Mr.
Platt then said that the incumbent would be put back as soon as the Legislature reconvened; I admitted that this was possible, but added cheerfully that I would remove him again just as soon as that Legislature adjourned, and that even though I had an uncomfortable time myself, I would guarantee to make my opponents more uncomfortable still.
We parted without any sign of reaching an agreement.
There remained some weeks before final action could be taken, and the Senator was confident that I would have to yield.

His most efficient allies were the pretended reformers, most of them my open or covert enemies, who loudly insisted that I must make an open fight on the Senator himself and on the Republican organization.

This was what he wished, for at that time there was no way of upsetting him within the Republican party; and, as I have said, if I had permitted the contest to assume the shape of a mere faction fight between the Governor and the United States Senator, I would have insured the victory of the machine.

So I blandly refused to let the thing become 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.