McCall, however, was not the only Public Service Commissioner involved in the revelations before the Joint Legislative Committee. At a session on December 16, 1915, Sidney G. Johnson, vice-president of the General Railway Signal Company, testified that Robert Colgate Wood, another Public Service Commissioner, demanded $5,000 from the Union Switch and Signal Company for using his influence as Commissioner to give that company a subway signal system contract. The offer, it was testified, was refused. On January 25, 1916, the Grand Jury in New York County indicted Mr. Wood for the alleged solicitation of a bribe. Meanwhile, on December 27, 1915, George V. S. Williams, another Public Service Commissioner, resigned from office on the plea that for some time he had been contemplating this step, and now that he was no longer “under fire” he could retire in justice to himself. Serious as these developments were, they did not have the damaging effect upon Tammany that might ordinarily be supposed. Except in certain offices here and there Tammany was out of power, and therefore, not being prominently on the defensive, could not be effectively assailed. Moreover, in view of the results of a recently tried libel suit, it was anything but a propitious time for Tammany’s Republican opponents to make capital from such incidents. This libel action, which conspicuously held public attention, was one brought by William Barnes, Jr., Republican State leader, against Theodore Roosevelt. In a published article, Colonel Roosevelt had practically charged that there was a corrupt alliance between Mr. Barnes and Charles F. Murphy, the Tammany leader, and that Mr. Barnes had worked through a corrupt alliance between crooked business and crooked politics. The article did not charge personal corruption in the sense of bribery, but emphasized the nature of the political methods used. The trial of this action resulted, on May 22, 1915, in the jury finding a verdict in favor of Roosevelt. The proceedings of this trial directed general notice much more to the workings of the Republican machine system than to Tammany methods. To the initiated it had long been known that the Republican machine, as the power usually controlling the Legislature, was the preferred instrument through which the powerful financial, industrial, utility, commercial and other corporations operated to get the legislation that they wanted. This fact was now confirmed and disseminated by the outcome of the libel suit. Long, too, had it been suspected that between the apparently hostile political machines there often existed secret understandings or alliances cloaked over by pretended political warfare which was merely mock opposition intended for credulous public consumption. The court proceedings and the verdict showed that the stating of this fact was not a libel.