Tammany was dismayed at the new party’s strength, and determined to destroy it by championing one of the reform measures demanded. In January, 1830, a bill for the better security of mechanics and other laborers of New York City was introduced by Silas M. Stillwell. The Tammany men immediately took it up as if it were their own, urged its passage and secured the credit of its adoption, when in April, much emasculated, it became a law. It required, under penalties, the owner of a building to retain from the contractor the amount due to the mechanics employed thereon. By exploiting this performance to the utmost, Tammany succeeded in making some inroads on the Workingmen’s party. The organization leaders had recognized that it was time they did something for the laboring classes. They were fast losing caste with even independent Democrats of means, because of their subservience to the aristocracy and of the common knowledge of the illegitimate ways in which they were amassing wealth.
One result of the Workingmen’s movement was the failure of the Wigwam to secure a majority in the Common Council. This seemed to frustrate the design to reelect, as Mayor, Walter Bowne (Grand Sachem in 1820 and 1831). Fourteen Aldermen and Assistants were opposed to Bowne, and thirteen favored him. There was but one expedient calculated to reelect him, and to this Tammany Hall resorted. Bowne, as presiding officer of the Council, held that the constitution permitted him to vote for the office of Mayor. “I will persist in this opinion even though the board decide against me,” he said. To prevent a vote being taken, seven of Bowne’s opponents withdrew on December 28, 1829. They went back on January 6, 1830, when Tammany managed to reelect Bowne by one vote. How this vote was obtained was a mystery. Fourteen members declared under oath that they had voted for Thomas R. Smith, Bowne’s opponent.[5] Charges of bribery were made, and an investigating committee was appointed on January 11; but as this committee was composed of Bowne’s own partizans, it announced its inability to find proofs. Meanwhile the general committee[6] had issued a loftily worded manifesto saying that it (the committee) was established and was maintained to watch over the political interests of the Democratic-Republicans of the city and “to expose and repel the insidious and open machinations of their enemies,” that it could not discover anything wrong in the conduct of the Chief Magistrate of the city, and that it “repelled the accusations of his enemies.”