“With a million-and-a-half people who are paying enormous taxes for which they receive scant value, who have thrust on them a legislature and other officials they are forced to elect at the Boss’s order!” finished Standish. “Surely, it’s an uphill fight that’s well worth while, if we can wake men to a sense of their own slavery and the frauds they are forced to connive at. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
The more experienced, if less enthusiastic, Ansel scratched his chin doubtfully.
“The people, as a mass, are slow to wake,” he observed. “Oftener they just open one eye and growl at being bothered, and then roll over and go happily to sleep again while the Boss goes through their pockets. Don’t start this campaign too optimistically, Mr. Standish. And don’t get the idea the people are begging to be waked. If you wake them you’ve got to do it against their will. Not with any help of theirs. Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t. As you say, it’s perhaps worth a try. Even if——”
“But they’ve been waked before,” insisted Standish. “And when they do awaken, there are no half-measures about it. Look how Jerome, on an independent fight, won out against the Machine in 1905. Why should the Mountain State——”
“The people are sleepy by nature,” laughed Ansel. “They wake up with a roar, chase the Boss out of their house, smash the Machine and then go back to bed again with the idea they’re heroes. As soon as their eyes are shut, back strolls the Boss, mends his Machine and reopens business at the old stand. And that’s what you have to look forward to. But we’ve been all over this sort of thing before. I’ll have your ‘speech-route’ made out in an hour, and start a man over it this afternoon to arrange about the halls and the ‘papering’ and the press work. Speaking of press work, I had your candidature telegraphed to New York to the Associated Press early this morning. There’ll be a perfect cloud of reporters up here before night. We must arrange to see them before the Conover crowd can get hold of them. Sympathy from out-of-State papers won’t do us any harm. The country at large has a pretty fair idea of the way Conover runs the Mountain State. And the country likes to watch a good fight against long odds. There’s lots of sympathy for the under dog—as long as the sympathizer has no money on the upper one.”
“How about the sketch of the situation that you were having Craig write out, telling about the stolen franchises, the arbitrary tax-rate, the machine-made candidates, the railroad rule and all that? It ought to prove a good campaign document if he handles the subject well.”
“Oh, he’s handled it all right. I’ve read the rough draft. Takes Conover from the very start. Tells of his boyhood in the yards of the C. G. & X., and how he bullied and schemed until he got into the management’s offices, the string of saloons he ran along the route and the drink-checks he made the men on his section cash in for liquor at his saloons, and all that. Then his career as Alderman, when he found out beforehand where the new reservoir lands and City Hall site were to be, and his buying them up, on mortgage, and clearing his first big pile. And that deal he worked in ‘bearing’ the C. G. & X. stock to $1.10, and scaring everyone out and scooping the pot; that’s brought in, too. And he’s got the story of Conover’s gradually working the railroad against the State and the State against the road, till he had a throat grip on both, and——”
“Wait a moment!” interrupted Standish. “Is all the sketch made up of that sort of thing?”
“Most of it. Good, red-hot——”
“It must be done all over, then. We are not digging up Conover’s personal past, but his influence on the State and on the Democratic Party. I’m not swinging the muckrake or flinging dirt at my opponent. That sort of vituperation——”