A Spoil of Office: A Story of the Modern West

by Hamlin Garland

When Bradley stepped forward, he was very pale.

"Friends and fellow-citizens," he began, after the applause had ended, "I can't find words to express my feeling for the great honor you have done me. I thank the citizens of Rock River for their aid, but I want to say—I'm going to run this campaign in the farmers' interest, because the interests of this county and of this State are agricultural, and whatever hurts the farmer hurts every other man in the State. There is no war between the town and the country. The war is between the people and the monopolist wherever he is, whether he is in the country or in the town. It is not true that the interests of the town dweller and of the farmer are necessarily antagonistic; the cause of the people is the same everywhere. It's like the condition of affairs between England and Ireland. People say that Ireland is fighting England—fighting the English people, but that is not the fact. The antagonism is between the Irish people and the English landlord. So the fight in America is the people against the special privileges enjoyed by a few. It's because these few generally live in towns that we seem to be fighting the towns.

"As the Judge said, we've settled the liquor question in this State; it won't come up again unless office seekers drag it up. It has been our State issue—that and the railroads; and now that is settled, we can turn our attention to the finishing up of the railway problem and to the discussion of the tariff."

"And the money!" shouted some one; "abolish the national banks!"

Bradley hesitated a little. "No, we can't do that, but we can destroy any special privilege they hold. But the first thing that stares us in the face is the war tariff that is eating us up. I'm going to state just what I think in this campaign, and you can vote for me or not. It is sheer robbery to continue a tariff that was laid at a time when we needed enormous revenue. See the surplus piling up in the public vault. You say it's better to have a surplus than a deficit. Yes, but I'd rather have the surplus in the pockets of the people. This taxing the people to death, in order to have a surplus to expend in senseless appropriations, is poor policy."

In this strain his whole speech ran, and it had an electrical effect. They cheered him tremendously, and the meeting broke up, and discussion burst out all over the hall with appalling fury, and continued each day thereafter. The railroad question and the tariff question began right there to divide the county into two camps. The young leader carried the same disturbing influence into every township in which he spoke, and the whole county became a debating school. It took a position far ahead of the other counties of the State in the questions.

Men stopped each other, and talked from plow to plow across the line fence. They met in the road upon dusty loads of wheat, and sat hours at a time under the burning August sun to discuss the matter of railroad commissions, and the fixing of rates, and the question of reducing the surplus in the treasury.

The old greenbackers came out of their temporary retirement, and helped Bradley's cause simply because he was young and a dissenter. They were a power, for most of them were deeply read on the tariff and on the railroad problem; in fact, were all round radicals and fluent speakers.

Judge Brown kept out of it. "I don't want to seem too prominent in this campaign," he said to Colonel Peavey. "We old Mohawks are a damage to any man's campaign just now. The time is coming, Colonel, when we'll help, but not now. We've set the mischief afoot; now let the young fellows and the farmers do the rest of it. Besides, my young man here is quite able to look out for himself. All that scares me is he'll get too radical, even for the Democracy, one of these days. If he does, all is we'll have to build a party up to his principle, for he'll be right, Colonel; there's no two ways about that."