The Equal Rights faction became especially active in the Fall of 1884. Its orators raised such a stir that both Tammany Hall and the Whigs suddenly developed an astonishing care for the workingmen. To conciliate them, the Tammany Nominating Committee exacted a written pledge from every one of its candidates requiring an expression of his sentiments on the monopoly question. To counteract the Wigwam, the Whigs gathered a meeting of “Whig Mechanics” at Masonic Hall, October 14, at which opposition to monopolies, especially banking monopolies, was declared. Not to be outdone, the Wigwam got together a meeting of “Democratic Mechanics,” who resolved to oppose monopolies and to restore the constitutional currency. Tammany also began to recognize, even more liberally than before, the naturalized citizens. As a consequence, it won the Fall (1834) election by over 2,300 majority, most of the Equal Rights men voting with it. One-third of its 18,000 voters were estimated at this time to be of foreign birth. Nearly all the Tammany Assemblymen proceeded to forget their pledges, only four of the delegation voting in the February following against the bill giving exclusive privileges to the Peaconic Company. The first clash between the Equal Rights faction and the Tammany monopolists occurred at a meeting at the Wigwam on March 31, 1835. Certain that the Aldermen would never grant additional ferries, the Equal Rights men favored a measure, then pending in the Legislature, for the establishment of a State Board of Commissioners clothed with that power. Gideon Lee,[16] a Wall Street banker, called the meeting to order and nominated Preserved Fish for chairman. Many objections were uttered, and Fish retired. The radicals howled down the Tammany speakers and ran the meeting themselves, adopting resolutions prepared by Joel P. Seaver, declaring for the creation of the State board. A bill for a new ferry--the present South Ferry--was passed the same year. The Equal Rights men still hoped to gain their ends inside the organization. When Cornelius W. Lawrence[17] stood for reelection as Mayor in April, 1835, there was scarcely any opposition to him from any quarter, he receiving 17,696 votes out of a total of 20,196.