me what you knew about it.” He insulted them all, one by one, in turn, including Sam Dickinson, and then he made a famous threat to the whole party:
“To all of you I say, you can’t bring your suit without the consent of the Attorney-general, and the Attorney-general is my brother.”
No matter what an honest man in office tries to do, if he persists, he comes sooner or later upon the corrupt business back of corrupt politics. And no matter what kind of reform it undertakes, an honest city administration, if it proceeds logically, has to appeal sooner or later to the corrupt state government back of the corrupt city government. Mark Fagan had come, as we have seen, upon the trolley business, and when Tom McCarter pointed to his brother Robert at Trenton, he was showing the Mayor of Jersey City where he must go next. And Mayor Fagan went where Tom McCarter pointed, and what Tom McCarter predicted happened. When Jersey City asked Attorney-general McCarter to take its expired franchise into court, Tom’s brother, Robert, refused.
Thus Mark Fagan learned that the trolley was king of his state. And he was to learn that the railroad was queen.
During this, his first administration, the Mayor
