On arrival I found the Lieutenant-Governor elect, Mr. Woodruff, who had also been asked to come.  The Senator informed me that he was glad to say that I would have a most admirable man as Superintendent of Public Works, as he had just received a telegram from a certain gentleman, whom he named, saying that he would accept the position!  He handed me the telegram.  The man in question was a man I liked; later I appointed him to an important office in which he did well.  But he came from a city along the line of the canal, so that I did not think it best that he should be appointed anyhow; and, moreover, what was far more important, it was necessary to have it understood at the very outset that the Administration was my Administration and was no one else’s but mine.  So I told the Senator very politely that I was sorry, but that I could not appoint his man.  This produced an explosion, but I declined to lose my temper, merely repeating that I must decline to accept any man chosen for me, and that I must choose the man myself.  Although I was very polite, I was also very firm, and Mr. Platt and his friends finally abandoned their position.

I appointed an engineer from Brooklyn, a veteran of the Civil War, Colonel Partridge, who had served in Mayor Low’s administration.  He was an excellent man in every way.  He chose as his assistant, actively to superintend the work, a Cornell graduate named Elon Hooker, a man with no political backing at all, picked simply because he was the best equipped man for the place.  The office, the most important office under me, was run in admirable fashion throughout my Administration; I doubt if there ever was an important department of the New York State Government run with a higher standard of efficiency and integrity.

But this was not all that had to be done about the canals.  Evidently the whole policy hitherto pursued had been foolish and inadequate.  I appointed a first-class non-partisan commission of business men and expert engineers who went into the matter exhaustively, and their report served as the basis upon which our entire present canal system is based.  There remained the question of determining whether the canal officials who were in office before I became Governor, and whom I had declined to reappoint, had been guilty of any action because of which it would be possible to proceed against them criminally or otherwise under the law.  Such criminal action had been freely charged against them during the campaign by the Democratic (including the so-called mugwump) press.  To determine this matter I appointed two Democratic lawyers, Messrs. Fox and MacFarlane (the latter Federal District Attorney for New York under President Cleveland), and put the whole investigation in their hands.  These gentlemen made an exhaustive investigation lasting several months.  They reported that there had been grave delinquency in the prosecution of the work, delinquency which justified public condemnation of those responsible