A few years ago there was a bitter contest for the Tammany leadership of the Ninth District between John C.Sheehan and Frank J.Goodwin.Both had had long experience in Tammany politics and both understood every move of the game.
Every morning their agents went to their respective headquarters before seven o'clock and read through the death notices in all the morning papers.

If they found that anybody in the district had died, they rushed to the homes of their principals with the information and then there was a race to the house of the deceased to offer condolences, and, if the family were poor, something more substantial.
On the day of the funeral there was another contest.

Each faction tried to surpass the other in the number and appearance of the carriages it sent to the funeral, and more than once they almost came to blows at the church or in the cemetery.
On one occasion the Goodwinites played a trick on their adversaries which has since been imitated in other districts.

A well-known liquor dealer who had a considerable following died, and both Sheehan and Goodwin were eager to become his political heir by making a big showing at the funeral.
Goodwin managed to catch the enemy napping.

He went to all the livery stables in the district, hired all the carriages for the day, and gave orders to two hundred of his men to be on hand as mourners.
Sheehan had never had any trouble about getting all the carriages that he wanted, so he let the matter go until the night before the funeral.
Then he found that he could not hire a carriage in the district.
He called his district committee together in a hurry and explained the situation to them.