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conventions, of course Tammany always teamed up with some other city political groups. Woodrow Wilson used to damn them right and left. That was popular also in the South. They were against the “city slickers.” They ranted against the Tammany Hall Democrats, but they couldn't have gotten on without them. They were always after the Chicago organization and any other organization. The back-country vote required you to say that you were against Tammany Hall.

It was the same way in New York State. The New York State Democrats around Rochester and Buffalo didn't want to be Tammany Democrats. There were a good many fine old families up there in Rochester, Genesee and Wyoming valleys, and all around Albany too, who didn't belong to the O'Connell gang of Troy and were not mixed up with them, who were Democrata and wanted to be Democrats. They were Democrats philosophically and on a basis of the party platform and on the basis of free trade which was the standard policy of the Democratic party in national politics. They made it quite clear that they were against this misrule of the city by these “low-grade thugs.”

It was the ancient conflict in American life between the old families and the newcomers, really. These “thugs” were the Irish politicians who had just come up and who were presuming to say how things should be done. They had their