At the time of Mr. Bryan’s nomination, in 1896, Mr. Croker was in England. His three years’ racing experience there cost him, it was reported, between $600,000 and $700,000. He remained abroad, leaving the organization, as we have mentioned, in charge of John C. Sheehan as a kind of vicegerent. Mr. Sheehan’s public record in Buffalo had been severely criticized, and many organization men had protested against his being put in charge. This protest, however, was generally understood at the time to be founded not so much on the matter of Mr. Sheehan’s record as on that of his being an interloper from another section of the State. Tammany that year ignored the national Democratic platform. Though ratifying Mr. Bryan’s nomination, a general apathy prevailed at the Wigwam throughout the campaign, and the more radical Democrats repeatedly charged the leaders with treachery to the ticket. The result of this apathy and of other influences was that Mr. McKinley carried the city by over 20,000 plurality. Mr. Croker finally returned home in September, 1897, shortly before the meeting of the Democratic city convention. It was commonly believed that Mr. Sheehan, the deputy “boss,” had made preparations to assume the “boss-ship” himself, but Mr. Sheehan emphatically denied this. Whatever the circumstances were Mr. Croker promptly deprived the former of power, and later succeeded in practically excluding him from the organization. The “Boss’s” supreme control of city politics was illustrated by the nomination for Mayor of Greater New York of Robert C. Van Wyck, who was in no sense the organization’s candidate, but represented merely Mr. Croker’s choice and dictation. The Citizens’ Union nominated Seth Low, who probably would have been elected had the Republicans indorsed him. But the latter nominated Benjamin F. Tracy, thus dividing the opposition, which was still further disintegrated by the action of the Jeffersonian Democrats in nominating Henry George, and later Henry George, Jr., upon the noted economist dying in the heat of the campaign. The canvass was carried on with the greatest vigor, for under the Greater New York charter all the territory now embraced in the city limits was to vote for one Mayor, with a four-years’ term, and almost dictatorial power in the matter of appointments and removals. In his statement, heretofore referred to, Mr. Sheehan asserted that during this campaign he personally collected and turned over to John McQuade,[18] the treasurer of Tammany Hall, the sum of $260,000, irrespective of contributions collected by others, and that at the end of the canvass Mr. McQuade had $50,000 in the treasury.[19]