In February the railways traversing our state sent to the capitol a bill
that had been drawn by our ablest lawyers and reviewed by the craftiest
of the great corporation lawyers of New York City. Its purpose, most
shrewdly and slyly concealed, was to exempt the railways from
practically all taxation. It was so subtly worded that this would be
disclosed only when the companies should be brought to court for
refusing to pay their usual share of the taxes. Such measures are
usually "straddled" through a legislature,--that is, neither party takes
the responsibility, but the boss of each machine assigns to vote for
them all the men whose seats are secure beyond any ordinary assault of
public indignation. In this case, of the ninety-one members of the lower
house, thirty-two were assigned by Dunkirk and seventeen by Silliman to
make up a majority with three to spare.
My boss, Dominick, got wind that Dunkirk and Silliman were cutting an
extra melon of uncommon size. He descended upon the capitol and served
notice on Dunkirk that the eleven Dominick men assigned to vote for the
bill would vote against it unless he got seven thousand dollars apiece
for them,--seventy-seven thousand dollars. Dunkirk needed every one of
Dominick's men to make up his portion of the majority; he yielded after
trying in vain to reduce the price. All Dominick would say to him on
that point, so I heard afterward, was:
"Every day you put me off, I go up a thousand dollars a head."
We who were to be voted so profitably for Dunkirk, Silliman, Dominick,
and the railroads, learned what was going on,--Silliman went on a "tear"
and talked too much. Nine of us, _not_ including myself, got together
and sent Cassidy, member from the second Jackson County district, to
Dominick to plead for a share. I happened to be with him in the Capital
City Hotel bar when Cassidy came up, and, hemming and hawing, explained
how he and his fellow insurgents felt.
Dominick's veins seemed cords straining to bind down a demon struggling
to escape. "It's back to the bench you go, Pat Cassidy,--back to the
bench where I found you," he snarled, with a volley of profanity and
sewage. "I don't know nothing about this here bill except that it's for
the good of the party. Go back to that gang of damned wharf rats, and
tell 'em, if I hear another squeak, I'll put 'em where I got 'em."
Cassidy shrank away with a furtive glance of envy and hate at me, whom
Dominick treated with peculiar consideration,--I think it was because I
was the only man of education and of any pretensions to "family" in
official position in his machine. He used to like to class himself and
me together as "us gentlemen," in contrast to "them muckers," meaning my
colleagues.
Next day, just before the voting began, Dominick seated himself at the
front of the governor's gallery,--the only person in it. I see him now
as he looked that day,--black and heavy-jawed and scowling, leaning
forward with both forearms on the railing, and his big, flat chin
resting on his upturned, stubby thumbs. He was there to see that each
of us, his creatures, dependent absolutely upon him for our political
lives, should vote as he had sold us in block. There was no chance to
shirk or even to squirm. As the roll-call proceeded, one after another,
seven of us, obeyed that will frowning from the gallery,--jumped through
the hoop of fire under the quivering lash. I was eighth on the roll.
"Sayler!" How my name echoed through that horrible silence!
I could not answer. Gradually every face turned toward me,--I could see
them, could feel them, and, to make bad enough worse, I yielded to an
imperious fascination, the fascination of that incarnation of
brute-power,--power of muscle and power of will. I turned my eyes upon
the amazed, furious eyes of my master. It seemed to me that his lips
must give passage to the oaths and filth swelling beneath his chest, and
seething behind his eyes.
"Sayler!" repeated the clerk in a voice that exploded within me.
"No!" I shouted,--not in answer to the clerk, but in denial of that
insolent master-to-dog command from the beast in the gallery.
The look in his eyes changed to relief and contemptuous approval. There
was a murmur of derision from my fellow members. Then I remembered that
a negative was, at that stage of the bill, a vote for it,--I had done
just the reverse of what I intended. The roll-call went on, and I sat
debating with myself. Prudence, inclination, the natural timidity of
youth, the utter futility of opposition, fear, above all else,
fear,--these joined in bidding me let my vote stand as cast. On the
other side stood my notion of self-respect. I felt I must then and there
and for ever decide whether I was a thing or a man. Yet, again and again
I had voted for measures just as corrupt,--had voted for them with no
protest beyond a cynical shrug and a wry look. Every man, even the
laxest, if he is to continue to "count as one," must have a point where
he draws the line beyond which he will not go. The liar must have things
he will not lie about, the thief things he will not steal, the
compromiser things he will not compromise, the practical man in the
pulpit, in politics, in business, in the professor's chair, or
editorial tribune, things he will not sacrifice, whatever the cost. That
is "practical honor." I had reached my line of practical honor, my line
between possible compromise and certain demoralization. And I realized
it.
When the roll-call ended I rose, and, in a voice that I knew was firm
and clear, said: "Mr. Speaker, I voted in the negative by mistake. I
wish my vote recorded in the affirmative. I am against the bill."
Amid a fearful silence I took my seat. With a suddenness that made me
leap, a wild and crazy assemblyman, noted as the crank of that session,
emitted a fantastic yell of enthusiastic approval. Again there was that
silence; then the tension of the assembly, floor and crowded galleries,
burst in a storm of hysterical laughter.
I wish I could boast how brave I felt as I reversed my vote, how
indifferent to that tempest of mockery, and how strong as I went forth
to meet my master and hear my death-warrant. But I can't, in
honesty,--I'm only a human being, not a hero, and these are my
_con_fessions, not my _pro_fessions. So I must relate that, though the
voice that requested the change of vote was calm and courageous, the man
behind it was agitated and sick with dread. There may be those who have
the absolute courage some men boast,--if not directly, then by
implication in despising him who shows that he has it not. For myself, I
must say that I never made a venture,--and my life has been a succession
of ventures, often with my whole stake upon the table,--I never made a
venture that I did not have a sickening sensation at the heart. My
courage, if it can be called by so sounding a name, has been in daring
to make the throw when every atom of me was shrieking, "You'll lose!
You'll be ruined!"
I did not see Dominick until after supper. I had nerved myself for a
scene,--indeed, I had been hoping he would insult me. When one lacks the
courage boldly to advance along the perilous course his intelligence
counsels, he is lucky if he can and will goad some one into kicking him
along it past the point where retreat is possible. Such methods of
advance are not dignified, but then, is life dignified? To my surprise
and alarm, Dominick refused to kick me into manhood. He had been paid,
and the seventy-seven thousand dollars, in bills of large denomination,
were warming his heart from the inner pocket of his waistcoat. So he
came up to me, scowling, but friendly.
"Why didn't you tell me you wanted to be let off, Harvey?" he said
reproachfully. "I'd 'a' done it. Now, damn you, you've put me in a place
where I've got to give you the whip."
To flush at this expression from Dominick was a hypocritical refinement
of sensitiveness. To draw myself up haughtily, to turn on my heel and
walk away,--that was the silliness of a boy. Still, I am glad I did both
those absurd things. When I told my mother how I had ruined myself in
politics she began to cry,--and tears were not her habit. Then she got
my father's picture and kissed it and talked to it about me, just as if
he were there with us; and for a time I felt that I was of heroic
stature.
But, as the days passed, with no laurels in the form of cases and fees,
and as clients left me through fear of Dominick's power, I shriveled
back to human size, and descended from my pedestal. From the
ground-level I began again to look about the matter-of-fact world.
I saw I was making only a first small payment on the heavy price for the
right to say, no, for the right to be free to break with any man or any
enterprise that menaced my self-ownership. That right I felt I must
keep, whatever its cost. Some men can, or think they can, lend their
self-ownership and take it back at convenience; I knew I was not of
them--and let none of them judge me. Especially let none judge me who
only deludes himself that he owns himself, who has sold himself all his
life long for salaries and positions or for wealth, or for the empty
reputation of power he wields only on another's sufferance.
A glance about me was enough to disclose the chief reason why so many
men had surrendered the inner citadel of self-respect. In the crucial
hour, when they had had to choose between subservience and a hard battle
with adversity, forth from their hearts had issued a traitor weakness,
the feeling of responsibility to wife and children, and this traitor
had easily delivered them captive to some master or masters. More, or
less, than human, it seemed to me, was the courage that could make
successful resistance to this traitor, and could strike down and drag
down wife and children. "I must give up Elizabeth," I said to myself,
"for her own sake as well as for mine. Marry her I must not until I am
established securely in freedom. And when will that be?" In my mood of
darkness and despair, the answer to that question was a relentless,
"Never, especially if you are weighted with the sense of obligation to
her, of her wasting her youth in waiting for you."
I wrote her all that was in my mind. "You must forget me," I said, "and
I shall forget you--for I see that you are not for me."
The answer came by telegraph--"Please don't ever again hurt me in that
way." And of the letter which came two days later I remember clearly
this sentence: "If you will not let me go on with you, I will make the
journey alone."
This shook me, but I knew only too well how the bright and beautiful
legions of the romantic and the ideal could be put to flight, could be
hurled headlong into the abyss of oblivion by the phalanxes of fact.
"I see what I must do," was my answer to her letter. "And I shall do it.
Be merciful to me, Elizabeth. Do not tempt me to a worse cowardice than
giving you up. I shall not write again."
And I did not. Every one of her letters was answered--sometimes, I
remember, I wrote to her the whole night through, shading my window so
that mother could not from her window see the reflection of my lamp's
light on the ground and become anxious. But I destroyed those long and
often agonized answers. And I can not say whether my heart was the
heavier in the months when I was getting her letters, to which I dared
not reply, or in those succeeding months when her small, clear
handwriting first ceased to greet me from the mail.