“Riggs,” Dana once remarked to a friend, “is my Phil Sheridan.” It was through Riggs that Thomas C. Platt, then the Republican master of New York State, sent word to Dana that he would like to have the _Sun’s_ idea of a financial plank for the Republican State platform of 1896. The plank was written by Mr. Dana and the _Sun’s_ publisher--afterward owner--William M. Laffan. It denounced the movement for the free coinage of silver and declared in favour of the gold standard. The State convention, held in March, adopted Dana’s plank, and the national convention in June accepted the same ideas in framing the platform upon which Major McKinley was elected to the Presidency. It was Riggs who carried a message from Dana to Platt, in 1897, asking the New York Senator to withdraw his opposition to the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Platt complied, and Roosevelt got the position. Some years ago, in response to a question as to the difference between a political reporter and a political correspondent, Riggs wrote: There was a vast difference between the two. The political reporter is he who begins at the foot of the ladder when he reports the actual facts at a ward meeting. The political correspondent is he who has run the gamut of ward meetings, primaries, Assembly district, Senate district, and Congress district conventions, city conventions, county conventions, State conventions, and national conventions, and who builds his articles to his newspaper on his information of the situation in the State or nation, based upon circumstances and facts arising out of all of the aforesaid conventions. A political reporter and a political correspondent occupy in newspaper life the same relative positions as the cellar-digger and the architect in the building-trade world. Cellar-digger is just as important in his sphere as architect. The most superb architects were the most superb cellar-diggers. No man can be a successful political correspondent unless he has been a successful political reporter. Judges are made out of lawyers, generals and admirals out of cadets. Only the most ordinary of human virtues are necessary for the equipment of a successful political reporter and correspondent--cleanliness, sobriety, honesty, and truthfulness. Writing of Riggs as the dean of American political correspondents, Samuel G. Blythe said in the _Saturday Evening Post_: He has made it his business to know men in all parts of the country, and to know them so they will tell him as much of the truth as they will tell anybody. He is tenacious of his opinions and loyal to his friends. He is jolly, good-natured, companionable, and a fine chap to have around when he is in repose. Wherever men spoke the English language he was known as “Riggs--of the _Sun_.”