements, to see that the widows had food and fuel and that the men had jobs.

An ingrate in politics is no good.

[New York reformers] tried to stand so straight that they fell over backwards.

[Immigrants] are alone, ignorant strangers, a prey to all manner of anarchical and wild notions. Except to their employer they have no value until they get a vote.

Some day an Italian and a Jew will be mayors of New York, and the Italian will come first.

All the time; same as you.

All the time; same as you.

An ingrate in politics is no good.

Politics are impossible without spoils.... You have to deal with men as they are ... you must bribe the masses with spoils.

[Immigrants] are alone, ignorant strangers, a prey to all manner of anarchical and wild notions. Except to their employer they have no value until they get a vote.

Tammany Hall had taught me to be kind to those in trouble, to look after the sick in the tenements, to see that the widows had food and fuel and that the men had jobs.

There’s a mayor and a council and judges—a hundred men to deal with … and you can’t do business with a lot of officials, who check and cross one another and who come and go …. A business man wants to do business with one man.

[New York reformers] tried to stand so straight that they fell over backwards.

Some day an Italian and a Jew will be mayors of New York, and the Italian will come first.