Edmond Kelly, founder of the City Club, gained early experience with the City Reform Club. From Welling's As the Twig Is Bent. Asiatic cholera. Reformers had failed to follow up their 1890 election efforts to defeat Tammany, and in the 1892 municipal election there were no reform candidates running for office. Glumly, the Club watched Thomas Gilroy, the Croker-picked candidate for mayor, triumph over his httle-known Republican opponent. Tammany's domination of the city's government was assured for at least two more years. More serious trouble stemmed from bitter internal dissensions that increased as self-doubt concerning the Club's effectiveness became pervasive. In late December Edmond Kelly resigned in disgust from the organization.35 Kelly, who was rapidly drifting toward socialism, scorned the "uncompromising idealism" of some of the members, notably John Jay Chapman. Kelly had little sympathy with Chapman's inability to accept the necessity of compromise as a means to reform, and Chapman, in turn, had even less sympathy with Kelly's socialist ideas.36 38 Edmond Kelly (1851—1909), born in France of American parents, educated at English schools and later at Columbia Law School, had settled in France where he became a well-known lawyer. After the death of his wife, he returned to the U.S. in 1891 and engaged in municipal reform. Dictionary of American Biography, X, 307. 36 Welling to Mark A. DeWolfe Howe, October 8, 1934, Welling Papers, NYPL; Richard Hovey, John Jay Chapman: An American Mind (New York: 1959), 65.