To hide what was in my thought, I made a pretense of considering the business in every one of its angles. There was a minute during which neither of us spoke.
“Why should I put the machine,” I asked at last, “in unnecessary peril of the law? This should be a campaign of fire. Every stick of those three millions you speak of would go to stoke the furnaces. I will do as well, and win more surely, with the labor people.”
“But do you want to put the mob in possession?” demanded Morton, emerging a bit from his dandyisms. “I'm no purist of politics; indeed, I think I'm rather practical than otherwise, don't y' know. I am free to say, however, that I fear a worst result should those savages of a dinner-can and a dollar-a-day, succeed—really! You should think once in a while, and particularly in a beastly squall like the present, of the City itself.”
“Should I?” I returned. “Now I'll let you into an organization tenet. Tammany, blow high, blow low, thinks only of itself.”
“You would be given half the offices, remember.”
“And the Police?”
“And the Police.”
“Tammany couldn't keep house without the police,” said I, laughing. “You've seen enough of our housekeeping to know that.”
“You may have the police, and what else you will.”
“Well,” said I, bringing the talk to a close, “I can't give you an answer now. I must look the situation in the eyes. To be frank, I don't think either the Tammany interest or my own runs with yours in this. I, with my people, live at the other end of the lane.”