William "Boss" Tweed

o William Marcy Tweed ran New York but there were still big problems
New York had problems of air pollution and traffic congestion,
but that's stated down below
Boss Tweed was a problem maker because he didn't care about
New York's problems. He was a scoundrel that used his power to
get money for himself. This is graft, which is using your power to
get something for yourself.
o Whenever the state legislature would pass a bill that Tweed didn't like,
Tweed's governor would veto it.
Because of this, the newspapers started telling the truth about
Boss Tweed and got him arrested and charged with fraud
He died in jail at age 55
NYC Condition
o The conditions of New York at the time in the 19th century were
horrible. The two main problems were air pollution and traffic
congestion
There were 700,000 people living in New York, most in
Manhattan Island. You would have to wait an hour just to move a
few yards in the streets. To make it worse at night, there were no
street lights
There were also more than 100,000 horses dumping manure
each day, not to mention the trash people dumped on the
streets as well. Pigs also ran about the streets eating garbage.
Oil refineries and burning coal send black and noxious
fumes in the air
Flies and diseases were also problems at the time
Tammany Hall
o Was the most powerful urban political machine in the 19th century
while Boss Tweed was the "Boss".
o Began as a kind of benevolent club in 1789 and was designed to help
the poor and help immigrants get started in America, but they were
soon hated because for bribery, larceny, and making people pay for
what they didn't have to
o One of Tammany's early leaders, William Mooney, stole $4000 and
sparked Tammany Hall's road to corruption
Alfred Ely Beach
o Beach was a genius inventor, publisher, and patent lawyer that
couldn't take much more of Boss Tweed's scoundrels
o In the 19th century, Beach took over the now-famous magazine
Scientific American and the became the publisher of the important
newspaper the New York Sun
Called the typewriter a "literary piano"
o Beach came up with idea of putting a railroad train underground and
he called it a subway. After 58 nights of secret work (he didn't want
Boss Tweed to know about it), his subway made it's debut under
Broadway in February 1870.
What made it move was a giant fan that blew it 371 feet

This was a model for a grand subway he was to build that would
carry 20,000 passengers to Central Park at a mile a minute.
o Boss Tweed was outraged with the subway and would always get his
governor to veto any bills allowing Beach to build the grand subway
o When the bill finally got passed, he didn't have enough energy and
money to build and maintain the subway, so it was closed and sealed
But in 1904, New York finally built that grand subway
George Washington Plunkitt
o Plunkitt worked for Tammany Hall and became very rich by graft, but
he said that what he was doing was honest graft (there's no such thing
as "honest graft")
He says "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."
o If he knows a certain place is attracting a park to be built there, he
would buy that land and sell it to the person that wants to buy it for
more than the original price
Today this is illegal and not right to know inside information
about government business to make a profit. Not today, Plunkitt
Thomas Nast
o Nast was a cartoonist that drew funny cartoons that showed Tweed as
the wicked man that he was. Although he was threatened and bribed
by Boss Tweed to stop, Nast kept drawing and soon got him arrested
Thomas Edison
o Invented the light bulb