A day or so after I lost the only case of consequence I had had in more
than a year, Buck Fessenden came into my office, and, after dosing me
liberally with those friendly protestations and assurances which please
even when they do not convince, said: "I know you won't give me away,
Sayler, and I can't stand it any longer to watch you going on this way.
Don't you see the old man's after you hammer and tongs? He'll never let
up. You won't get no clients, and, if you do, _you won't win no cases_."
Those last five words, spoken in Buck's most significant manner,
revealed what my modesty--or, if you prefer, my stupidity--had hidden
from me. I had known all along that Dominick was keeping away and
driving away clients; but I had not suspected his creatures on the
bench. To this day, after all these years of use, only with the greatest
reluctance and with a moral uneasiness which would doubtless amuse most
political managers, do I send "suggestions" or "intimations" to my men
in judicial office--and I always do it, and always have done it,
indirectly. And I feel relieved and grateful when my judges, eager to
"serve the party," anticipate me by sending me a reassuring hint.
I did not let Buck see into my mind. "Nonsense!" I pooh-poohed; "I've no
cause to complain of lack of business: but even if I had, I'd not blame
Dominick or any one else but myself." Then I gave him a straight but
good-humored look. "Drop it, Buck," said I. "What did the old man send
you to me for? What does he want?"
He was too crafty to defend an indefensible position. "I'll admit he did
send me," said he with a grin, "but I came on my own account, too. Do
you want to make it up with him? You can get back under the plum tree if
you'll say the word."
I could see my mother, as I had seen her two hours before at our poor
midday meal,--an old, old woman, so broken, so worn! And all through
the misery this Dominick had brought upon us. Before I could control
myself to speak, Buck burst out, a look of alarm in his face, "Don't say
it, Mr. Sayler,--I know,--I know. I told him it'd be no use. Honest, he
ain't as bad as you think,--he don't know no better, and it's because he
liked and still likes you that he wants you back." He leaned across the
desk toward me, in his earnestness,--and I could not doubt his
sincerity. "Sayler," he went on, "take my advice, get out of the state.
You ain't the sort that gives in, and no more is he. You've got more
nerve than any other man I know, bar none, but don't waste it on a fool
fight. You know enough about politics to know what you're up against."
"Thank you," said I, "but I'll stay on."
He gave over trying to persuade me. "I hope," said he, "you've got a
card up your sleeve that the old man don't know about."
I made some vague reply, and he soon went away. I felt that I had
confirmed his belief in my fearlessness. Yet, if he could have looked
into my mind, how he would have laughed at his credulity! Probably he
would have pitied me, too, for it is one of the curious facts of human
nature that men are amazed and even disgusted whenever they see--in
others--the weaknesses that are universal. I doubt not, many who read
these memoirs will be quite honestly Pharisaical, thanking Heaven that
they are not touched with any of my infirmities.
It may have been coincidence, though I think not, that, a few days after
Fessenden's call, a Reform movement against Dominick appeared upon the
surface of Jackson County politics. I thought, at the time, that it was
the first streak of the dawn I had been watching for,--the awakening of
the sluggish moral sentiment of the rank and file of the voters. I know
now that it was merely the result of a quarrel among the corporations
that employed Dominick. He had been giving the largest of them,
Roebuck's Universal Gas and Electric Company, called the Power Trust,
more than its proportional share of the privileges and spoils. The
others had protested in vain, and as a last resort had ordered their
lawyers to organize a movement to "purify" Jackson County, Dominick's
stronghold.
I did not then know it, but I got the nomination for county prosecutor
chiefly because none of the other lawyers, not even those secretly
directing the Reform campaign, was brave enough publicly to provoke the
Power Trust. I made a house to house, farm to farm, man to man, canvass.
We had the secret ballot, and I was elected. The people rarely fail to
respond to that kind of appeal if they are convinced that response can
not possibly hurt, and may help, their pockets. And, by the way, those
occasional responses, significant neither of morality nor of
intelligence, lead political theorists far astray. As if honor or
honesty could win other than sporadic and more or less hypocritical
homage--practical homage, I mean--among a people whose permanent ideal
is wealth, no matter how got or how used. That is another way of saying
that the chief characteristic of Americans is that we are human and,
whatever we may profess, cherish the human ideal universal in a world
where want is man's wickedest enemy and wealth his most winning friend.
But as I was relating, I was elected, and my majority, on the face of
the returns, was between ten and eleven hundred. It must actually have
been many thousands, for never before had Dominick "doctored" the tally
sheets so recklessly.
Financially I was now on my way to the surface. I supposed that I had
become a political personage also. Was I not in possession of the most
powerful office in the county? I was astonished that neither Dominick
nor any other member of his gang made the slightest effort to conciliate
me between election day and the date of my taking office. I did succeed
in forcing from reluctant grand juries indictments against a few of the
most notorious, but least important, members of the gang; and I got one
conviction--which was reversed on trial-errors by the higher court.
The truth was that my power had no existence. Dominick still ruled,
through the judges and the newspapers. The press was silent when it
could not venture to deprecate or to condemn me.
But I fought on almost alone. I did not fail to make it clear to the
people why I was not succeeding, and what a sweep there must be before
Jackson County could have any real reform. I made an even more vigorous
campaign for reëlection than I had made four years before. The farmers
stood by me fairly well, but the town went overwhelmingly against me.
Why? Because I was "bad for business" and, if reëlected, would be still
worse. The corporations with whose law-breaking I interfered were
threatening to remove their plants from Pulaski,--that would have meant
the departure of thousands of the merchants' best customers, and the
destruction of the town's prosperity. I think the election was fairly
honest. Dominick's man beat me by about the same majority by which I had
been elected.
"Bad for business!"--the most potent of political slogans. And it will
inevitably result some day in the concentration of absolute power,
political and all other kinds, in the hands of the few who are strongest
and cleverest. For they can make the people bitterly regret and speedily
repent having tried to correct abuses; and the people, to save their
dollars, will sacrifice their liberty. I doubt if they will, in our time
at least, learn to see far enough to realize that who captures their
liberty captures them and, therefore, their dollars too.
By my defeat in that typical contest I was disheartened,
embittered,--and ruined. For, in my enthusiasm and confidence I had gone
deeply into debt for the expenses of the Reform campaign. At midnight of
election day I descended into the black cave of despair. For three weeks
I explored it. When I returned to the surface, I was a man, ready to
deal with men on the terms of human nature. I had learned my lesson.
For woman the cost of the attainment of womanhood's maturity is the
beautiful, the divine freshness of girlhood. For man, the cost of the
attainment of manhood's full strength and power is equally great, and
equally sad,--his divine faith in human nature, his divine belief that
abstract justice and right and truth rule the world.
Even now, when life is redeeming some of those large promises to pay
which I had long ago given up as hopeless bad debts; even now, it gives
me a wrench to remember the crudest chapter in that bitter lesson. So
certain had I been of reëlection that I had arranged to go to Boston the
day after my triumph at the polls. For I knew from friends of the
Crosbys in Pulaski that Elizabeth was still unmarried, was not engaged,
and upon that I had built high a romantic hope.
* * * * *
I made up my mind that mother and I must leave Pulaski, that I must give
up the law and must, in Chicago or Cleveland, get something to do that
would bring in a living at once. Before I found courage to tell her that
which would blast hopes wrapped round and rooted in her very heart, and,
fortunately, before I had to confess to her the debts I had made, Edward
Ramsay threw me a life-line.
He came bustling into my office one afternoon, big and broad, and
obviously pleased with himself, and, therefore, with the world. He had
hardly changed in the years since we were at Ann Arbor together. He had
kept up our friendship, and had insisted on visiting me several times,
though not in the past four years, which had been as busy for him as for
me. Latterly his letters urging me to visit him at their great country
place, away at the other end of the state, had set me a hard task of
inventing excuses.
"Well, well!" he exclaimed, shaking my hand violently in both his. "You
wouldn't come to see me, so I've come to you."
I tried not to show the nervousness this announcement stirred. "I'm
afraid you'll find our hospitality rather uncomfortable," was all I
said. Mother and I had not spread much sail to our temporary gust of
prosperity; and when the storm began to gather, she straightway
closereefed.
"Thanks, but I can't stop with you this time," said he. "I'm making an
inspection of the Power Trust's properties, and I've got mother and
sister along. We're living in the private car the company gives me for
the tour." He went on to tell how, since his father's death, he had been
forced into responsibilities, and was, among many other things, a member
of the Power Trust's executive committee.