In the mean time Richard Croker spent most of his time in England. From being a comparatively poor man, as he testified in 1890, he became suddenly rich. From April, 1889, to February, 1890, he was City Chamberlain, at a salary of $25,000 a year, but thereafter he held no public office. Within two years, however, he was able, according to common report, to buy an interest in the Belle Meade stock farm for $250,000, paying additionally $109,000 for Longstreet and other race horses. Later, he built a new house, said to cost over $200,000, and lavishly spent money, and displayed the evidences of wealth in other ways. When in the city he was, for a considerable number of years, in the real estate business. He is popularly credited with having been interested in the passage and development of certain extremely valuable franchises which were obtained from the Legislature and Board of Aldermen for almost nothing. In 1892 he was reputed to dominate the Legislature, as he did the city, and the lobby disappeared. It was related at the time that all applicants for favors or for relief from hostile measures were advised “to see headquarters.” One of the franchises granted during that year was the “Huckleberry franchise,” for a street railway in the Annexed District--a grant which was worth at the time fully $2,000,000, and yet was practically given away under circumstances of great scandal.[15] When testifying before the Mazet Committee in 1899, he was asked whether he had owned, in 1892, 800 shares of the stock of this road, but declined to state.[16] Another illustration of Mr. Croker’s alleged diversified interests was furnished by a statement said to have been inspired by John C. Sheehan and published on December 23, 1900. Mr. Sheehan asserted that in 1894 he and Mr. Croker were interested in a company formed with a capital of $5,000,000 for the construction of the rapid transit tunnel. Mr. Sheehan, the statement read, forced through the Board of Aldermen a resolution approving the tunnel route which he and Mr. Croker had selected as the most feasible. The statement further set forth that Mr. Croker had $500,000 worth of this company’s stock, which came to him gratuitously, and that he and Mr. Sheehan had been also mutually interested in a proposed surety company. As chairman of the finance committee of Tammany Hall (a post Tweed and Kelly had held, and which carried with it the titular leadership of the organization), all the vast funds contributed for Tammany’s many campaigns passed through his hands. As he himself testified, the finance committee kept no books.[17] Whether Mr. Croker was at home or far abroad, his control of the Wigwam was absolute. Long since, he had inaugurated the system of “turning down” any man that disobeyed orders.