In a talk, on March 18, 1913, with Mr. Murphy over appointments to the Supreme Court of New York State, the Tammany chief--so Mr. Sulzer related--“threatened me with public disgrace unless I agreed to his program on legislative matters and appointments. It was at this conference, too, that he talked about the things he ‘had on me,’ and said that I had better listen to him and not to his enemies up the State; that if I did what he told me I would have things easy and no trouble, and that if I didn’t do what he wanted me to, I would have all the trouble I wanted.… “He was very insulting. Then I asked him what he could do to destroy me. And he said: ‘Never mind; you will find out in good time. Stand by the organization and you will be all right. If you go against the organization, I will make your administration the laughing stock of the State.’ It was at this time that he asked me to call off George Blake, the commissioner who was investigating the prisons.… I told him that Blake was an efficient man and that I was going to let him go on with his work, and he said, ‘If you do you will be sorry for it. Mark what I am telling you now!’ “I told him what I had heard about the vileness of things in the Sing Sing and Auburn prisons. I said: ‘We certainly ought not to stand for them. I want to get at the facts, and if there is anything wrong, stop it; if there is any graft, eliminate it.’ Mr. Murphy told me that he didn’t want anything done in connection with Sing Sing prison by Blake or any other man; that the warden there, Mr. Kennedy, was a friend of his and a good man, and he wanted him left alone. This, remember, was the warden whom I afterward removed from his place on charges and who was since indicted by the Westchester grand jury.” It may be noted here that later there were a number of prosecutions in prison graft cases. The graft in the prisons reached a total of many millions of dollars in the one item alone of the substitution of bad food for the good food paid for by the State. Extensive grafting was found in other respects. Mr. Sulzer added that one of the agents through whom Mr. Murphy most frequently communicated with him was Justice Edward E. McCall. “Judge McCall usually spoke of Mr. Murphy as ‘the Chief,’ and would say to me that ‘the Chief’ wished such and such a thing done, or demanded that I follow such and such a course of action. Every Tammany member of either house who approached me from day to day used the same language, saying that ‘the Chief’ demanded this or demanded that, or that ‘the Chief’ had telephoned to put through such a piece of legislation, or kill some other piece of legislation.”