Mr. Jerome’s denunciations and promises aroused great enthusiasm and large expectations; they had much effect in contributing to the result of the campaign, for it was popularly realized that while Tammany leaders accumulated their millions of dollars, yet back of these leaders, and secretly operating through them, were magnates of great financial power with their tens or hundreds of millions of dollars acquired largely by means of financial and industrial power conferred by legislation, permissory or statute, of various kinds. The electorate well knew that comparatively small grafters were numerous, but now it had the promise that the large spoliators, hitherto immune, would be exposed and prosecuted, if possible. The result of the election was that Mr. Low was elected Mayor by a plurality of 31,636. Nearly all of the other anti-Tammany candidates for the large offices were also elected, although Tammany’s candidate for the Borough of the Bronx--Louis F. Haffen--was successful. The total vote stood: Low, 296,813; Shepard, 265,177. For other political parties, a small vote was cast: Benjamin Hanford, candidate for Mayor of the Social Democratic party, received 9,834 votes; Keinard, Socialist Labor candidate for Mayor, polled 6,213 votes, and Manierre, Prohibition candidate for Mayor, 1,264 votes. That of a total vote of 561,990 votes cast for the two chief opposing candidates, Tammany and its allied organizations should have polled 265,177 votes, showed Tammany Hall’s enormous strength, even in the face of a combination of opponents, with all the strength of definite issues obviously putting Tammany on the defensive. Realizing that the attacks upon him personally as the “boss” of Tammany Hall and of the city had been successful in a political sense, Mr. Croker wisely concluded, immediately after this defeat, to obscure himself and give an appearance of retiring from active participation in the affairs of Tammany Hall. Conscious, too, of the public discredit attaching to Tammany methods and Tammany leaders, he saw that the time had come to inject some show of an element of respectability and reform into Tammany Hall. He now underwent the formalities of an “abdication.” On January 13, 1902, the astonishing news was made public that he had selected Lewis Nixon as his successor as the leader of Tammany Hall. Mr. Nixon, at this time, was forty-one years old; hailing from Leesburg, Virginia, he had been graduated from the United States Naval Academy, and had become a naval constructor, later owning his own naval ship plant at Elizabeth, New Jersey. He was also connected with a number of private corporations. In 1898 he had been appointed by Mayor Van Wyck to the office of President of the East River Bridge Commission, and in 1900-1901 had acted, as we have seen, as Chairman of Mr. Croker’s Anti-Vice Committee.