The Mayor was not destined to serve his full term. In September, 1874, a bitter quarrel sprang up between him on the one hand and John Kelly and John Morrissey on the other, apparently over the appointment, at Kelly’s request, of Richard Croker to be a Marshal. “When Croker’s appointment was announced,” wrote the Mayor, “I was overwhelmed with a torrent of indignation.” In a public letter addressed to Kelly, Mayor Havemeyer charged that the former, while Sheriff, had obtained $84,482 by fraudulent and illegal receipts, adding this further characterization: “I think that you were worse than Tweed, except that he was a larger operator. The public knew that Tweed was a bold, reckless man, making no pretensions to purity. You, on the contrary, were always avowing your honesty and wrapped yourself in the mantle of piety. Men who go about with the prefix of ‘honest’ to their names are often rogues.” Kelly replied that he had acted in the Sheriff’s office as had his predecessors, and brought a libel suit against the Mayor, in the answer to which the latter embodied his charges in full. But on the day the suit was to come to trial Havemeyer fell dead of apoplexy in his office. During the two years (1872-74) various forces combined to restore Tammany to the old power. The two great parties were struggling for partizan advantage for future State and national elections. This brought about the old party alignment, the reform Democrats, as a rule, acting with the Wigwam, and the reform Republicans drifting to the Republican side. The disreputable classes issued forth in greater force than ever to help replace in power the Tammany that meant to them free sway. The panic of 1873, with the consequent “hard times,” turned great bodies of voters against the dominant party. The “ring” had so thoroughly looted the city that Havemeyer’s administration was forced to practise economy in the public works. The working classes either did not understand the motive of this retrenchment, or did not appreciate it. Out of the 24,500 mechanics in the city during the Winter of 1873-74, 15,000, it was estimated, were unemployed. Tammany now adroitly declared itself in favor of giving public employment to the workers. The Wigwam agents scoured the poorer districts during the campaign of 1874, giving aid to the needy, and gained their support. The agitation against a third term for President Grant; the demand for a low tariff and the denunciation of the Washington “ring,” all had their effect, while the impression which naturally might have been expected from Havemeyer’s charges against Kelly was entirely lost by the former’s slurring allusions to Kelly’s humble birth and early occupation--allusions which threw the sympathy and support of the masses strongly to Kelly and his ticket.