"Nothing, except look after these eastern states. We'll take care of the West, and also of raising money here for our campaign during October out there."
"Can I be of any service to you in introducing you down town?" he asked.
"No, thank you," said I. "I have a few acquaintances there. I'm not going to fry any fat this trip. My fire isn't hot enough yet."
And I did not. I merely called on two of the big bankers and four heads of industrial combinations and one controller of an ocean-to-ocean railway system. I stayed a very few minutes with each, just long enough to set him thinking and inquiring what the election of Scarborough would mean to him and to his class generally. "If you'll read his speeches," said I to each, "you'll see he intends to destroy your kind of business, that he regards it as brigandage. He's honest, afraid of nothing, and an able lawyer, and he can't be fooled or fooled with. If he's elected he'll carry out his program, Senate or no Senate—and no matter what scares you people cook up in the stock market." To this they made no answer beyond delicately polite insinuations about being tired of paying for that which was theirs of right. I did not argue; it is never necessary to puncture the pretenses of men of affairs with a view to saving them from falling into the error of forgetting that whatever "right" may mean on Sunday, on week days it means that which a man can compel.
I returned to Fredonia and sent Woodruff East to direct a campaign of calamity-howling in the eastern press, for the benefit of the New York, Boston and Philadelphia "captains of industry." At the end of ten days I recalled him, and sent Roebuck to Wall Street to confirm the fears and alarms Woodruff's campaign had aroused. And in the West I was laying out the money I had been able to collect from the leading men of Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio and western Pennsylvania—except a quarter of a million from Howard of New York, to whom we gave the vice-presidential nomination for that sum, and about half a million more given by several eastern men, to whom we promised cabinet offices and posts abroad. I put all this money, not far from two millions, into our "campaign of education" and into those inpourings of delegations upon Burbank at his "rural retreat."
To attempt to combat Scarborough's popularity with the rank and file of his own party, was hopeless. I contented myself with restoring order and arousing enthusiasm in the main body of our partizans in the doubtful and uneasy states. So ruinous had been Goodrich's management that even at that comparatively simple task we should not have succeeded but for the fortunate fact that the great mass of partizans refuses to hear anything from the other side; they regard reasoning as disloyalty—which, curiously enough, it so often is. Then, too, few newspapers in the doubtful states printed the truth about what Scarborough and his supporters were saying and doing. The cost of this perversion of publicity to us—direct money cost, I mean—was almost nothing. The big papers and news associations were big properties, and their rich proprietors were interested in enterprises to which Scarborough's election meant disaster; a multitude of the smaller papers, normally of the opposition, were dependent upon those same enterprises for the advertising that kept them alive.
Perhaps the most far-sighted—certainly, as the event showed, the most fortunate—single stroke of my campaign was done in Illinois. That state was vital to our success; also it was one of the doubtful states where, next to his own Indiana, Scarborough's chances were best. I felt that we must put a heavy handicap on his popularity there. I had noticed that in Illinois the violently radical wing of the opposition was very strong. So I sent Merriweather to strengthen the radicals still further. I hoped to make them strong enough to put through their party's state convention a platform that would be a scarecrow to timid voters in Illinois and throughout the West; and I wished for a "wild man" as the candidate for governor, but I didn't hope it, though I told Merriweather it must be done. Curiously enough, my calculation of the probabilities was just reversed. The radicals were beaten on platform; but, thanks to a desperate effort of Merriweather's in "coaxing" rural delegates, a frothing, wild-eyed, political crank got the nomination. And he never spoke during the campaign that he didn't drive voters away from his ticket—and, therefore, from Scarborough. And our machine there sacrificed the local interests to the general by nominating a popular and not insincere reformer.
When Roebuck and I descended upon Wall Street on October sixteenth, three weeks before election, I had everything in readiness for my final and real campaign.
Throughout the doubtful states, Woodruff was in touch with local machine leaders of Scarborough's party, with corruptible labor and fraternal order leaders, with every element that would for a cash price deliver a body of voters on election day. Also he had arranged in those states for the "right sort" of election officers at upward of five hundred polling places, at least half of them places where several hundred votes could be shifted without danger or suspicion. Also, Burbank and our corps of "spellbinders" had succeeded beyond my hopes in rousing partizan passion—but here again part of the credit belongs to Woodruff. Never before had there been so many free barbecues, distributions of free uniforms to well-financed Burbank and Howard Campaign Clubs, and arrangings of those expensive parades in which the average citizen delights. The wise Woodruff spent nearly one-third of my "education" money in this way.
One morning I found him laughing over the bill for a grand Burbank rally at Indianapolis—about thirty-five thousand dollars, as I remember the figures.