endent of Market Fees and Rents, under Connolly. In 1873 he was
elected coroner and ten years later was appointed fire commissioner. His
career as boss was marked by much political cleverness and caution and
by an equal degree of moral obtuseness.

The triumph of Tammany in 1892 was followed by such ill-disguised
corruption that the citizens of New York were again roused from their
apathy. The investigations of the Fassett Committee of the State Senate
two years previously had shown how deep the tentacles of Tammany were
thrust into the administrative departments of the city. The Senate now
appointed another investigating committee, of which Clarence Lexow was
the chairman and John W. Goff the counsel. The Police Department came
under its special scrutiny. The disclosures revealed the connivance of
the police in stupendous election frauds. The President of the Police
Board himself had distributed at the polls the policemen who committed
these frauds. It was further revealed that vice and crime under police
protection had been capitalized on a great scale. It was worth money to
be a policeman. One police captain testified he had paid $15,000 for
his promotions; another paid $12,000. It cost $300 to be appointed
patrolman. Over six hundred policy-shops were open, each paying $1500 a
month for protection; pool rooms paid $300 a month; bawdy-houses, from
$25 to $50 per month per inmate. And their patrons paid whatever they
could be blackmailed out of; streetwalkers, whatever they could be
wheedled out of; saloons, $20 per month; pawnbrokers, thieves, and thugs
shared with the police their profits, as did corporations and others
seeking not only favors but their rights. The committee in its statement
to the Grand Jury (March, 1892) estimated that the annual plunder from
these sources was over $7,000,000.

During the committee's sessions Croker was in Europe on important
business. But he found time to order the closing of disreputable
resorts, and, though he was only a private citizen and three thousand
miles away, his orders were promptly obeyed.

Aroused by these disclosures and stimulated by the lashing sermons
of the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, the citizens of New York, in 1894,
elected a reform government, with William L. Strong as Mayor. His
administration set up for the metropolis a new standard of city
management. Colonel George E. Waring organized, for the first time in
the city's history, an efficient streetcleanin