o the destruction of the game, which would
bear most severely upon the very men whose rapacity has been appealed to
in order to secure its extermination. . . ."

I reorganized the Commission, putting Austin Wadsworth at its head.

APPENDIX B

THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1900

My general scheme of action as Governor was given in a letter I wrote
one of my supporters among the independent district organization
leaders, Norton Goddard, on April 16, 1900. It runs in part as follows:
"Nobody can tell, and least of all the machine itself, whether the
machine intends to renominate me next fall or not. If for some reason I
should be weak, whether on account of faults or virtues, doubtless the
machine will throw me over, and I think I am not uncharitable when I say
they would feel no acute grief at so doing. It would be very strange if
they did feel such grief. If, for instance, we had strikes which led
to riots, I would of course be obliged to preserve order and stop the
riots. Decent citizens would demand that I should do it, and in any
event I should do it wholly without regard to their demands. But, once
it was done, they would forget all about it, while a great many laboring
men, honest but ignorant and prejudiced, would bear a grudge against
me for doing it. This might put me out of the running as a candidate.
Again, the big corporations undoubtedly want to beat me. They prefer
the chance of being blackmailed to the certainty that they will not be
allowed any more than their due. Of course they will try to beat me
on some entirely different issue, and, as they are very able and very
unscrupulous, nobody can tell that they won't succeed. . . . I have been
trying to stay in with the organization. I did not do it with the idea
that they would renominate me. I did it with the idea of getting things
done, and in that I have been absolutely successful. Whether Senator
Platt and Mr. Odell endeavor to beat me, or do beat me, for the
renomination next fall, is of very small importance compared to the fact
that for my two years I have been able to make a Republican majority
in the Legislature do good and decent work and have prevented any split
within the party. The task was one of great difficulty, because, on the
one hand, I had to keep clearly before me the fact that it was better to
have a split than to permit bad work to be done, and, on the other hand,
the fact that to have that split would absolutely prevent all _good_
w