"The pay ain't much," confessed Buck, "but there ain't nothing to do
except vote according to order. Then there's a great deal to be picked
up on the side,--the old man understands that others have got to live
besides him. Salaries in politics don't cut no figure nowadays, anyhow.
It's the chance the place gives for pick-ups."
At first I flatly refused, but Buck pointed out that I was foolish to
throw away the benefits sure to come through the "old man's" liking for
me. "He'll take care of you," he assured me. "He's got you booked for a
quick rise." My poverty was so pressing that I had not the courage to
refuse,--the year and a half of ferocious struggle and the longing to
marry Betty Crosby had combined to break my spirit. I believe it is
Johnson who says the worst feature of genteel poverty is its power to
make one ridiculous. I don't think so. No; its worst feature is its
power to make one afraid.
That night I told my mother of my impending "honors." We were in the
dark on our little front porch. She was silent, and presently I thought
I heard her suppressing a sigh. "You don't like it, mother?" said I.
"No, Harvey, but--I see no light ahead in any other direction, and I
guess one should always steer toward what light there is." She stood
behind my chair, put her hands on my shoulders, and rested her chin
lightly on the top of my head. "Besides, I can trust you. Whatever
direction you take, you're sure to win in the end."
I was glad it was dark. An hour after I went to bed I heard some one
stirring in the house,--it seemed to me there was a voice, too. I rose
and went into the hall, and so, softly to my mother's room. Her door was
ajar. She was near the window, kneeling there in the moonlight,
praying--for me.
* * * * *
I had not been long in the legislature before I saw that my position was
even more contemptible than I anticipated. So contemptible, indeed, was
it that, had I not been away from home and among those as basely
situated as myself, it would have been intolerable,--a convict
infinitely prefers the penitentiary to the chain gang. Then, too, there
was consolation in the fact that the people, my fellow citizens, in
their stupidity and ignorance about political conditions, did not
realize what public office had come to mean. At home they believed what
the machine-controlled newspapers said of me--that I was a "manly,
independent young man," that I was "making a vigorous stand for what was
honest in public affairs," that I was the "honorable and distinguished
son of an honorable and distinguished father." How often I read those
and similar eulogies of young men just starting in public life! And is
it not really amazing that the people believe, that they never say to
themselves: "But, if he were actually what he so loudly professes to be,
how could he have got public office from a boss and a machine?"
I soon gave up trying to fool myself into imagining I was the servant of
the people by introducing or speaking for petty little popular
measures. I saw clearly that graft was the backbone, the whole skeleton
of legislative business, and that its fleshly cover of pretended public
service could be seen only by the blind. I saw, also, that no one in the
machine of either party had any real power. The state boss of our party,
United States Senator Dunkirk, was a creature and servant of
corporations. Silliman, the state boss of the opposition party, was the
same, but got less for his services because his party was hopelessly in
the minority and its machine could be useful only as a sort of
supplement and scapegoat.
With the men at the top, Dunkirk and Silliman, mere lackeys, I saw my
own future plainly enough. I saw myself crawling on year after
year,--crawling one of two roads. Either I should become a political
scullion, a wretched party hack, despising myself and despised by those
who used me, or I should develop into a lackey's lackey or a plain
lackey, lieutenant of a boss or a boss, so-called--a derisive name,
really, when the only kind of boss-ship open was head political procurer
to one or more rich corporations or groups of corporations. I felt I
should probably become a scullion, as I thought I had no taste or
instinct for business, and as I was developing some talent for "mixing,"
and for dispensing "hot air" from the stump.
I turned these things over and over in my mind with an energy that
sprang from shame, from the knowledge of what my mother would think if
she knew the truth about her son, and from a realization that I was no
nearer marrying Betty Crosby than before. At last I wrought myself into
a sullen fury beneath a calm surface. The lessons in self-restraint and
self-hiding I learned in that first of my two years as assemblyman have
been invaluable.
When I entered upon my second and last winter, I was outwardly as serene
as--as a volcano on the verge of eruption.