George F. Seward, president of the Fidelity and Casualty Company, testified on March 21, 1910, before Superintendent Hotchkiss, that a man representing himself to be an agent of Senator “Big Tim” Sullivan, in 1891 or 1892, offered, in return for a $10,000 bribe, to have a bill inimical to that company’s interests killed. Mr. Seward, in response, dictated this telegram to Sullivan: “Mr. Seward says you can go to hell.” In reply to a question as to whether this happened when the Republican party or the Democratic party was in power, Mr. Seward replied, “So far as either party is concerned, I don’t think it would make very much difference, and I really do not recall.” Both parties, Mr. Seward said, were represented in the “Black Horse Cavalry” at Albany. In a public interview Sullivan denounced Mr. Seward’s charge as a lie. Recalled as a witness, on March 22, 1910, Seward adhered to the story he had told. It may be remarked here that when Sullivan died in 1913, he left a considerable fortune, originally estimated at two millions of dollars; his friends represented that he had made it from a chain of showhouses in which he was interested; but the inventory showed that he owned large quantities of stock in mining companies, realty companies and other concerns. Many of these shares, however, were listed by the executors of his estate as valueless. The definite value of Sullivan’s estate was placed at $1,021,277.33.
On March 24, 1910, certain definite facts were brought out showing how Buckley, lobbyist at Albany for the fire insurance companies, had succeeded in killing, in 1903, various proposed enactments which those companies did not want enacted.
Correspondence produced showed that Buckley had written to George P. Sheldon, president of the Phœnix Insurance Company, that “it was not difficult to tie the matter [insurance bills] up in the committee,” and later correspondence held out the assurance that the matter “had been arranged.” According to the testimony, Justice Edward E. McCall of the New York State Supreme Court had indorsed a $35,000 check from Sheldon to Buckley. On March 29, 1910, Darwin P. Kingsley, president of the New York Life Insurance Company, testified that Buckley had offered to buy him the votes of six members of the New York State Senate for a certain amount, and that when he (Kingsley) declined to pay, a certain insurance measure which Kingsley had favored was withdrawn.
These are but a few of the specific details brought out in the hearings before Mr. Hotchkiss; it appeared that at least ten prominent Republican legislators who had ruled important Senate and Assembly Committees for years had speculative accounts in the brokerage firm of Ellingwood & Cunningham of New York City, in which firm G. Tracy Rogers, keeper of the traction “Yellow Dog” fund during that period, was a special partner.
On April 8, 1910, State Superintendent of Insurance Hotchkiss made a full report to Governor Hughes of the investigation that he had made. Mr. Hotchkiss reported that the aggregate of disbursements by fire insurance companies in connection with legislation affecting those companies, from 1901 to 1909, probably exceeded $150,000.
“The moneys so paid,” Mr. Hotchkiss reported, “were disbursed for traveling expenses of individuals and delegations; annual and special retainers of regular counsels; so-called retainers of legislative lawyers; contributions to political committees; gifts or payments to men of political prominence and influence, and entertaining legislators and others, at times in a somewhat lavish manner.”
Mr. Hotchkiss further set forth in his report that the log rolling of “strike” bills in and out of committees was a regular business, that the books of the stock brokerage house of Ellingwood & Cunningham, New York City, “warrant a strong suspicion that such books, to an extent at least, had been a clearing house for financial transactions connected with legislation during the period mentioned,” and that G. Tracy Rogers, a special partner in the firm and long president of the Street Railways Association of the State of New York, seemed up to the time of the failure of that firm “to have been the legislative representative at Albany of the traction interests.” Mr. Hotchkiss reported that: “Certain of the accounts in these ledgers show a close connection between G. Tracy Rogers and the Metropolitan traction interests in New York City. The character of the securities dealt in [by legislators] frequently recalls legislation urged or retarded at about the same time.” Mr. Hotchkiss urged further inquiry, and in a special message to the Legislature, on April 11, 1910, Governor Hughes called on that body to follow, by means of a general investigation, the trails of legislative corruption laid bare by the Allds bribery trial and the investigation conducted by Superintendent Hotchkiss.
In the face of the exposures already made and the insistent demands for further investigation, the legislative committee appointed for the purpose could not evade pressing the inquiry.
The testimony on September 15, 1910, showed that during a single month in the summer of 1903, the sum of $40,000 was sent by an agent of the New York City street railway interests to the firm of Ellingwood & Cunningham, and that no vouchers or receipts were asked or given to account for the distribution of the money. At previous hearings, the fact had been established that this brokerage house was the firm which served as a “clearing-house” for the money supplied to members of the Legislature by G. Tracy Rogers. At the hearing on September 16, 1910, the evidence showed that Senator Louis F. Goodsell and Assemblyman Louis Bedell, prominent Republican leaders in the Legislature, had received large amounts of money from the Metropolitan Street Railway Company and G. Tracy Rogers from 1900 to 1904; Goodsell had received $24,800, and Bedell $21,750. Goodsell admitted that he had “bought” stock without putting up any margin.
At the same hearing, H. H. Vreeland, president of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, testified that the Metropolitan Street Railway Company contributed campaign funds, and that it did so to practically every one that ran for office; he remembered $20,000 or $25,000 given to the Republican organization and $17,000 or $18,000 to the Democratic organization; this was in about the year 1902 or 1903. Another method of subsidizing politicians individually, Mr. Vreeland testified, was by carrying stocks on the books of various brokerage houses for them; these individual stock transactions ran from $20,000 to more than $30,000.