Mr. Croker did not testify before the Lexow Committee, urgent business demanding his presence in England throughout the investigation.
The public was aroused as it had not been since 1871. An earnest agitation for reform, largely due to the crusade of Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, and to the work of the City Club and the Good Government clubs, was begun. A Committee of Seventy, composed of representatives of all classes, was formed to carry on a political contest, and an enthusiastic support was given to it by the great mass of the public throughout the campaign. William L. Strong, a Republican and a prominent dry goods merchant, was nominated by the Seventy for Mayor, and the Republicans indorsed him. Tammany, after floundering about for several weeks in the vain hope of securing a candidate strong enough to stem the opposing tide, selected at first Nathan Straus, who withdrew, and then Hugh J. Grant, making its campaign largely on the ground that Mr. Grant was the only unsmirched Tammany member of the “Boodle” Board of Aldermen of 1884. The contest was bitter and determined on both sides, Tammany putting forth its utmost efforts to avert the inevitable disaster. According to a statement of John C. Sheehan, the organization expended more money in this election than in any election in recent years.
The convictions of the previous year had served to cool the zeal of the Tammany workers for records at the polls. In consequence of this, and of further changes in the manner of balloting, New York enjoyed probably the most fairly conducted election of any since the first organized effort of Tammany men at the polls in 1800. Strong was elected by a majority of 45,187. With his election went nearly the whole of the city patronage, changes in the new constitution (1894) having greatly centralized the city’s administrative functions in the Mayor’s hands. Tammany was thus thrust out again.
Mayor Strong’s administration on the whole was beneficial. The city budget went up to nearly $44,000,000, but for the first time since Mayor Havemeyer’s time the streets were kept clean—a result due to the systematic energy of Col. George E. Waring, Jr. Moreover, new schools were built, new parks laid out, streets asphalted, improvements planned and carried out, while administrative corruption was almost unheard of. Not the least of the benefits of this administration was the partial reform of the Police Department, through the efforts of Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, and his fellow Commissioners, Avery D. Andrews, Andrew D. Parker and Frank Moss.
In the mean time Richard Croker spent most of his time in England. From being a comparatively poor man, as he testified in 1890, he became suddenly rich. From April, 1889, to February, 1890, he was City Chamberlain, at a salary of $25,000 a year, but thereafter he held no public office. Within two years, however, he was able, according to common report, to buy an interest in the Belle Meade stock farm for $250,000, paying additionally $109,000 for Longstreet and other race horses. Later, he built a new house, said to cost over $200,000, and lavishly spent money, and displayed the evidences of wealth in other ways.
When in the city he was, for a considerable number of years, in the real estate business. He is popularly credited with having been interested in the passage and development of certain extremely valuable franchises which were obtained from the Legislature and Board of Aldermen for almost nothing. In 1892 he was reputed to dominate the Legislature, as he did the city, and the lobby disappeared. It was related at the time that all applicants for favors or for relief from hostile measures were advised “to see headquarters.”
One of the franchises granted during that year was the “Huckleberry franchise,” for a street railway in the Annexed District—a grant which was worth at the time fully $2,000,000, and yet was practically given away under circumstances of great scandal.[15] When testifying before the Mazet Committee in 1899, he was asked whether he had owned, in 1892, 800 shares of the stock of this road, but declined to state.[16] Another illustration of Mr. Croker’s alleged diversified interests was furnished by a statement said to have been inspired by John C. Sheehan and published on December 23, 1900. Mr. Sheehan asserted that in 1894 he and Mr. Croker were interested in a company formed with a capital of $5,000,000 for the construction of the rapid transit tunnel. Mr. Sheehan, the statement read, forced through the Board of Aldermen a resolution approving the tunnel route which he and Mr. Croker had selected as the most feasible. The statement further set forth that Mr. Croker had $500,000 worth of this company’s stock, which came to him gratuitously, and that he and Mr. Sheehan had been also mutually interested in a proposed surety company.
As chairman of the finance committee of Tammany Hall (a post Tweed and Kelly had held, and which carried with it the titular leadership of the organization), all the vast funds contributed for Tammany’s many campaigns passed through his hands. As he himself testified, the finance committee kept no books.[17]
Whether Mr. Croker was at home or far abroad, his control of the Wigwam was absolute. Long since, he had inaugurated the system of “turning down” any man that disobeyed orders.
At the time of Mr. Bryan’s nomination, in 1896, Mr. Croker was in England. His three years’ racing experience there cost him, it was reported, between $600,000 and $700,000. He remained abroad, leaving the organization, as we have mentioned, in charge of John C. Sheehan as a kind of vicegerent. Mr. Sheehan’s public record in Buffalo had been severely criticized, and many organization men had protested against his being put in charge. This protest, however, was generally understood at the time to be founded not so much on the matter of Mr. Sheehan’s record as on that of his being an interloper from another section of the State. Tammany that year ignored the national Democratic platform. Though ratifying Mr. Bryan’s nomination, a general apathy prevailed at the Wigwam throughout the campaign, and the more radical Democrats repeatedly charged the leaders with treachery to the ticket. The result of this apathy and of other influences was that Mr. McKinley carried the city by over 20,000 plurality.