In each case I did my best to persuade Mr. Platt not to oppose me.  I endeavored to make it clear to him that I was not trying to wrest the organization from him; and I always gave him in detail the reasons why I felt I had to take the position I intended to adopt.  It was only after I had exhausted all the resources of my patience that I would finally, if he still proved obstinate, tell him that I intended to make the fight anyhow.  As I have said, the Senator was an old and feeble man in physique, and it was possible for him to go about very little.  Until Friday evening he would be kept at his duties at Washington, while I was in Albany.  If I wished to see him it generally had to be at his hotel in New York on Saturday, and usually I would go there to breakfast with him.  The one thing I would not permit was anything in the nature of a secret or clandestine meeting.  I always insisted on going openly.  Solemn reformers of the tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid attention to the name and not the thing, were much exercised over my “breakfasting with Platt.”  Whenever I breakfasted with him they became sure that the fact carried with it some sinister significance.  The worthy creatures never took the trouble to follow the sequence of facts and events for themselves.  If they had done so they would have seen that any series of breakfasts with Platt always meant that I was going to do something he did not like, and that I was trying, courteously and frankly, to reconcile him to it.  My object was to make it as easy as possible for him to come with me.  As long as there was no clash between us there was no object in my seeing him; it was only when the clash came or was imminent that I had to see him.  A series of breakfasts was always the prelude to some active warfare.[*] In every instance I substantially carried my point, although in some cases not in exactly the way in which I had originally hoped.

[*] To illustrate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine to Senator Platt of December 13, 1899.  He had been trying to get me to promote a certain Judge X over the head of another Judge Y. I wrote:  “There is a strong feeling among the judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it.  I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to adopt.  Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson’s at 8:30.”

There were various measures to which he gave a grudging and querulous assent without any break being threatened.  I secured the reenactment of the Civil Service Law, which under my predecessor had very foolishly been repealed.  I secured a mass of labor legislation, including the enactment of laws to increase the number of factory inspectors, to create a Tenement House Commission (whose findings resulted in further and excellent legislation to improve housing conditions),