Its transactions revealed the great difference between Tweed’s methods and those of the later leaders of Tammany Hall. Under the Tweed régime tens of millions of dollars were stolen outright. The lesson of the overthrow of the Tweed “ring” was not lost on his successors. Mr. Croker refused to countenance such outworn, discarded and dangerous methods of theft. They had resulted disastrously to Tammany in Tweed’s day. In place of direct thieving methods of getting rich, indirect methods, surrounded with secrecy and every possible precaution against detection, were developed. Some Tammany district leaders became opulent on blackmail and extortion, the circuitous route of which it was most difficult to trace (in a legal sense) to its final destination. As for Mr. Croker himself, the question was frequently put to him, “Where did you get it?”[6] He could reply that his operations in amassing his wealth were entirely legitimate; “inside” real estate speculations, connections with trust companies and other corporations and stock transactions. Knowing him to be the source of much legislation and administrative favors worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to corporations, his opponents were by no means wholly satisfied with such an explanation, but whatever their suspicions they could never prove that he had personally profited from selling legislation. Essentially, however, Mr. Croker never posed as a business man; he was a politician. But by the period when Charles F. Murphy became “chief,” the “business-man” type of leader had evolved. Under this plan--a plan that afforded the most plausible opportunities for explaining the sudden acquisition of wealth--Tammany men became open or secret partners in contracting firms, using the pressure of political power to have large contracts awarded to their concerns. It was not necessary for these leaders to know anything of contracting; they could be ignorant of every detail; their one aim was to get the contracts; the actual skilled work could be done by hired professional men. No law penalized such methods, respectable in every appearance. At the same time, inasmuch as speculating in the stock market was legitimate in law, fortunes could be made in acting upon advance information of legislative or other official means concerning certain corporations. The first large contract obtained by the New York Contracting and Trucking Company was a $2,000,000 contract for excavating the site for the new Pennsylvania Railroad Station in New York City.