come a personal fight,
explaining again and again that I was perfectly willing to appoint an
organization man, and naming two or three whom I was willing to appoint,
but also explaining that I would not retain the incumbent, and would not
appoint any man of his type. Meanwhile pressure on behalf of the said
incumbent began to come from the business men of New York.

The Superintendent of Insurance was not a man whose ill will the big
life insurance companies cared to incur, and company after company
passed resolutions asking me to reappoint him, although in private some
of the men who signed these resolutions nervously explained that they
did not mean what they had written, and hoped I would remove the man. A
citizen prominent in reform circles, marked by the Cato-like austerity
of his reform professions, had a son who was a counsel for one of the
insurance companies. The father was engaged in writing letters to the
papers demanding in the name of uncompromising virtue that I should not
only get rid of the Superintendent of Insurance, but in his place should
appoint somebody or other personally offensive to Senator Platt--which
last proposition, if adopted, would have meant that the Superintendent
of Insurance would have stayed in, for the reasons I have already given.
Meanwhile the son came to see me on behalf of the insurance company he
represented and told me that the company was anxious that there should
be a change in the superintendency; that if I really meant to fight,
they thought they had influence with four of the State Senators,
Democrats and Republicans, whom they could get to vote to confirm
the man I nominated, but that they wished to be sure that I would not
abandon the fight, because it would be a very bad thing for them if I
started the fight and then backed down. I told my visitor that he need
be under no apprehensions, that I would certainly see the fight through.
A man who has much to do with that kind of politics which concerns both
New York politicians and New York business men and lawyers is not easily
surprised, and therefore I felt no other emotion than a rather sardonic
amusement when thirty-six hours later I read in the morning paper
an open letter from the officials of the very company who had been
communicating with me in which they enthusiastically advocated the
renomination of the Superintendent. Shortly afterwards my visitor,
the young lawyer, called me up on the telephone and explained th