When the returns came in the next night, the Socialist vote had jumped from 250 to 1800. Root had only 1,000. O'Brien, the machine candidate, won with 2,500. At the last moment, the Old Man, seeing that Root was hopelessly beaten, had gone back on his bargain and sent out word to elect O'Brien.
"The funny thing about the Socialists is," Benson said to me, "that they are dead right. Take Lipsky. He's a dub of a politician, but pretty good as a philosopher. Wasn't it old Mark Aurelius who wanted the world ruled by philosophers—not a bad idea—only it's impracticable. They are right to suspect us reformers. Nine out of ten of the settlement bunch are just like Maynard—quitters when it comes to the issue. They'd like to uplift the working class, but they don't want to be mistaken for them. And after all this red light business is only a symptom. You and I and Lipsky can afford to be philosophic about it—we haven't any daughters. But the fathers who live in this dirty district—they ask for bread—not any philosopher's stone. Any way, we fixed Root, and that is what we set out to do."
"It cost me a lot of money," he said later. "And I did not want to go broke just now. There is a bunch of swindlers out in Chicago with a fake shoe polish they want me to market. It will ruin a shoe in two months. They are offering me all kinds of money. I hate to go to it—but I guess I'll have to."
He sat down to his desk and began studying his bills and bank-book.
"How would 'shin-ide' do for a bum shoe-polish?" he said, looking up suddenly. "'Shin-ide. It puts halos on your shoes.'"
Our sudden burst into politics, at least Benson's—my small part in it was never known—attracted a good deal of newspaper notice. Certainly Root realized where his troubles started, and he went heartily about making us uncomfortable.
A couple of mornings after election, the Rev. Mr. Dawn, the head-worker, came to our room, his hands full of newspapers and letters—the "corpus delicti."
I wish I could give more space to Dawn. He was a thoroughly good man. And although we judged him harshly at the time, I think an admirable man. At least, I feel that I ought to think so about him, but some of the old contempt still clings to his memory.
His whole soul was wrapped up in the settlement movement. Socialism was repellent to him because it insisted on the existence of class lines. He had come to America from England because the class distinctions—so closely drawn there—were repugnant to him. He hoped in our young Republic to see a development in the opposite direction. His hope blinded him.
And in spite of his loudly-professed Democracy, he was essentially aristocratic in his ideas of social service. The solution of our manifest ills he expected to find in the good intentions of the "better bred." Their loving kindness was to bring cheer and comfort to the lowly. His faith in the settlement movement was real and great, which of course made him very conservative in the face of any issue which involved its good repute.