During the course of this same inquiry Mr. Sulzer testified, on January 21, 1914, that on learning that Stewart was to be denied the contracts, he telegraphed on December 18, 1912, to the Canal Board asking it to defer action until he could consult with its members. Whereupon John H. Delaney came to him and excitedly said, “My God, Congressman, what have you done? It angered the Chief more than anything else I have ever known. The Chief is wild.” The “Chief,” otherwise Charles F. Murphy, demanded an interview with the Governor-elect at once.
In this interview, which was held at Delmonico’s, Mr. Sulzer quoted Mr. Murphy as saying to him, “Why did you send that telegram to the Canal Board? You have no right to butt in on things that don’t concern you. I’m attending to that matter, and I want you to keep your hands off. If you are going to begin this way, I can see now where you will end as Governor. You do what you are told hereafter, and don’t take any action on matters that don’t concern you without conferring with me.” When Mr. Sulzer said he was going to be Governor, Mr. Murphy (so Sulzer testified) replied: “So that is the way you understand it? Well, if you go along that line, I can see where you will end up damned quick. You are going to be Governor? Like hell you are!”
Mr. Sulzer further testified at this hearing that on the evening of March 3, 1913, at a luncheon in Washington, he told Senator O’Gorman that Mr. Murphy was putting the “screws” on him and bringing to bear all the influence he could to have James E. Gaffney appointed Commissioner of Highways, and that Senator O’Gorman had said: “Governor, if you appoint Jim Gaffney Commissioner of Highways it will be a disgrace to the State of New York and it will ruin your political career as the Governor. Don’t you know that Gaffney is Murphy’s chief bagman? Don’t you know he is the man Murphy sends out to hold up the contractors? Don’t you know he is the man that held up my client, James G. Stewart, for over a hundred thousand dollars, and he would have got away with it if Stewart had not come to me, and if I had not gone to Murphy and read the Riot Act, telling him that I would not stand for that kind of politics; that he had to stop Gaffney, and that if he didn’t stop Gaffney, so far as my client was concerned, I would expose him.”
Subsequently Mr. Sulzer met Mr. Murphy several times, and was importuned (so he testified) to appoint Mr. Gaffney. When Sulzer replied that it was impossible, Mr. Murphy announced, “Well, it’s Gaffney or war.” Mr. Sulzer’s testimony went on: “At this conversation, one of the things Mr. Murphy said to me was, ‘If you don’t do this, I will wreck your administration.’ It was not the first time he had threatened me, and I answered, ‘I am the Governor, and I am going to be the Governor.’ He said, ‘You may be the Governor, but I have got the Legislature, and the Legislature controls the Governor, and if you don’t do what I tell you to do, I will throw you out of office.’” After Governor Sulzer had removed Reel, Mr. Murphy was still pressing Gaffney’s appointment.
Of the inquiries into graft carried on by George W. Blake and John W. Hennessy, Mr. Sulzer testified: “Their reports staggered me, and believe me, it takes something to stagger me. There was graft, graft everywhere, nor any man to stop it.” Mr. Sulzer testified that Mr. Murphy had sought to hamper the graft exposure by causing to be cut off—for the first time in the State’s history, he said—the Governor’s contingent fund, and he described how it became necessary to raise money by private subscription to enable the graft inquiry to be carried on.
“I have been in office now for six months,” wrote Mr. Sulzer in a signed article later, “and in that time I have learned enough to be able to say without fear of contradiction that in the past three years $50,000,000 of the people’s money has been wasted or stolen.”
In a talk, on March 18, 1913, with Mr. Murphy over appointments to the Supreme Court of New York State, the Tammany chief—so Mr. Sulzer related—“threatened me with public disgrace unless I agreed to his program on legislative matters and appointments. It was at this conference, too, that he talked about the things he ‘had on me,’ and said that I had better listen to him and not to his enemies up the State; that if I did what he told me I would have things easy and no trouble, and that if I didn’t do what he wanted me to, I would have all the trouble I wanted.…
“He was very insulting. Then I asked him what he could do to destroy me. And he said: ‘Never mind; you will find out in good time. Stand by the organization and you will be all right. If you go against the organization, I will make your administration the laughing stock of the State.’ It was at this time that he asked me to call off George Blake, the commissioner who was investigating the prisons.… I told him that Blake was an efficient man and that I was going to let him go on with his work, and he said, ‘If you do you will be sorry for it. Mark what I am telling you now!’
“I told him what I had heard about the vileness of things in the Sing Sing and Auburn prisons. I said: ‘We certainly ought not to stand for them. I want to get at the facts, and if there is anything wrong, stop it; if there is any graft, eliminate it.’ Mr. Murphy told me that he didn’t want anything done in connection with Sing Sing prison by Blake or any other man; that the warden there, Mr. Kennedy, was a friend of his and a good man, and he wanted him left alone. This, remember, was the warden whom I afterward removed from his place on charges and who was since indicted by the Westchester grand jury.” It may be noted here that later there were a number of prosecutions in prison graft cases. The graft in the prisons reached a total of many millions of dollars in the one item alone of the substitution of bad food for the good food paid for by the State. Extensive grafting was found in other respects.
Mr. Sulzer added that one of the agents through whom Mr. Murphy most frequently communicated with him was Justice Edward E. McCall. “Judge McCall usually spoke of Mr. Murphy as ‘the Chief,’ and would say to me that ‘the Chief’ wished such and such a thing done, or demanded that I follow such and such a course of action. Every Tammany member of either house who approached me from day to day used the same language, saying that ‘the Chief’ demanded this or demanded that, or that ‘the Chief’ had telephoned to put through such a piece of legislation, or kill some other piece of legislation.”