“For, observe! It is not as wood that it burns. Madré de Dios, no! It is the wrath of the devil on the end of a stick.”
The Union Electric had the contract for the whole outfit of the lights and trolleys, and sent me down to handle it. I had good nerve then. I thought electricity was king, and that a man could do anything he set out to do. He can, but my nerve is not so good now.
Now The Union Electric Company's contract was to furnish the city of Portate so many arc lights, at so much a month per light, with monthly payments, but there was more politics in it than I was used to. It took me some time to see that if the Mayor bought a set of gilt furniture on the 28th, and the paymaster a span of horses on the 29th, it wasn't reasonable to bring them a city lighting bill on the 30th. But they thought it unreasonable, and after awhile I came near thinking so too. I had to get five signatures to each bill, and the signatures took turns going off into the country between the 30th and the 15th. After that they generally came with protests in parentheses, that arc No. 53 had been observed by respected gentlemen to sputter improperly, and that arc No. 5, on a certain night, had refused to burn, in contempt of authority,—which was because a native had heaved a stone into it, out of religious scruples. They were always in arrears.
They liked it that way. They said it was delay in tax-collecting. It was very warm. Did the Senor suffer from the heat? Alas! the tax collector was too fat. It had been represented to his Excellency that tax collectors should be thinner. They were thirty thousand dollars behind. It seemed to me that the city of Portate was too happy. It didn't have troubles enough.
I went to see the Mayor, what they call the “Jefe Municipal.”
He was a puffy old man, of about the fatness of the tax collector, but smaller, and wore a white moustache and imperial in such a way that it seemed to be his symbol of authority.
I said, “Mayor, the city owes me thirty thousand dollars.”
“Is it possible!” he cried, holding up his hands. “But we do pay you too much. How does the city owe you so much if it is not too much?”
That was good tropical logic. Tropical logic always confused me.
“My friend,” he said, “is it not in your country also that the corporation oppresses the people?”