It was so in Tim Sullivan’s district. As the Jews swarmed in, the Irish and Germans fled north. Sullivan stood his ground. It was his old territory, he would not leave it, nor remove his family. He cultivated the new arrivals and made a partnership with the ex-kosher chicken butcher, Martin Engel.
The Jews lived under Sullivan’s rule for a time, awaiting the moment when they should know what to do for themselves. The Yiddish flood increased until the district was crowded, and then the Jews demanded representation for themselves. With a premonition that a new force had arisen, Tim Sullivan played safe and helped the Jews to get recognition—Martin Engel was made leader of the old Eighth. But Sullivan had previously gone to Tammany—or to what remained of the old non-Jewish Tammany—and exacted an understanding that his rule should be left unchanged below Fourteenth street.
From that time forward, in spite of the understanding, Sullivan’s power began