[ 244 ] ROBERT MUCCIGROSSO that such reform stalwarts as John Jay Chapman, William Jay Schief- felin, and Edmond Kelly joined the Club only after 1886.18 Despite the organizational revisions, much of the time and effort expended by the reformers was in vain. Attempts to check violations of election day laws—especially violations of the excise laws—illustrate one of the Club's most futile endeavors. According to the excise laws, all saloons within a quarter of a mile of the polls were to be closed in order to prevent the buying of votes. With the open connivance of the police and excise departments, Tammany had carried on wholesale bribery in procuring votes, often without even the pretense of closing the saloons. During the municipal elections of 1887, 1888, and 1889 the City Reform Club sent watchers to guard against expected violations of the law and, if violations did occur, to seek redress through the Board of Excise. On election day, November 5, 1889, the Club sent out teams of watchers to note the customary violations of the excise laws. James Pryor and J. Noble Hayes (Welling's brother-in-law) policed the Bleecker Street-Bowery area; W Harris Roome and Richard Zeraga covered the Broadway area; Abraham Bernheim and William A Shortt watched the downtown districts; Welling and his former Harvard classmate, Leonard Opdycke, who had recently joined the Club, covered the East Side. Each team reported a "perfect" score—all saloons were illegally open.19 The Club then offered its findings to the Board of Excise whose responsibility it was to revoke the licenses of the saloon owners if the latter were found guilty of transgressing the excise laws. After forty-five days of "deliberation" the excise commissioners failed to reach a single decision on these cases, which numbered over one hundred. Finally the Club's counsel, Lewis Delafield, won a mandamus (Welling v. Meakin et al., Commissioners of Excise), forcing the commissioners to decide the cases. The commissioners then unsuccessfully appealed the writ of mandamus to the Court of Ap- 18 Chapman got his cousin Schieffelin to join in 1889 saying, "you ought to join the City Reform Club, which is a club of about a dozen young college graduates, nearly all lawyers, who are the only people in town who have the guts to stand up and fight Tammany. The Republican Party, which ought to be doing it, is really in partnership with Tammany in return for a small share of the patronage!' Memoirs of William Jay Schieffelin, ic—11, Oral History Collection of Columbia University. 19 Minutes, II, November 7,1889.