[19] Early in 1898 Tammany Hall, with considerable display, disposed of most of this fund, by giving $20,000 for the poor of the city and a like sum for the Cuban cause. CHAPTER XXIX THE DICTATORSHIP OF RICHARD CROKER (_Concluded_) 1897-1901 Now that Tammany was reinstalled in almost absolute power, Mr. Croker set about choosing the important city officials to be appointed by the Mayor. He frankly admitted before the Mazet Committee, in 1899, that practically all of them were selected by him or his immediate associates. Requiring a routine assistant in the work of “bossing,” Mr. Croker selected John F. Carroll, who thereupon resigned the office of Clerk of the Court of General Sessions, which yielded, it was estimated, about $12,000 a year, to take a post with no apparent salary. Mr. Croker then returned to horse-racing in England. The public pronouncements of the organization continued to voice the old-time characteristic pretensions of that body’s frugality, honesty and submission to the popular will. In October, 1898, the county convention in the Wigwam passed resolutions commending “the wise, honest and economical” Tammany administration of Greater New York, and denouncing the “corruption, extravagance and waste of the infamous mismanagement” by the previous reform administration. Yet at this very moment the Bar Association was protesting against Mr. Croker’s refusal to renominate Judge Joseph F. Daly,[1] on the ground of his refusing to hand over the patronage of his court. The convention itself, despite its fine words, acted merely as the register of the will of one man, with scarcely the formality of a contest; and the public had again become agitated over the certainty of grave scandals in the public service. Tammany’s election fund this year was generally reputed to be in the neighborhood of $100,000. As much as $500 was spent in each of several hotly contested election districts. Tammany won, but by a margin less than had been expected and, in fact, arranged for. The State Superintendent of Elections, John McCullough, in his annual report (January, 1899) to Gov. Roosevelt, gave good grounds for believing that Tammany had been deprived of a large support on which it had counted. Of 13,104 persons registered from specified lodging houses in certain strong Tammany districts, only 4,034 voted. It was evident that colonization frauds on a large scale had been attempted, and had been frustrated only by the vigilance of Superintendent McCullough.