When Mr. Van Wyck was elected Mayor, Charles F. Murphy was appointed a Dock Commissioner. Report had it that when he went into the Dock Board Mr. Murphy “was worth” perhaps $400,000, accumulated in the saloon business and politics in eighteen years. He had long been known as “Silent Charlie.” Within a few years after his appointment as Dock Commissioner, his fortune, it was said, reached at least $1,000,000. When he became Dock Commissioner, Mr. Murphy nominally assigned his four saloons to a brother and three old friends. Before leaving the office of Dock Commissioner, John J. Murphy (Charles F. Murphy’s brother), James E. Gaffney and Richard J. Crouch (one of Charles F. Murphy’s political district lieutenants) had incorporated the New York Contracting and Trucking Company. Gaffney was an Alderman. These three men were credited with holding only five shares each of the hundred shares of the company; just who held the remaining eighty-five shares has never been definitely explained. When quizzed later by a legislative committee, Charles F. Murphy denied that he had any ownership or financial interest in the New York Contracting and Trucking Company, and no records could be found proving that he did have any interest. One of the transactions of this company was as follows: In July, 1901, the company leased a dock at West Ninety-sixth Street, and it leased another dock at East Seventy-ninth Street, paying the city a total rent of $4,800 a year for the two properties. It would appear from a report subsequently made by Commissioner of Accounts William Hepburn Russell to Mayor Low that the average profit from the two dock properties was $200 a day, making a rate of 5,000 per cent. on the investment. This particular transaction of the New York Contracting and Trucking Company, lucrative as it was, nevertheless was modest compared to the company’s subsequent transactions which we shall duly describe. Certainly by the year 1902, Mr. Murphy showed the most visible evidences of some sizable degree of wealth; he acquired a suburban estate at Good Ground, Long Island, owning, too, in time, among other possessions denoting wealth, a string of automobiles.