CHAPTER LXXVII
ALETA'S PROBLEM
By the end of Schmitz' second term the Democrats and Republicans were thoroughly alarmed. They saw a workingmen's control of city government loom large and imminent, with all its threat of overturned political tradition.
So the old line parties got together. They made it a campaign of Morality against imputed Vice. They selected as a fusion standard-bearer George S. Partridge, a young lawyer of unblemished reputation--and of untried strength.
"If Ruef succeeds a third time," Frank said to his father, "he'll control the town. He'll elect a full Board of Supervisors ... that is freely prophesied if Union Labor wins. You ought to see his list of candidates--waffle bakers, laundry wagon drivers--horny-fisted sons of toil and parasites of politics. Heaven help us if they get in power!"
"But there's always a final reckoning ... like the Vigilance Committee," said Francisco, slowly. "Somehow, I feel that there's a shakeup coming."
"A moral earthquake, eh?" laughed Jeanne. "I wouldn't want to have a real one, with all of our new skyscrapers."
After dinner Stanley and his son strolled downtown together. Exercise and diet had been recommended, Francisco was acquiring embonpoint. Frank was enthusiastic over the new motor carriages called automobiles.
Robert had one of them--the gasoline type--with a chauffeur, as the French called the drivers of such machines. Bertha Larned had an "electric coupe," very handsome and costly, with plate-glass windows on three sides. She drove it herself. Frank sometimes encountered it downtown, looking like a moving glass cage, with the two women in it. Mrs. Larned, the aunt, always had a slightly worried expression, and Bertha, as she steered the thing through a tangle of horse-drawn traffic, wore a singularly determined look.