They drowned his voice each time he attempted to speak, until it began to dawn upon them that instead of gaining favour with the Lord Mayor, who was in the chair, they were incurring his displeasure. "Gentlemen," he cried, "I protest against this conduct. I call upon _my friend_, Mr. Crooks, to speak." You should have seen their faces then! They had forgotten that the Lord Mayor (Sir Joseph Dimsdale) and Crooks had been colleagues together for years on the County Council. Having got a hearing, the Labour man spoke evidently very much to the point. Sir Thomas Lipton, who represented the King at that and the subsequent conferences, declared afterwards that the one mayor in London who seemed to know what was wanted was the working-man Mayor of Poplar. At any rate, the final arrangements for the King's Dinner were left to a small sub-committee, of which Crooks was unanimously elected one by the body that first tried to howl him down. The illusion that working-men cannot make mayors died hard. It lingered last in the columns of the _Times_. Crooks had been in office several months when that journal called public attention to the fact that the Mayor of Poplar lived in a house "only rated at £11 a year." From this circumstance the _Times_ drew the rash conclusion that a man so poor could not necessarily fill the office of mayor properly. After this, nobody could be surprised at the wild mis-statements that followed. The _Times_ went on to say that before Crooks's election the Labour Party of Poplar seemed to think his income of £3 10s. a week insufficient for the mayoralty, and that they started a movement "in favour of paying future mayors of the borough a salary at the rate of from £500 to £1,000 a year." How completely the facts tell a different story has already appeared. What movement there was in Poplar for paying a salary originated with the previous mayor, Mr. R. H. Green, a large employer of labour. Mr. Green did not wish for a salary himself, being a man of means; he was only anxious that his colleagues should understand that he favoured the principle. His successor, the Labour man, was equally anxious his colleagues should understand that he did not favour payment. The real facts were placed before the _Times_, but although its original mis-statements were copied into several other newspapers and led the _St. James's Gazette_ to publish a foolish leader on the subject, the _Times_ offered neither an explanation as to how it fell into its culpable error nor an apology for its amazing exhibition of bad taste. In reality, his position as Mayor was strengthened by his refusal to take a salary. He stated in an interview in the _Daily Telegraph_ towards the end of his year of office:--