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“A Thanksgiving Croker”
Wasn't It a Dainty Dish to Set Before the Mayor!
Boss Waiter, J. K. "Take him in sections, yer Honor, if yer can't swallow him at one dose."
In
order to prevent a split in New York City’s Democratic Party in 1882,
Tammany Hall boss
John Kelly
secured the mayoral nomination
for a member of the anti-Tammany Democrats, Franklin Edson, a
businessman who had never held public office.
After winning the election, Mayor Edson initially placed Tammany
men in patronage positions. However,
he increasingly exhibited his independence of the Democratic machine and
within a few months was endorsing civil service reform.
The featured cartoon pictures Boss Kelly as a waiter serving
Thanksgiving Day turkey—in the guise of Tammany men applying for
patronage jobs—to a displeased Mayor Edson.
Although Edson continued his strong support for civil service
reform, Kelly did pressure the mayor into appointing
Richard Croker, the future boss of Tammany Hall, as fire commissioner.
Franklin Edson was born in
Chester, Vermont, on April 5, 1832.
As a youth, he worked on a farm during the summers and studied
during the winter, eventually becoming a schoolteacher.
When 20 years old, he went to work in his brother’s whiskey
distillery in Albany, New York, and then became trustee of his
brother’s estate. (The
“Tammany Sauce” alcohol bottle in the cartoon is probably intended
as a negative comment on the Democratic machine, not on Edson’s past
association with a distillery.) In
1859, he founded a grain and produce business called Edson, Orr, &
Chamberlain, and his business skills led to the accumulation of
considerable wealth during the Civil War years.
In 1866, he moved the firm to New York City, and the next year
assumed sole proprietorship under its new name of Franklin Edson &
Co. He served as president
of the New York Produce Exchange, the city’s commodities market, in
1866, 1873, and 1874, during which he imposed regulations for grading
the value of the grains.
Within two weeks after Edson
became mayor in January 1883, Harper’s Weekly complained that
his appointments revealed, “that the Mayor had shown himself to be the
mere agent of those who bargained for his nomination.”
That the new mayor was only a tool of John Kelly and Tammany Hall
was “a foregone conclusion,” the journal argued, given Edson’s
political inexperience and the current charter under which the city
government operated, which gave little independent authority to the
mayor.
However, in its March 3 issue, Harper’s
Weekly was pleasantly surprised to report that Mayor Edson had
proposed a new charter for the city government that was “the best
charter which has been suggested for the actual situation in the
city.” It earned the
paper’s praise by defining and concentrating power in the officer of
the mayor, allowing him to appoint department heads and remove them
under certain circumstances. In
May, Edson further pleased the national newspaper by urging that
construction of the
Croton Aqueduct
not degenerate into a
pork-barrel project. A
couple of weeks later, the publication reported that Edson, “as an
intelligent and self-respecting man,” had broken with Tammany Hall, as
had the Democratic governor,
Grover Cleveland.
In September, Harper’s
Weekly was heartened by Mayor Edson’s endorsement of civil service
reform in city government. In
the December 1 issue, in which the featured cartoon appeared, the Mayor
is quoted praising the application of the merit rules of civil service
reform to the New York State government, and promising to adapt the
reform rules to the city’s government in the new year.
In September 1884, the journal congratulated Edson on his
appointment of talented reformers to the city’s civil service
commission. “The cordial
cooperation of Mayor Edson in this good work, like that of Governor
Cleveland, has been of signal service to a reform which is absolutely
non-partisan, and which has been effectively supported by men of all
parties.”
Well, not by everyone.
Tammany Hall, of course, was furious over Edson’s support of
reforms that threatened to undermine its power.
The divisions in New York City’s Democratic Party, which Kelly
had temporarily united in 1882, severed completely in 1884.
William R. Grace, a former Democratic mayor, was elected mayor as
an independent backed by anti-Tammany Hall Democrats, defeating the
Tammany Hall and Republican candidates.
Edson thereafter retired from politics, returning to business and
charitable pursuits. He
died on September 24, 1904, in New York City.
Robert C. Kennedy
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