Beginning life as a bartender, “Big Tim” Sullivan had been given the nickname “Dry Dollar” Sullivan, because of his habit of carefully wiping the bar before placing change on it. His career in the Assembly and Senate was notorious for the number of bad bills promoted or supported by him. His power in manipulating primaries and swaying elections on the East Side south of Fourteenth Street was recognized as that of a master hand; he knew how to make the “gangs” his obedient servants; not a secret of colonizing voters and carrying elections was unknown to him and his clan; at the same time he was called “the friend of the poor” because of his yearly practise of giving the wastrels of the Bowery and vicinity Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and presents. By his proved and consistent ability to sway politics in the great and thickly-populated East Side, he had to be recognized as an independent Tammany power; no one could become “boss” of Tammany Hall without his support. His power in Tammany was exceeded only by Mr. Murphy’s. In fact, he was one of the actual rulers, not only of Tammany Hall, but of New York City. George F. Seward, president of the Fidelity and Casualty Company, testified on March 21, 1910, before Superintendent Hotchkiss, that a man representing himself to be an agent of Senator “Big Tim” Sullivan, in 1891 or 1892, offered, in return for a $10,000 bribe, to have a bill inimical to that company’s interests killed. Mr. Seward, in response, dictated this telegram to Sullivan: “Mr. Seward says you can go to hell.” In reply to a question as to whether this happened when the Republican party or the Democratic party was in power, Mr. Seward replied, “So far as either party is concerned, I don’t think it would make very much difference, and I really do not recall.” Both parties, Mr. Seward said, were represented in the “Black Horse Cavalry” at Albany. In a public interview Sullivan denounced Mr. Seward’s charge as a lie. Recalled as a witness, on March 22, 1910, Seward adhered to the story he had told. It may be remarked here that when Sullivan died in 1913, he left a considerable fortune, originally estimated at two millions of dollars; his friends represented that he had made it from a chain of showhouses in which he was interested; but the inventory showed that he owned large quantities of stock in mining companies, realty companies and other concerns. Many of these shares, however, were listed by the executors of his estate as valueless. The definite value of Sullivan’s estate was placed at $1,021,277.33. On March 24, 1910, certain definite facts were brought out showing how Buckley, lobbyist at Albany for the fire insurance companies, had succeeded in killing, in 1903, various proposed enactments which those companies did not want enacted.