“In the first place,” said the Railroader, “I think you called me a ‘cur.’ Twice, I believe, you said that. You most likely thought I’d get mad. A cur does get mad when he’s called bad names. But a grown man’s too busy to kick the puppy that yelps at his heels. A man of sense keeps his mouth shut, unless he’s got something to say. If a cur hasn’t anything else to yelp at, he goes out and picks a scrap with the moon, or at something else that’s too big or too high up to bother to hit back when he barks at it. Me, for instance. So we’ll let it go at that, and we won’t bother to get up a puzzle picture of us both and label it ‘Find the cur.’ Have a cigar? No? They aren’t campaign smokes. You needn’t ’a’ been afraid of ’em.”
He lighted a gaudily-banded perfecto, puffed it a minute, and went on:
“I don’t know why I’m going to waste time talking to you. I’ve never took the trouble, before, to defend myself or to try to make other folks see my view of the case. But you’re a well-meaning chap, for all you’re such an ass. And maybe something’s due you after the luck I put you up against on that tour of yours. So I’m just going to squander some words on you. And after that I’ll ask you to trot off home, for I’ve some riding to do.”
He shifted his cigar to an angle of his mouth and resumed:
“In the first place, you give me the usual rank old talk about the way I treat the people of the Mountain State. Why do I boss this City and the State? Because the people want me to. Why do I run things to suit myself in my railroads and my legislature? Because the people want me to. Now you’re getting ready to say that’s a lie. It isn’t. Why don’t I grab the food off some man’s dinner table? Because he don’t want me to. He’d yell for the police or pull a gun on me if I tried it. Why do I saddle that same man with any taxes I choose? Why do I elect my own crowd to office and work franchises and everything else just as I like? Because he does want me to. If he didn’t he wouldn’t let me. He could stop me from stealing his dinner. And he would. He could stop me from grabbing his State. And he doesn’t. Do you s’pose for a second that I, or Tom Platt, or Richard Croker, or Charley Murphy, or Matt Quay or any other boss who ever lived, could have made ten people in the whole world do what those people didn’t want to? You knew well enough they couldn’t. Then, why did Platt and Quay and the rest boss the Machine? Why do I boss the Machine? Because the people want to be bossed. Because they’d rather be led than to lead themselves. Can you find a flaw in that? Facts is facts, and history is history. Bosses is bosses, and the people are sheep. Is a shepherd in the herding business for his health and to amuse and el’vate the sheep? Not he. He’s in the game for the money he can get out of shearing and occasional butchering. So am I. My own pocket first, last and always. If it wasn’t me it’d be another shepherd. And maybe one that’d make the sheep sweat worse’n I do.”
Clive’s lips parted in protest, but Caleb waved him to silence.
“You were going to say some wise thing about the people’s inviolate rights, eh? We’ve all got ‘inviolate rights.’ But if we leave ’em laying around loose and don’t stand up for ’em, we can’t expect much pity when someone else cops ’em away from us. If I try to turn you out of your house, you’ve got a right to prevent me. And you would. If you sat by and let me do it, you’d deserve what you got. If I try to turn the people out of their rights in the Legislature and they stand for it, who’s got a kick coming? Once in a blue moon some man whose brains have all run to lungs—nothing personal—gets up and shouts to the people that they’re being conned. Sometimes—not this time, mind you—they believe it, and they throw over the Machine and elect a bunch of wall-eyed reformers that know as much about practical politics as a corn-fed dodo bird knows about theology. What happens? The city and the State are run in a way that’d make a schoolboy cry. At the end of one single administration there’s a record of incompetence and messed-up official affairs that takes a century to straighten out. The police have been made so pure they won’t let ice and milk be sold for sick babies on Sundays, but they haven’t time to keep folks from being sandbagged in open daylight. The Building Department Commissioners are so incorruptible they don’t know a brick from a lump of putty. And the contractors eat up chunks of overpay for rotten work. And so in every branch of government. The people get wise to all this, and they decide it’s better to be bled by professionals and to get at least part of their money’s worth in decent service than it is to be bled just as heavy by a pack of measly amachoors and get no service at all. So back they come to the Boss, begging him to get on the job again. Which he does, being a self-sacrificing sort of a cuss, and glad to help the ‘plain pe-ople.’ Likewise himself.”
“The administration you describe is the result of fanaticism, not real reform. It——”
“From where I sit, the difference between the two ain’t so great as to show to the undressed eye. You speak of lawyers and country editors being bought by my passes. Is there any law making ’em accept those passes if they don’t want ’em? Could I buy ONE of those men if he wasn’t for sale? There’s just one thing more, and then your little lesson’ll be over and you can run home. All through this delightful little ree-union you’ve kind of took the ‘holier-than-thou’ tone that’s such a pleasing trait of you reformers when you’re dealing with mere sane folks. Now, the best thing you can do is to take that fool idea out for a walk and lose it, for you not only ain’t any better than me, but ain’t half the man, and never will be half the man I am. You were born with a gold spoon in your mouth. The spoon was pulled out after you grew up, but not till you had your education and your profession. What did you do? You’d had the best advantages money could buy you. And for all that, the most you could rise to was a measly every-day law practice. That’s all the dividends the tens of thousands of dollars invested in your future were ever able to declare, or ever will be able to. I started life dead broke. No education, no pull, no cash, no prospects. I don’t know just how rich I am to-day, but no one’s going to call you a liar if you put it at forty millions. And I’m bossing bigger territory—and bossing with more power—than half the so-called high and mighty kings of Yurrup. Now, s’pose you’d started where I did? Where’d you be to-day? You’d be the ‘honest young brakeman on the branch road,’ or at best you’d be ‘our genial and rising young feller-townsman,’ the second deputy assistant passenger agent of the C. G. & X. That’s where you’d be. And you know it. Had you the brains or the sand to get where I am? Not you. Any more than one of those patent leather ’ristocrats in France had the genius to win out the Napoleon job. You’re where you started. I’ve kept on rising. And I’ll rise to the White House before I’m done. Now I ask you, fair and square, which of us two is the best man, and if you oughtn’t to be looking up to Caleb Conover instead of——”
“I am the better man,” answered Clive quietly. “And so is any honest man. And I can look down on you for the same reason any square American can look down on a political Boss. Because we are honest and you are not.”