[ 254 1 ROBERT MUCCIGROSSO Pryor's vehement protest that "the autonomy of the Club should be preserved at all hazards!' At this same meeting Kelly resigned.38 By early 1893 Kelly had persuaded several of the remaining City Reform Club members—including Welling, Chapman, Hayes, and even Pryor —to join the City Club. Less than a year later the City Reform Club was defunct. The City Reform Club had failed in its avowed purpose to bring honest and efficient government to New York City through nonpartisan politics. Most citizens continued to vote for municipal candidates as they voted for national candidates—according to party allegiance. As a result, Tammany, which George Washington Plunkitt was describing as "the most perfect political machine on earth" still firmly gripped the reins of city government in its powerful jaws.39 Yet it would be an injustice to label the City Reform Club a total failure. Looking back, Welling asserted: "Its most valuable work lay in a number of valuable object lessons in which the city became thoroughly convinced that crimes had been committed; and while the wicked continued to prosper and the machinery of justice broke down, the public judgment and general attitude of sophistication advanced greatly toward the goal of practical efficiency!'40 In giving urban reformers in New York invaluable practical experience, which they desperately needed, the City Reform Club had performed an important function. The variety of reform organizations which sprang to fife in increasing numbers during the 1890s invariably looked to it as an example. Its work was to be continued—slightly altered, but never wholly ignored—by the urban reformers who followed. By the 1890s, the decade of the City Club, Good Government Clubs, Citizens Union, and National Municipal League, politicians could no longer ignore with impunity the demands of reformers. ssIbid., December 10, 17, and 29,1892. 3» William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (New York: 1905), 92. 4« Welling, "Civic Problems',' Welling Papers, NYPL.