876 NEW YORK 



regard to subways by opposing the majority of the board of estimate and apportionment. 

 In the Cullen-Folcy (modified Gaynor) charter there was a provision empowering the mayor 

 to veto contracts let by this board. He insisted, it was generally believed, on being in actual 

 control of the police and enforced his theories of personal liberty and of non-interference on 

 the part of the police with gambling and other vice. Possibly as a result of the weakening 

 of the power of the police came a wave of lawlessness and licence which culminated in "gang" 

 terrorism on the lower east side of Manhattan and in the assassination of a gambler, Herman 

 Rosenthal, July 16, 1912, who was on the point of making disclosures to the county district 

 attorney of the relations between gamblers and the police. Charles Becker, a police 

 lieutenant, was accused of instigating the murder because Rosenthal's disclosures would cut 

 off the income he was deriving from protecting gamblers. He was tried and convicted 

 (October 24), and immediately afterwards four gangsters or "gunmen" were convicted as 

 the actual slayers of Rosenthal. A Citizens' Committee was organised to study police 

 problems and an enquiry was begun by a special committee of the board of aldermen (the 

 Curran Committee), which at first was openly opposed by Mayor Gaynor, who upheld the 

 administration of the police department. The city chamberlain Charles H. Hyde was 

 indicted by a grand jury on May I, 1911 for accepting a bribe from the Carnegie Trust 

 Company. He was stoutly defended by the mayor, who urged him not to resign, but he 

 withdrew on the ground that the charges made against him would embarrass the adminis- 

 tration. After a long delay, procured by the counsel for the defence, he was convicted 

 on November 29, 1912. This conviction and those in the Rosenthal case were largely 

 due to the efforts of the county district attorney, Charles Seymour Whitman (b. 1868), 

 assistant corporation counsel in 1901-02, city magistrate 1904-07, and judge of general 

 sessions court, 1907, who was mentioned as a candidate for governor in 1912 and for mayor 

 in 1913. In December 1912 disclosures of corruption in the police department were made 

 by owners of disorderly houses. In Queens borough, New York City, a former borough 

 president was indicted, November 21, 1911, for corrupt conspiracy to secure the nomination 

 of a candidate for the supreme court of the state; and on September 26 Governor Dix 

 removed President Gresser of the borough for incompetency. 



The Democratic senate through a committee in 1912 investigated the city government of 

 Albany, the capital of the state, controlled by a Republican machine organisation led by 

 William Barnes, Jr., the Republican state "boss," and showed the presence of corruption. 

 On March 29 the senate adopted the report of the committee and recommended the removal 

 of Mayor James B. McEwan. 



There were several serious labour disturbances in the state in 1911 and 1912. In New 

 York City drivers and helpers in the street-cleaning department struck on November 5, 

 IQII, asking for the abolition of night work and for increased wages, but they were all em- 

 ployed under civil service rules and were tried and dismissed. The strike was broken by 

 the end of the month. There was rioting on November 12. A coastwise shipping strike 

 in New York City lasted from June 28 to the end of July 1912. This strike and that of New 

 York City hotel waiters (May 31 to June 25) were marked by violence. Other strikes in 

 New York City were those of tailors (September 14-16, 191 1), of furriers (June 2O-September 

 8, 1912) and of theatre musicians (July ig-August 4); the latter was broken by the use in 

 many theatres of mechanical pianos, etc. At the very close of 1912 a garment workers' 

 strike began. At the New York cotton mills near Utica there was a strike from March 28 

 to April 23, 1912; the militia were called out early in April to check disorder and the strikers 

 went back to work having gained nothing. A strike at a knitting mill in Little Falls begin- 

 ning October 23, 1912 was led by the Industrial Workers of the World; it was marked by 

 rioting and by the attempt of the police to prevent Socialists from speaking in the streets; 

 Mayor Lunn of Schenectady was arrested (October 15 and 17) for addressing the strikers 

 and was sentenced to fine or imprisonment. On December 28, 1912, there were two riots. 

 Two days before this the State Department of Labor had begun an investigation of the 

 strike. The strike ended early in January 1913. 



In New York City the completion of the Pennsylvania terminal (31-33 sts.; 7th and 8th 

 Aves.) in 1911 and the opening in 1912 of part of the new Grand Central Station (42d st. 

 and Park Ave.) were events of architectural and economic importance. The new city 

 Public Library (Fifth Ave.; 40-42 sts.) was opened in May 1911 and the great Municipal 

 Office building (probably the largest municipal building in the world) immediately E. of City 

 Hall park was nearing completion in 1912. New hotels completed in 1911-12 were the Rit?- 

 C'arlton (Madison Ave. and 46 st.) the Vanderbilt (34 st. and Park Ave.) and the McAlpin 

 (Broadway and 34 st.). The two last call attention to the development of the city in the 

 district near the Pennsylvania terminal. ^ The Woolworth Building, 760 ft. high, was fin- 

 ished in 1912. A city plan association in Albany was organised in 1911 and by an or- 

 dinance of January 15, 1912 it employed as expert Arnold W. Brunner of New York City. 



Bibliography. Session Laws (5 vols., 1911-12); Legislative Manual, 1912; S. D. Brum- 

 mer, Political History of New York State During the Period of the Civil War (New York, 

 1911); S. Jenkins, The Greatest Street in the World (1911); Z. R. Brockway, Fifty Years of 

 Prison Service (1912); E. E. Pratt, Industrial Causes of Congestion of Population in New 

 York City (1911); A. Chester, Legal and Judicial History of New York State (3 vols., 1911). 



