XXXIX
THE news ran like wildfire through Imperialist circles of the City that Sir Munt had “ratted.” Moreover, the influence of a particularly honest and forcible man was such that he threatened to carry with him some of the acknowledged stays of his party. A situation at once arose that was a fitting prelude to the most significant by-election within living memory.
No matter what the moral defects of the prime minister might be, he was a very old and sure hand at the parliament game. His choice of John Endor to throw down the gage of battle to the U. P. was almost inspired. It might thunder up and down the land, but there was no disguising that a prophet had arisen to fight the cause of the oppressed Middle Class. John Endor made a fine champion for the small trader, the struggling professional man, and the people whose moderate, fixed incomes were being taxed out of existence.
The U. P. did not take long to realize the danger of its guns being spiked. Its batteries might thunder unceasingly, the real issues might be obscured in a cloud of poison gas, all its black arts might be called into play, but from the start there was no burking the fact that for once the Newspaper Ring was not going to have a walk-over.
To begin with, it was soon apparent that Cosmos Alley had shown less than its usual acumen in choosing a candidate. At the first blush, Sir Stuyvescent Milgrim, with his protection for key industries, preferential tariffs within the Empire and other shining lures for a purely mercantile community was “the sure card.” But, as John Endor’s first meeting proved, the U. P. champion was not well adapted to withstand the fire of criticism that was suddenly directed upon him from an unexpected quarter.
To the surprise of every politician in the City, the chair at Mr. Endor’s first meeting was occupied by Blackhampton’s Big Noise. For years Sir Josiah Munt had held a unique position in its public life. He was the friend of every good cause. If money had to be raised for a worthy object, a piece of legislation demanded, or a wrong denounced it was “as sure as Monday morning” that Sir Munt in his own characteristic fashion would sit at a small table with a tiny hammer in his hand in the center of the platform of the City’s largest public hall. Moreover, he would bring the occasion home in a few words peculiarly his own. In the art of “putting it over” he had locally no equal. Disdaining mere grammar, verbal finesse, minor niceties of form, at all times he knew how to speak man to man to the citizens.
At the Chairman’s table, Sir Munt was a formidable proposition. He was very much a master man. And from the outset of the fight for Blackhampton East, the friends of Sir Stuyvescent Milgrim had to keep the fact ever before them.
“Seems to some on us, gentlemen,” said Sir Munt, in the course of his opening remarks, at Mr. Endor’s first meeting, “that our Colonial friend with the old Yorkshire name, who is so keen to help us over here, might do almost as well in Ottawa, trying to persuade the Land of Promise to give a square deal to people not so happily situated. Some on us in this hall, who helped to provide his country with the money that has done so much to make her the proposition she is to-day, have not forgotten her Government’s dealings with the Grand Trunk Railway. Those of us in the city who happened to hold the stock have not forgotten how its proprietors were frozen out by penal legislation. I, for one, gentlemen, intend to keep that little episode in mind.”
This was “some” beginning and when the Chairman went on in the racy style in which all public meetings delight, to give his opinion of the U. P. and the inevitable result of government by newspaper, the first fruits of which the country had already reaped, his words fell as seed on a prepared soil. John Endor’s speech was in a different key. His platform manner had not the breadth, the force, the abounding humor of the Mayor’s, but it did not lack “punch.” There was a quality of voice, bearing and gesture which lent to a deliberate, almost leisurely choice of phrase, a moral conviction that drove every word home. The eye of the seer and the fervor of the prophet when under the discipline of the will seldom fail in their impact upon an audience of average people which often has a flair for just those qualities in which it knows itself to be lacking.
John Endor’s first meeting produced a mighty reverberation. It was heard all over the City. But it was a mere prelude to the fight. And what a fight! The “graft” that Sir Munt had feared came powerfully into play. That amazing organization, the U. P., had its unseen tentacles fixed very firmly in the vitals of the nation. It was the biggest Trust in the world’s history, beginning with the Government itself and filtering down through every department of commerce and public life to the smallest retail dealer and the humblest newsboy. For their interest and good will it had something substantial to barter.