Perhaps his hottest battle was over the law to tax corporations which held public franchises. This touched the owners of street railways in the cities and towns, and many other corporations which enjoyed a monopoly in managing quasi-public utilities. "In politics there is no politics," said that elderly early mentor of Roosevelt when he first sat in the Assembly. Legislatures existed simply to do the bidding of Big Business, was the creed of the men who controlled Big Business. They contributed impartially to the Republican and Democratic campaign funds. They had Republican Assemblymen and Democratic Assemblymen in their service, and their lobbyists worked harmoniously with either party. Merely to suggest that the special privileges of the corporations might be open to discussion was sacrilege. No wonder, therefore, that the holders of public franchises marshaled all their forces against the Governor. Boss Platt wrote Roosevelt a letter--one of the sort inspired more by sorrow than by anger--to the effect that he had been warned that the Governor was a little loose on the relations of capital and labor, on trusts and combinations, and, in general, on the right of a man to run his business as he chose, always respecting, of course, the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code. The Senator was shocked and pained to perceive that this warning had a real basis, and that the Governor's "altruism" in behalf of the people had led him to urge curtailing the rights of corporations. Roosevelt, instead of feeling contrite at this chiding, redoubled his energy. The party managers buried the bill. Roosevelt then sent a special message, as the New York Governors are empowered to do. It was laid on the Speaker's desk, but no notice was taken of it. The next morning he sent this second message to the Speaker: 'I learn that the emergency message which I sent last evening to the Assembly on behalf of the Franchise Tax Bill has not been read. I, therefore, send hereby another. I need not impress upon the Assembly the need of passing this bill at once .... It establishes the principle that hereafter corporations holding franchises from the public shall pay their just share of the public burden.'* * Riis, 221. The Speaker, the Assembly, and the Machine now gave heed. The corporations saw that it would be suicidal to bring down on themselves the avalanche of fury which was accumulating. The bill passed. Roosevelt had set a precedent for controlling corporate truculence.