XVIISCARBOROUGH
Now cametheproblem—to elect.
We hear much of many wonders of combination and concentration ofindustrialpower which railway and telegraph have wrought. But nothing is said about what seems to me the greatest wonder of them all—how these forces have resulted in the concentration of thepoliticalpower of upwards of twelve millions of our fifteen million voters; how the few can impose their ideas and their will upon widening circles, out and out, until all are included. The people are scattered; the powers confer, man to man, day by day. The people are divided by partizan and other prejudices; the powers are bound together by the one self-interest. The people must accept such political organizations as are provided for them; the powers pay for, and their agents make and direct, those organizations. The people are poor; the powers are rich. The people have not even officesto bestow; the powers have offices to give and lucrative employment of all kinds, and material and social advancement,—everything that the vanity or the appetite of man craves. The people punish but feebly—usually the wrong persons—and soon forget; the powers relentlessly and surely pursue those who oppose them, forgive only after the offender has surrendered unconditionally, and they never forget where it is to their interest to remember. The powers know both what they want and how to get it; the people know neither.
Back in March, when Goodrich first suspected that I had outgeneraled him, he opened negotiations with the national machine of the opposition party. He decided that, if I should succeed in nominating Burbank, he would save his masters and himself by nominating as the opposition candidate a man under their and his control, and by electing him with an enormous campaign fund.
Beckett, the subtlest and most influential of the managers of the national machine of the opposition party, submitted several names to him. He selected Henry J. Simpson, Justice of the SupremeCourt of Ohio—a slow, shy, ultra-conservative man, his brain spun full in every cell with the cobwebs of legal technicality. He was, in his way, almost as satisfactory a candidate for the interests as Cromwell would have been. For, while he was honest, of what value is honesty when combined with credulity and lack of knowledge of affairs? They knew what advisers he would select, men trained in their service and taken from their legal staffs. They knew he would shrink from anything "radical" or "disturbing"—that is, would not molest the two packs of wolves, the business and the political, at their feast upon the public. He came of a line of bigoted adherents of his party; he led a simple, retired life among sheep and cows and books asleep in the skins of sheep and cows. He wore old-fashioned rural whiskers, thickest in the throat, thinning toward the jawbone, scant about the lower lip, absent from the upper. These evidences of unfitness to cope with up-to-date corruption seemed to endear him to the masses.
As soon as those big organs of the opposition that were in the control of the powers began totalk of Simpson as an ideal candidate, I suspected what was in the wind. But I had my hands full; the most I could then do was to supply my local "left-bower," Silliman, with funds and set him to work for a candidate for his party more to my taste. It was fortunate for me that I had cured myself of the habit of worrying. For it was plain that, if Goodrich and Beckett succeeded in getting Simpson nominated by the opposition, I should have a hard fight to raise the necessary campaign money. The large interests either would finance Simpson or, should I convince them that Burbank was as good for their purposes as Simpson, would be indifferent which won.
I directed Silliman to work for Rundle of Indiana, a thoroughly honest man, in deadly earnest about half a dozen deadly wrong things, and capable of anything in furthering them—after the manner of fanatics. If he had not been in public life, he would have been a camp-meeting exhorter. Crowds liked to listen to him; the radicals and radically inclined throughout the West swore by him; he had had two terms in Congress, had got ahundred-odd votes for the nomination for President at the last national convention of the opposition. A splendid scarecrow for the Wall Street crowd, but difficult to nominate over Goodrich's man Simpson in a convention of practical politicians.
In May—it was the afternoon of the very day my mutineers got back into the harness—Woodruff asked me if I would see a man he had picked up in a delegate-hunting trip into Indiana. "An old pal of mine, much the better for the twelve years' wear since I last saw him. He has always trained with the opposition. He's a full-fledged graduate of the Indiana school of politics, and that's the best. It's almost all craft there—they hate to give up money and don't use it except as a last resort."
He brought in his man—Merriweather by name. I liked the first look at him—keen, cynical, indifferent. He had evidently sat in so many games of chance of all kinds that play roused in him only the ice-cold passion of the purely professional.
"There's been nothing doing in our state forthe last two or three years—at least nothing in my line," said he. "A rank outsider, Scarborough—"
I nodded. "Yes, I know him. He came into the Senate from your state two years ago."
"Well, he's built up a machine of his own and runs things to suit himself."
"I thought he wasn't a politician," said I.
Merriweather's bony face showed a faint grin. "The best ever," said he. "He's put the professionals out of business, without its costing him a cent. I've got tired of waiting for him to blow over."
Tired—and hungry, I thought. After half an hour of pumping I sent him away, detaining Woodruff. "What does he really think about Rundle?" I asked.
"Says he hasn't the ghost of a chance—that Scarborough'll control the Indiana delegation and that Scarborough has no more use for lunatics than for grafters."
This was not encouraging. I called Merriweather back. "Why don't you people nominate Scarborough at St. Louis?" said I.
Behind his surface of attention, I saw his mind traveling at lightning speed in search of my hidden purpose along every avenue that my suggestion opened.
"Scarborough'd be a dangerous man for you," he replied. "He's got a nasty way of reaching across party lines for votes."
I kept my face a blank.
"You've played politics only in your own state or against the Eastern crowd, these last few years," he went on, as if in answer to my thoughts. "You don't realize what a hold Scarborough's got through the entire West. He has split your party and the machine of his own in our state, and they know all about him and his doings in the states to the west. The people like a fellow that knocks out the regulars."
"A good many call him a demagogue, don't they?" said I.
"Yes—and he is, in sort of a way," replied Merriweather. "But—well, he's got a knack of telling the truth so that it doesn't scare folks. And he's managed to convince them that he isn't looking out for number one. It can't be deniedthat he made a good governor. For instance, he got after the monopolies, and the cost of living is twenty per cent. lower in Indiana than just across the line in Ohio."
"Then I should say that all the large interests in the country would line up against him," said I.
"Every one," said Merriweather, and an expression of understanding flitted across his face. He went on: "But it ain't much use talking about him. He couldn't get the nomination—at least, it wouldn't be easy to get it for him."
"I suppose not," said I. "That's a job for a first-class man—and they're rare." And I shook hands with him.
About a week later he returned, and tried to make a report to me. But I sent him away, treating him very formally. I appreciated that, being an experienced and capable man, he knew the wisdom of getting intimately in touch with his real employer; but, as I had my incomparable Woodruff, better far than I at the rough work of politics, there was no necessity for my entangling myself. Merriweather went to Woodruff, and Woodruff reported to me—Scarborough's friendsin Indianapolis all agreed that he did not want the nomination and would not have it.
"We must force it on him," said I. "We must have Scarborough."
Immediately after Burbank's nomination, Goodrich concentrated upon nominating Judge Simpson. He had three weeks, and he worked hard and well. I think he overdid it in the editorials in our party organs under his influence in New York, Boston and other eastern cities—never a day without lugubrious screeds on the dismal outlook for Burbank if the other party should put up Simpson. But his Simpson editorials in big opposition papers undoubtedly produced an effect. I set for De Milt and his bureau of underground publicity the task of showing up, as far as it was prudent to expose intimate politics to the public, Goodrich and his crowd and their conspiracy with Beckett and his crowd to secure the opposition nomination for a man of the same offensive type as Cromwell. And I directed Woodruff to supply Silliman and Merriweather and that department of my "bi-partizan" machine with all the money they wanted. "Theycan't spend much to advantage at this late day except for traveling expenses," said I. "Our best plan, anyhow, is good honest missionary work with the honest men of the other party who wish to see its best man nominated."
While Goodrich's agents and Beckett's agents were industriously arranging the eastern machinery of the opposition party for Simpson, Merriweather had Silliman's men toiling in the West and South to get Rundle delegates or uninstructed delegations. And, after our conversation, he was reinforced by Woodruff and such men of his staff as could be used without suspicion. Woodruff himself could permeate like an odorless gas; you knew he was there only by the results. Nothing could be done for Rundle in his own state; but the farther away from his home our men got, the easier it was to induce—by purchase and otherwise—the politicians of his party to think well of him. This the more because they regarded Simpson as a "stuff" and a "stiff"—and they weren't far wrong.
"It may not be Scarborough, and it probably won't be Rundle," Woodruff said in his final reportto me, "but it certainly won't be Simpson. He's the dead one, no matter how well he does on the first ballot."
But I would not let him give me the details—the story of shrewd and slippery plots, stratagems, surprises. "I am worn out, mind and body," said I in apology for my obvious weariness and indifference.
For six months I had been incessantly at work. The tax upon memory alone, to say nothing of the other faculties, had been crushing. Easy as political facts always were for me, I could not lightly bear the strain of keeping constantly in mind not merely the outlines, but also hundreds of the details, of the political organizations of forty-odd states with all their counties. And the tax on memory was probably the least. Then added to all my political work was business care; for while I was absorbed in politics, Ed Ramsay had badly muddled the business. Nor had I, like Burbank and Woodruff, the power to empty my mind as I touched the pillow and so to get eight hours of unbroken rest each night.
Woodruff began asking me for instructions.But my judgment was uncertain, and my imagination barren. "Do as you think best," said I. "I must rest. I've reached my limit,"—my limit of endurance of the sights and odors and befoulings of these sewers of politics I must in person adventure in order to reach my goal. I must pause and rise to the surface for a breath of decent air or I should not have the strength to finish these menial and even vile tasks which no man can escape if he is a practical leader in the practical activities of practical life.
XVIIIA DANGEROUS PAUSE
I took train for my friend Sandys' country place near Cleveland, forbidding Woodruff or Burbank or my secretaries to communicate with me. Sandys had no interest in politics—his fortune was in real estate and, therefore, did not tempt or force him into relations with political machines.
Early in the morning after my arrival I got away from the others and, with a stag-hound who remembered me with favor from my last visit, struck into woods that had never been despoiled by man. As I tramped on and on, my mind seemed to revive, and I tried to take up the plots and schemes that had been all-important yesterday. But I could not. Instead, as any sane man must when he and nature are alone and face to face, I fell to marveling that I could burn up myself, the best of me, the best years of my one life, in such a fever of folly and fraud as thispolitical career of mine. I seemed to be in a lucid interval between paroxysms of insanity. I reviewed the men and things of my world as one recalls the absurd and repellent visions of a nightmare. I shrank from passing from this mood of wakefulness and reason back into the unreal reality of what had for years been my all-in-all. I wandered hour after hour, sometimes imagining that I was flying from the life I loathed, again that somewhere in those cool, green, golden-lighted mazes I should find—my lost youth, and her. For, how could I think ofitwithout thinking ofheralso? It had been lighted by her; it had gone with her; it lived in memory, illumined by her.
The beautiful, beautiful world-that-ought-to-be! The hideous, the horrible world-that-is!
I did not return to the house until almost dinner-time. "I have to go away to-morrow morning," I announced after dinner. For I felt that, if I did not fly at once, I should lose all heart for the task which must be finished.
"Why," protested Sandys, "you came to stay until we all started with you for St. Louis."
"I must go," I repeated. I did not care to inventan excuse; I could not give the reason. Had I followed my impulse, I should have gone at once, that night.
By noon the next day I had again flung myself into the vexed political ocean whose incessant buffetings give the swimmers small chance to think of anything beyond the next oncoming wave.
XIXDAVID SENT OUT AGAINST GOLIATH
I was almost master of myself again when, a week later, I got aboard the car in which Carlotta and I were taking our friends to look on at the opposition's convention at St. Louis.
When we arrived, I went at once to confer with Merriweather in a room at the Southern Hotel which no one knew he had. "Simpson has under, rather than over, five hundred delegates," was his first item of good news. "It takes six hundred and fifty to nominate. As his sort of boom always musters its greatest strength on the first ballot, I'm putting my money two to one against him."
"And Scarborough?" I asked, wondering at my indifference to this foreshadowing of triumph.
"My men talk him to every incoming delegation. It's well known that he don't want the nomination and has forbidden his friends to vote for him and has pledged them to work against him. Then, too, the bosses and the boys don't like him—to put it mildly. But I think we're making every one feel he's the only man they can put up, with a chance to beat Burbank."
"THAT," I REPLIED TO MRS. SANDYS, "IS SENATOR SCARBOROUGH OF INDIANA" p. 226"THAT," I REPLIED TO MRS. SANDYS, "IS SENATOR SCARBOROUGH OF INDIANA"p. 226
My wife and our friends and I dined at the Southern that night. As we were about to leave, the streets began to fill. And presently through the close-packed masses came at a walk an open carriage—the storm-center of a roar that almost drowned the music of the four or five bands. The electric lights made the scene bright as day.
"Who is he?" asked the woman at my side—Mrs. Sandys.
She was looking attheman in that carriage—there were four, but there was no mistaking him. He was seated, was giving not the slightest heed to the cheering throngs. His soft black hat was pulled well down over his brows; his handsome profile was stern, his face pale. If that crowd had been hurling curses at him and preparing to tear him limb from limb he would not have looked different. He was smooth-shaven, which made him seem younger than I knew him to be. And over him was the glamour of the world-that-ought-to-be inwhich he lived and had the power to compel others to live as long as they were under the spell of his personality.
"That," I replied to Mrs. Sandys, "is Senator Scarborough of Indiana."
"What's he so stern about?"
"I'm sure I don't know—perhaps to hide his joy," said I.
But I did know, and my remark was the impulsive fling of envy. He had found out, several weeks before, what a strong undercurrent was running toward him. He was faced by a dilemma—if he did not go to the convention, it would be said that he had stayed away deliberately, and he would be nominated; if he went, to try to prevent his nomination, the enthusiasm of his admirers and followers would give the excuse for forcing the nomination upon him. And as he sat there, with that ominous tumult about him, he was realizing how hard his task was to be.
His companions pushed him a passage through the crowds on the sidewalk and in the lobby, and he shut himself away in the upper part of the hotel. When we left, half an hour later, the peoplewere packed before that face of the hotel which displayed the banner of the Indiana delegation, were cheering Scarborough, were clamoring—in vain—for him to show himself.
"But won't he offend them?" asked my wife.
"A crowd loves like a woman," said I. "Indifference only excites it."
"Oh,Inever loved that way," protested Mrs. Sandys.
"Then," said my wife, rather sourly I thought, "you and Mr. Sandys have something to live for."
And so we talked no more politics. There may be American women whoreallylike to talk politics, but I never happened to know one with so little sense. It's a pity we men do not imitate our women more closely in one respect. In season and out of season, they never talk anything but business—woman's one business. When other things are being discussed, they listen, or rather, pretend to listen; in reality, their minds are still on their business, and how they shall contrive to bring it back into the conversation with advantage to themselves.
Next day the convention adopted a wishy-washyplatform much like Burbank's—if anything, weaker. I saw Goodrich's blight upon it. But the victory cost him dear. That night the delegates realized what a blunder they had made—or thought they realized it after Merriweather and his staff had circulated among them. Few of them had been trusted by Beckett with the secret that, with that platform and with Simpson as the nominee, their party would have the interests behind it, would almost certainly win. They only saw ahead a dull campaign, and no real issue between the parties, and their candidate, if he was Simpson, much the less attractive personality of the two.
The following morning the voting began; and after seven ballots Simpson had thirty-nine votes less than on the first ballot. "It was like a funeral," was the verdict of my disappointed guests that evening. A night of debate and gloom among the politicians and other delegates, and on the opening ballot Merriweather sprung his trap.
The first big doubtful state in the alphabetical list of states is Illinois. When the secretary ofthe convention called for Illinois' vote, it was cast solidly for Scarborough.
There was straightway pandemonium. It was half an hour before any one could get a hearing. Then Indiana was called, and Pierson, attorney general of that state and chairman of its delegation, cast its vote as in the other ballots, for Hitchens, its governor. From my box I was watching Scarborough and his immediate friends going from delegation to delegation, and I knew what he was about. When Iowa was called and cast its vote solidly for him I knew he had failed.
"How white he is!" said Mrs. Sandys, who was looking at him through opera-glasses.
I borrowed them and saw that his gaze was fixed on a box on the other side of the huge auditorium, on a woman in that box—I had only to look at her to see which woman. She was beautiful, of that type of charm which the French sum up in the phrase "the woman of thirty." I have heard crowds bellow too often to be moved by it—though the twenty or thirty thousand gathered under that roof were outdoing the cannonade of any thunderstorm. But that woman's look in responseto Scarborough's—there was sympathy and understanding in it, and more, infinitely more. He had been crushed for the moment—and I understood enough of his situation to understand what a blow to all his plans this untimely apparent triumph was. She was showing that she too felt the blow, but she was also sending a message of courage to him—one of those messages that transcend words, like music, like the perfumes of flowers and fields, like that which fills us as we look straight up into a clear night sky. I lowered the glasses and looked away—I could not bear it. For the moment I hated him—hating myself for it.
I heard Carlotta asking a woman in the box next ours the name of "the woman with the white plume in the big black hat in the seventh box on the other side."
"Mrs. Scarborough," was the answer.
"Oh, is thatshe?" exclaimed Mrs. Sandys, almost snatching her glasses from me in her eagerness. "You know who she was—John Dumont's widow—you remember him? She must be an unusual person to have attracted two such men."
But Scarborough was nominated now. He waved aside those who tried to take him up and bear him to the platform. He walked down the aisle alone and ascended amid a tense silence; he stood looking calmly out. His face had lost its whiteness of a few minutes before. As he stood there, big and still, a sort of embodiment of fearlessness, I wondered—and I fancy many others were wondering—whether he was about to refuse the nomination. But an instant's thought drove the wild notion from my mind. He could not strike that deadly blow at his party.
"Fellow delegates," said he—a clearer, more musical voice than his I have never heard—"I thank you for this honor. As you know, I opposed the platform you saw fit to adopt. I have nothing to retract. I do not like it. But, after all, a candidate must be his own platform. And I bring my public record as proof of my pledge—that—" he paused and the silence was tremendous. He went on, each word distinct and by itself—"if I am elected"—a long pause—"I shall obey the Constitution"—another long pause—"I shall enforce the laws!"
He was descending to the aisle before the silence was broken—a feeble, rippling applause, significant of disappointment at what seemed an anti-climax. He had merely repeated in condensed form the oath of office which a President takes at his inauguration. But somehow—no doubt, it was the magic of his voice and his manner and superb presence—those simple words kept on ringing; and all at once—full half a minute must have elapsed, a long time in such circumstances—all at once the enormous meaning of the two phrases boomed into the brains of those thousands: If this man is elected, there will be a President without fear or favor, and he will really obey the Constitution, will really enforce the laws! That little speech, though only a repetition of an oath embodied in our century-old supreme law, was a firebrand to light the torch of revolution, of revolution back toward what the republic used to be before differences of wealth divided its people into upper, middle and lower classes, before enthroned corporate combinations made equality before the law a mockery, before the development of our vast material resources restoredto the intelligent and energetic few their power over the careless and purposeless many.
As the multitude realized his meaning,—I doubt if many times in all history such a sight and sound has burst upon mortal ears and eyes. For the moment I was daunted; it was impossible not to think that here was the whole people, not to feel that Scarborough had been chosen President and was about to fulfil his pledge. Daunted, yet thrilled too. For, at bottom, are we not all passionate dreamers of abstract right and justice?
Then I remembered; and I said to myself, "He has defied the interests. David has gone out against Goliath—but the Davids do not win nowadays. I can elect Burbank."
But where was the elation that thought would have set to swelling in themeof less than two weeks before? And then I began clearly to see that, for me at least, the prize, to be prized, must be fairly won from start to goal; and to be enjoyed, must gladden eyes that would in turn gladden me with the approval and sympathy which only a woman can give and without which a man is alone and indeed forlorn.
XXPILGRIMS AND PATRIOTS
From St. Louis I went direct to Burbank.
His heart had been set upon a grand speech-making tour. He was fond of wandering about, showing himself to cheering crowds; and he had a deep, and by no means unwarranted, confidence in his platform magnetism. At first I had been inclined to give him his way. But the more I considered the matter, the stronger seemed to become the force of the objections—it takes a far bigger man than was Burbank at that stage of his growth not to be cheapened by "steeple-chasing for votes"; also, the coming of the candidate causes jealousy and heart-burnings over matters of precedence, reception and entertainment among the local celebrities, and so he often leaves the party lukewarm where he found it enthusiastic. Further, it uses up local campaign money that ought to be spent in hiring workers at the polls, which is the polite phrase for vote-buying as "retaining-fee" is the polite phrase for bribe.
I decided against the tour and for the highly expensive but always admirable and profitable "pilgrimage plan".
Burbank's own home was at Rivington, and I should have had him visited there, had it not been on a single-track branch-railway which could not handle without danger and discomfort the scores of thousands we were planning to carry to and from him almost daily. So, it was given out that he purposed as far as possible to withdraw from the strife of the campaign and to await the results in the dignified calm in which he wished the voters to determine it. He took—after Woodruff had carefully selected it—a "retired" house "in the country."
And it was in the open country. A farm garden adjoined it on the one side, a wheat field on the other, a large orchard to the rear. The broad meadow in front gave plenty of room for delegations visiting the "standard bearer of the party of patriotism" in his "rural seclusion," to hear his simple, spontaneous words of welcome. But for all the remote aspect of the place, it was only five minutes' drive and ten minutes' walk from astation through which four big railroads passed. One of the out-buildings was changed into a telegraph office from which accounts of the enthusiasm of the delegations and of his speeches could be sent to the whole country. On his desk in his little study stood a private-wire telephone that, without danger of leakage, would put him in direct communication either with my study at Fredonia or with Doc Woodruff's privatest private room in the party national headquarters at Chicago. Thus, our statesman, though he seemed to be aloof, was in the very thick of the fray; and the tens of thousands of his fellow citizens, though they seemed to come almost on their own invitation inspired by uncontrollable enthusiasm for the great statesman, were in fact free excursionists—and a very troublesome, critical, expensive lot they were. But—the public was impressed. It sits in its seat in the theater of action and believes that the play is real, and ignores and forgets the fact that there is a behind-the-scenes.
The party distributed from various centers tons of "literature." And in addition to meetings arranged by state and local committees, a series ofhuge demonstrations was held in the cities of every doubtful state. Besides the party's regular speakers, we hired as many "independent" orators as we could. But all these other branches of the public side of the campaign were subsidiary to the work at the "retreat." It might be called the headquarters of the rank and file of the party—those millions of "principle" voters and workers who were for Burbank because he was the standard-bearer of their party. No money, no bribes of patronage have to be given to them; but it costs several millions to raise that mass to the pitch of hot enthusiasm which will make each individual in it certain to go to the polls on election day and take his neighbors, instead of staying at home and hoping the party won't lose.
Burbank's work was, therefore, highly important. But the seat of the real campaign was Woodruff's privatest private room in the Chicago headquarters. For, there were laid and were put in the way of execution the plans for acquiring those elements that, in the doubtful states, have the balance of power between the two opposing and about evenly matched masses of "principle"voters. I just now recall a talk I had with my wife, about that time. She took no interest in politics and rarely spoke of political matters—and both of us discouraged political talk before the children. One day she said to me: "This campaign of yours and Mr. Burbank's must be costing an awful lot of money."
"A good deal," said I.
"Several millions?"
"This is a big country, and you can't stir it up politically for nothing. Why do you ask?"
"Who gives the money?" she persisted.
"The rich men—the big corporations—give most of it."
"Why?"
"Patriotism," said I. "To save the nation from our wicked opponent."
"How do Mr. Roebuck and the others get it back?" she pursued, ignoring my pleasantry.
"Get what back?"
"Why the money they advance. They aren't the men togiveanything."
I answered with a smile only.
She lapsed into thoughtfulness. When I wasassuming that her mind had wandered off to something else she said: "The people must be very stupid—not to suspect."
"Or, the rich men and the corporations very stupid to give," I suggested.
"Do you mean that they don't get it back?" she demanded.
"Of course," said I, "their patriotism must be rewarded. We can not expect them to save the country year after year for nothing."
"I should think not!" she said, adding disgustedly, "I think politics is very silly. And men get excited about it! ButInever listen."
Arriving at the "retreat" from the Scarborough convention, I found Burbank much perturbed because Scarborough had been nominated. He did not say so—on the contrary, he expressed in sonorous phrases his satisfaction that there was to be "a real test of strength between conservatism and radicalism." He never dropped his pose, even with me—not even with himself.
"I confess I don't share your cheerfulness," said I. "If Scarborough were a wild man, we'd have a walkover. But he isn't, and I fear he'll bemore and more attractive to the wavering voters, to many of our own people. Party loyalty has been overworked in the last few presidential campaigns. He'll go vote-hunting in the doubtful states, but it won't seem undignified. He's one of those men whose dignity comes from the inside and can't be lost."
Burbank was unable to conceal his annoyance—he never could bear praise of another man of his own rank in public life. Also he showed surprise. "Why, I understood—I had been led to believe—that you—favored his nomination," was his guarded way of telling me he knew I had a hand in bringing it about.
"So I did," replied I. "He was your only chance. He won't be able to get a campaign fund of so much as a quarter of a million, and the best workers of his party will at heart be against him. Simpson would have had—well, Goodrich could and would have got him enough to elect him."
Burbank's eyes twitched. "I think you're prejudiced against Senator Goodrich, Harvey," said he in his gentlest tone. "He is first of all a loyal party man."
"Loyal fiddlesticks!" replied I. "He is agent of the Wall Street crowd—they're his party. He's just the ordinary machine politician, with no more party feeling than—than—" I smiled—"than any other man behind the scenes."
Burbank dodged this by taking it as a jest. He always shed my frank speeches as humor. "Prejudice, prejudice, Harvey!" he said in mild reproof. "We need Goodrich, and—"
"Pardon me," I interrupted. "We do not need him. On the contrary, we must put him out of the party councils. If we don't, he may try to help Scarborough. The Senate's safe, no matter who's elected President; and Goodrich will rely on it to save his crowd. He's a mountain of vanity and the two defeats we've given him have made every atom of that vanity quiver with hatred of us."
"I wish you could have been here when he called," said Burbank. "I am sure you would have changed your mind."
"When does he resign the chairmanship of the national committee?" I asked. "He agreed to plead bad health and resign within two weeks after the convention."
Burbank gave an embarrassed cough. "Don't you think, Harvey," said he, "that, to soothe his vanity, it might be well for us—for you—to let him stay on there—nominally, of course? I knowyoucare nothing for titles."
Instead of being angered by this attempt to cozen me, by this exhibition of treachery, I felt disgust and pity—how nauseating and how hopeless to try to forward one so blind to his own interests, so easily frightened into surrender to his worst enemies! But I spoke very quietly to him. "The reason you want me to be chairman—for it is you that want and need it, not I—the reason Imustbe chairman is because the machine throughout the country must know that Goodrich is out and that your friends are in. In what other way can this be accomplished?"
He did not dare try to reply.
I went on: "If he stays at the head of the national committee Scarborough will be elected."
"You are prejudiced, Harvey—"
"Please don't say that again, Governor," I interrupted coldly. "I repeat, Goodrich must give place to me, or Scarborough will be elected."
"You don't mean that you would turn against me?" came from him in a queer voice after a long pause.
"While I was in St. Louis, working to make you President," said I, "you were plotting behind my back, plotting against me and yourself."
"You were at St. Louis aiding in the nomination of the strongest candidate," he retorted, his bitterness distinct though guarded.
"Strongest—yes. But strongest with whom?"
"With the people," he replied.
"Precisely," said I. "But the people are not going to decide this election. The party lines are to be so closely drawn that money will have the deciding vote. The men who organize and direct industry and enterprise—theyare going to decide it. And, in spite of Goodrich's traitorous efforts, the opposition has put up the man who can't get a penny from them."
In fact, I had just discovered that Scarborough had instructed Pierson, whom he had made chairman of his campaign, not to take any money from any corporation even if it was offered. But I thought it wiser to keep this from Burbank.
He sat folding a sheet of paper again and again. I let him reason it out. Finally he said: "I see your point, Harvey. But I practically promised Goodrich—practically asked him to remain—"
I waited.
"For the sake of the cause," he went on when he saw he was to get no help from me, "any and all personal sacrifices must be made. If you insist on having Goodrich's head, I will break my promise, and—"
"Pardon me again," I interrupted. My mood would not tolerate twaddle about "the cause" and "promises" from Burbank—Burbank, whose "cause," as he had just shown afresh, was himself alone, and who promised everything to everybody and kept only the most advantageous promises after he had made absolutely sure how his advantage lay. "It's all a matter of indifference to me. If you wish to retain Goodrich, do so. He must not be dismissed as a personal favor to me. The favor is to you. I do not permit any man to thimblerig his debts to me into my debts to him."
Burbank seemed deeply moved. He came up tome and took my hand. "It is not like my friend Sayler to use the word indifference in connection with me," he said. And then I realized how completely the nomination had turned his head. For his tone was that of the great man addressing his henchman.
I did not keep my amusement out of my eyes. "James," said I, "indifference is precisely the word. I should welcome a chance to withdraw from this campaign. I have been ambitious for power,youwant place. If you think the time has come to dissolve partnership, say so—and trade yourself off to Goodrich."
He was angry through and through, not so much at my bluntness as at my having seen into his plot to help himself at my expense—for, not even when I showed it to him, could he see that it was to his interest to destroy Goodrich. Moral coward that he was, the course of conciliation always appealed to him, whether it was wise or not, and the course of courage always frightened him. He bit his lip and dissembled his anger. Presently he began to pace up and down the room, his head bent, his hands clasped behind him. After perhapsfive minutes he paused to say: "You insist on taking the place yourself, Harvey?"
I stood before him and looked down at him. "Your suspicion that I have also a personal reason is well-founded, James," said I. "I wouldn't put myself in a position where I should have to ask as a favor what I now get as a right. If I help you to the presidency, I must be master of the national machine of the party, able to use it with all its power and againstany one—" here I looked him straight in the eye—"who shall try to build himself up at my expense. Personally, we are friends, and it has been a pleasure to me to help elevate a man I liked. But there is no friendship in affairs, except where friendship and interest point the same way. It is strange that a man of your experience should expect friendship from me at a time when you are showing that you haven't for me even the friendship of enlightened self-interest."
"Your practice is better than your theory, Harvey," said he, putting on an injured, forgiving look and using his chest tones. "A better friend never lived than you, and I know no other manwho gets the absolute loyalty you get." He looked at me earnestly. "What has changed you?" he asked. "Why are you so bitter and so—so unlike your even-tempered self?"
I waved his question aside,—I had no mind to show him my uncovered coffin with its tenant who only slept, or to expose to him the feelings which the erect and fearless figure of Scarborough had set to stirring in me. "I'm careful to choose my friends from among those who can serve me and whom I can therefore serve," I said. "And that is the sentimentalism of the wise. I wish us to remain friends—therefore, I must be able to be as useful to you as you can be useful to me."
"Goodrich shall go," was the upshot of his thinking. "I'll telephone him this afternoon. Is my old friend satisfied?"
"You have done what was best for yourself," said I, with wholly good-humored raillery. And we shook hands, and I went.
I was glad to be alone where I could give way to my weariness and disgust; for I had lost all the joy of the combat. The arena of ambition had now become to me a ring where men are devouredby the beast-in-man after hideous battles. I turned from it, heart-sick. "If only I had less intelligence, less insight," I thought, "so that I could cheat myself as Burbank cheats himself. Or, if I had the relentlessness or the supreme egotism, or whatever it is, that enables great men to trample without a qualm, to destroy without pity, to enjoy without remorse."