“whether it be a primary election, a municipal election, or a State or a National election, the police are a factor. The district leader who can control the majority of the uniformed men on duty in his bailiwick is not apt to have much trouble in fighting off rival candidates. He has a most influential body of men working for him 365 days in the year. “The baneful influence of the ordinary Tammany district leader in a single precinct station house is far-reaching. When he can do favors, or persuade the men that he can do them, his influence is something beyond belief. Some leaders have had more authority in some police stations than the executive head of the department. They have been looked upon as the men from whom to take orders. They have often visited the station not only to give bail for unlucky constituents, but to give orders to the captains and lieutenants. “Policemen as a whole are the most gullible persons in the entire City Government when it comes to the question of the power of the political ‘boss.’ This is not surprising. Experience has taught them that if they displease the local powers they are apt to be transferred to a distant precinct. Therefore, they fear to take a chance. The wily leader takes advantage of this weakness. He uses his power at every opportunity, and when he meets with opposition he is prompt with his threats. Suppose, in the course of time, the offending policeman is shifted as a matter of routine. Then the leader struts about telling this offender’s fellow officers that he, the leader, had the man transferred.” And if a policeman showed independence, Mr. Bingham asserted, a word from the leader to the superior officers caused “complaints to be made, extra hours of duty, unpleasant details and the like, until the man’s life is made miserable.” General Bingham declared that he had labored to stamp out these abuses, but unavailingly. “So bad did this political influence become in some precincts in Manhattan after Mayor McClellan began his contests at the primaries for the leadership of Tammany Hall, that I had to make radical changes in the personnel of those districts.” It was absurdly easy for Mr. Murphy and his Tammany machine leaders to squelch Mayor McClellan’s plans for leadership. No auspicious time was it, however, to nominate a “regular Organization man” for Mayor; respectability had to be invoked and a hack politician obviously would not serve the purpose. Besides, there was resistance from Senator McCarren’s Brooklyn organization against the nomination of a distinctively Tammany “Organization” creature.