It was too late, however, to avoid bloodshed. The Hibernians, encouraged by Mayor Hall's attitude, declared for open warfare if the Orangemen paraded, with general destruction to Protestant sympathizers, adding a special threat against the house of Harper Brothers for its publication of the cartoons of Nast. The Governor's belated order had no effect. The warning and admonition of priest and bishop went unheeded. The spirit of sixty-three was abroad. The mob was ripe for bloodshed, and the burning and sacking of stores.

It proved a brief and sanguinary episode. On Eighth Avenue, from Twenty-third to Twenty-ninth Streets, the assault on the paraders took place. The military, which had been called out to escort the Orangemen, did not immediately open fire, and the rioters now boldly appeared from all sides discharging fire-arms and missiles of every sort at the procession. A woman who waved a handkerchief to the Orangemen was instantly killed. A little girl by her side shared the same fate. Then a private was shot down, and then, a moment later, the military opened fire on the mob.

The crowd of ruffians who had made up their minds that the soldiers would not shoot, broke wildly and fled, leaving almost a hundred dead and wounded behind. The riot was over. The prompt and severe military punishment had avoided a repetition of the Draft Riot scenes of 1863. Nast, marching with his regiment, had seen the fulfilment of a prophecy in "Shadows of Coming Events," published more than a year before.

A letter to Nast from General Alfred Pleasanton concerning the riot seems interesting in the view it gives us of this gallant officer's theory of handling mobs.

My Dear Nast:

Washington, July 16, 1871.

Many thanks for your kind remembrance in Harper of last week. I fear you have given me an impossible task-to teach Tammany arithmetic. Subtracting and dividing are the only

rules they practise, and the decimal point they disregard altogether.*

That was a good lesson you gave them on the 12th, but it was only a beginning. You handled them with gloves on. Fighting a mob requires different tactics from those used in fighting in the field.

In street fighting, every house from which a shot is fired should be gutted, and no one in the house should escape. Had the troops taken possession of the houses from which shots were fired on the 12th and shot every man in them, you would have struck terror into the mob and they would have dispersed disheartened.

The next time they will have more experienced leaders and will not commit the same mistakes. Remember what I tell you -you must terrorize a mob to subdue it-simply killing them does not answer the purpose. The survivors only run away to return with more experience. This thing will be repeated some day, when I hope to see it properly handled. I will tell you how when we meet. Accept my congratulations at your going through it safe and sound, and believe me,

Your sincere friend,

A. Pleasanton.

The riot was a hard blow to the Ring. The public in general denounced Hall and his associates, according them full blame for the city's disgrace and sorrow. Also, the Times each day boldly emblazoned in its edito

rial page in big black figures the added proofs of the betrayal of public trust. Men and papers who had stood by the municipal government showed signs of desertion. There was wavering in the ranks. At any moment it might become a stampede. The tenure of Fraud had become a precarious thing.

* See page 169, top of col. four.

Boss TWEED. "As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it? say?"

CHAPTER XXI

THE RING'S BATTLE FOR LIFE

The excitement over the armory exposures was as nothing in comparison with the upheaval that took place on publication of the Copeland transcript of the Controller's accounts, the first of which appeared as a special sheet in the Times of July 22, 1871.

These figures, carefully tabulated and printed in full clear type, showed at a glance where millions upon millions of dollars had been paid from the public treasury, with no return to the city, worth counting.

Many of the great sums had been charged as repairs or furnishings for the new court-house, and most of them had been distributed through such "contractors" as J. H. Ingersoll & Company, Andrew J. Garvey, Keyser & Company and others, who had" arranged "whatever small part was really due for goods and labor, and deposited the huge balance to the credit of the various members and associates of the Ring.

The new court-house was still far from complete, and miserably furnished, yet it had already resulted in the neat outlay of $11,000,000, when the most liberal estimate placed its value, finished and luxuriously furnished, at less than three millions.

A few items will be sufficient to show the scale upon which the Ring had conducted its financial policy:

Forty old chairs and three tables had a record value of $179,729.60.

A charge for repairing fixtures, through J. H. Keyser & Company, was $1,149,874.50.

Thermometers, $7,500.

Another charge for furniture, through Ingersoll & Company, $240,564.63.

City and County Advertising-paid to the newspapers of New York City, $2,703,308.48-a large proportion of this vast sum having been paid in the early months of 1871.*

A single item of stationery was set down at $186,495.61. What, in heaven's name, could the .61 have paid for with stationery bought at Ring rates? Possibly it represented the actual cost of the entire outlay.

Then there were carpets, shades and curtains, also supplied by that marvellous firm, Ingersoll & Company, at the fairly comfortable figure of $675,534.44. Why always these odd cents? It must have been worrisome to make change in those days of opulence. But one cannot help admiring the two liverymen who in a few brief days earned nearly fifty thousand dollars by supplying the aldermen with carriages, mostly for funerals. That must have been a busy season for aldermen, keeping up with all those obsequies. Nor must we overlook one G. S. Miller, a carpenter who was set down as having received $360,747.61 (another .61-fatal sum) for one month's work. "Is not," asks the Times," this Miller the luckiest carpenter alive?"

But Garvey, Andrew J. Garvey, the plasterer! Generations of plasterers yet unborn will take off their hats to his memory! $2,870,464.06 had he earned at his humble trade in the brief

The entire amount disbursed by the Ring during a period of about thirty months for public advertising and printing was $7,168,212.23-the greater part of which was paid to the New York Printing Company, owned by the Ring.

period of nine months. Fifty thousand dollars a day was his record for an entire month! Surely never was a month so well plastered as that long-ago June! "As G. S. Miller is the luckiest carpenter alive," comments the Times," so is Andrew J. Garvey the Prince of Plasterers. His good fortune surpasses anything recorded in the Arabian Nights. A plasterer who can earn $138,187 in two days (December 20 and 21), and that in the depths of winter, need never be poor. With a total of $2,870,464.06 for the job, he could afford to donate the .06 to charity."

It is unnecessary to go further into the details of this monster and monstrous fraud, $5,663,246.83 of which had been paid through the single "firm" of Ingersoll & Company. An illustrated pamphlet poem, "The House That Tweed Built," distributed by the American News Company, contained this stanza, which we may add as a final touch:

"This is Boss Tweed

::

Nast's man with the Brains.

The Tammany Atlas who all sustains,

(A Tammany Sampson, perhaps, for his pains)
Who rules the city where Oakey reigns,
The master of Woodward and Ingersoll,
And all the gang of the city roll,
And formerly lord of Slippery Dick'
Who Controlled the plastering laid on so thick,
By the controller's plasterer, Garvey by name,
The Garvey whose fame is the little Game
Of laying on plaster and knowing the trick
Of charging as if he himself were a brick
Of the well-plastered house that TWEED built."

As heretofore stated, during thirty months of Ring rule, thirty millions of dollars had been stolen out of hand. The city debt had increased more than fifty millions and was doubling every two years. No wonder the shores of Long Island Sound were lined with the elegant homes of the city contractors and financiers. Matthew J. O'Rourke, who since that time has made a