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of his Farewell Address to deploring its ex­istence.

To-day the Society of Tammany, or its twin, Tammany Hall, or just plain Tammany, or "the organization with a history of 139 years of similar denunciation and much more vigorous attack; of investigation and inquiry; of scandal and graft and exposure-even of temporary set-back-still is spoken of authoritatively as the most powerful po­litical institution in America. Certainly it is the oldest, strongest and best organized; assuredly it is the most notorious.

The Tammany Society owes its origin to a worthy enough conception. Fundamentally its or­ganization was a protest against class distinction in the new republic; a move for preservation of those rights of common freedom for which the Revolu­tion had been fought but which, in those early post­war days, with the infant government controlled by wealth and aristocracy, seemed far from perma­nent realization. Money and family were bent on claiming a place not only in the social but in the political life of the United States of America which they were equally determined to deny to poverty and lowly birth.

Aristocratic associations, closely class-restricted, were numerous, and best known of them was the Society of the Cincinnati. It was as a gesture aimed

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