“Who’s ‘we’?”
The Senator’s earnest gaze flickered for a moment. “I,” he said, at length. “I’m making this fight pretty near alone so far.”
“What fight is that?”
“The fight to get the control of the State away from the grafters and exploiters and turn it over to the people. And I’m beginning to get the support I need now.”
“From the German crowd?”
The Senator smiled at his caller with an expression almost affectionate. “You would n’t take to politics much worse than a duck to water. Yes; from the Germans largely. I’m a reformer, and I’m not ashamed of the name. The German-Americans are solid for reform and clean government. Government by corporations is never clean. It can’t be. It uses the kind of tools that Wymett is.”
“The Guardian has offered me a job,” observed Jeremy.
“Don’t touch it,” advised the other earnestly. “They ’re on the ragged edge. As I told you, Wymett is a crook. One of these days I’m going to tell the State that.”
“Maybe I’ll be there to report it,” said the caller, smiling.
“Maybe you’ll be there (you should work into the legislative end, by the way, for the experience); but you won’t report it. Your paper would print any attack by Wymett on me that suited its purposes. But if I proved Wymett to be a crook and a grafter—not a word in The Record. That’s the way the papers hang together.”