I did not lose my identity with my ward, but now my work covered all Philadelphia, and my retainers became larger and more numerous, for I was within the local sphere of the “big interests.”
At that time the boss was a man by the name of Hardy. He was born in the western part of the State, but came to Philadelphia when a boy, his mother having married the second time a man named Metz, who was then City Treasurer and who afterwards became Mayor.
Hardy was a singular man for a boss; small of frame, with features almost effeminate, and with anything but a robust constitution, he did a prodigious amount of work.
He was not only taciturn to an unusual degree, but he seldom wrote, or replied to letters. Yet he held an iron grip upon the organization.
His personal appearance and quiet manners inspired many ambitious underlings to try to dislodge him, but their failure was signal and complete.
He had what was, perhaps, the most perfectly organized machine against which any municipality had ever had the misfortune to contend.
Hardy made few promises and none of them rash, but no man could truthfully say that he ever broke one. I feel certain that he would have made good his spoken word even at the expense of his fortune or political power.
Then, too, he played fair, and his henchmen knew it. He had no favorites whom he unduly rewarded at the expense of the more efficient. He had likes and dislikes as other men, but his judgment was never warped by that. Success meant advancement, failure meant retirement.
And he made his followers play fair. There were certain rules of the game that had to be observed, and any infraction thereof meant punishment.
The big, burly fellows he had under him felt pride in his physical insignificance, and in the big brain that had never known defeat.