The age-herald., 1900-07-14
HILL>CROKER QUARREL.
Alfred Henry Lewis Gives It's Secret
 History.


 adelphia North American, gives what pur-
 ports to be the secret history of the Hill- | Croker quarrel It is folows | While one is waiting a week or fort
 night before searching for popular feelings as to Bryan and the Kansas City platform, the brief story of the Croker-Hill difference
 in it's course and extent may with profit be told It will assist one in any New York
 estimate he may now or hereafter seek to
 make. As a first proposal, then, no one
 need fear harm to Bryan the fruit of a Hill enmity Hill may offer no effort to the
 injury of the ticket. If he be sagacious he will not. Should he do so, however, ne would but waste his time. Hill could not, with the bitterest effort he could make, de- track from the ticket 100 votes. Hill Has No Strength This will sound strange to ears beyond | New York. Hill has been Governor and | Senator and might naturally expect | him to have a following. As fact, how | ever, he has no strength that would adhere to him were he to fight the party at the | polls Hill has no personal following, as | Croker has, Folk admire Hill for his cour- | age, his brains, his forensic genius They | do not cling to him-do not even trust him. | Hill is capable of much unpopularity. This | is due mainly to the fact that Hill thinks | of no one but himself, and is moved oftener 1 of an impulse born of his vanity and his | selishness than of anything else No one walks the avenues of politics to- | day who is better off because of Hill. He l has helped no one This is important at | least in New York, where most folk are | asleep or awake are dreaming or thinking. Croker so far differs from Hill that those | who have benefited politically by his friend- | ship and his effort might for their numbers | be mustered into brigade. Even Hill is | himself an example. Hill has been Gov | ernor and Senator, in the past, wholly and | solely, by delegates, votes and funds that l Croker gave him. As Croker has more than | once said, however, Hill owes him nothing | for that Croker did it to please and favor l Murphy not Hill. Still, the whole story of i the Hill and the Croker past the first
 selfish, the other generous and conducting 1 his politics live-and-let-live plan, of | fers the key to that riddle why-locally at | least-the one is so much hated and the | ether much loved.
 Croker's Feud With Hill Croker's feud with Hill is one of no late | date It will never be patched up. It be- l gan as far away as the days of Tweed Hill ] was a favorite of Tweed's, ran a Tweed 1 paper in Chemung County, and was known | as 'Tweeds Elmira man. Croker from l the beginning was inimcal to Tweed; his
 day and night enemy, and among those | foremost agencies that brought about l Tweeds downfall and rescued Tammany l Hall from Tweeds control.
 From that far-off day of Tweed until l now Hill and Croker have never once | agreed. In their very natures they could | not come together. Hill alert agile, bril- | liant, shifty, full of word tricks, and more l apt to keep promise in its letter than in 1 its spirit, was precisely a figure that Croker would first distrust and finally condemn. 1 Croker, on the toher hand, cool, steady, | oaklike, with capacity to indomitably de- | fend; who held his word higher than gold, l and never departed a promise or avoided an obligation, was just naturally the | subject of Hills hatred. Murphy, whose l forte is peace and peacemaking, and in
 whom Croker has boundless confidence has | ever stood between the other rancerous | two and prevented war.
 | Croker would have contented himself
 with positively despising Hill as one whose word was breakable, and who had no | gratitude-an attribute, this latter, upon | which Croker in his estimates of men lays | deepest stress-were it not for one guilty
 caper of Hills. It was in 1891. Croker had
 resigned his leadership of Tammany Hall
 to John c. Sheehan and gone to England. 1 Hill was pleased to the point of open glee, | and rejoiced with the thought that he had | seen the last of his stubborn enemy. Hill
 had the ill-grace, not to say the unwis- | dom, to jubiate with an insulting open | ness.
 | Hill's Attack on Croter | It was one evening when Hill was asked | to address the Democratic Club; the same l whereof three years ago Croker took pos | session and rehabilitated. The late Gov | ernor Flower was then the clubs presi- | dent
 We have entered Upon a new era," ob- | served the exultant Hill in the course of | his remarks. We have gotten rid, and I | trust forever, of those leaders who. getting
 their money, heaven knows how, retire
 from the party and the country to gamble
 it away on the English race tracks" | Croker heard of this and his resentments | lifted up their dangerous heads. Croker's ] is a representative nature, albeit his rug l ged, square-cornered outlines might sue- i gest different thought It may well that | Hills gratuitous and mendacious insults : had later everything to do with bringing 1 Croker back from England to retake tho l reins of Tammany Hall. Croker never for l got or forgave that attack. It is upper- most in his thoughts at every glimpse he i gets of Hill, and reason for instantly | assailing him.
 Croker mentioned the occurrence to Hill | a year later, and Hill, then Senator l chanced to be in his room in d certain New
 York hotel. Croker, equally by chance | happened to be sitting in the hotel hjbby | He had just returned from England | What Croker Told ninIsIey .- l One Hinkley, at that time a great ad- | mirer and satchel-carrier of Hll's came | by. He was pushing breathlessly for Hills | room to greet him.
 1 Have you met the Senator?' asked l Hinkley as he paused before Croker 1 T have not" replied Croker nor am I
 likely to. Hill is no friend of mine"
 Then Croker, retorting to Hinkley's ex- U of sI1rra ris,a ntal h