BURBANK

It was through Carlotta that I came to know Burbank well.

He was in the House, representing the easternmost district of our state.

I had disliked him when we were boys in the state assembly together,

and, when I met him again in Washington, he seemed to me to have all his

faults of fifteen years before aggravated by persistence in them.

Finally, I needed his place in Congress for a useful lieutenant of

Woodruff's and ordered him beaten for the renomination. He made a bitter

fight against decapitation, and, as he was popular with the people of

his district, we had some difficulty in defeating him. But when he was

beaten, he was of course helpless and hopelessly discredited,--the

people soon forget a fallen politician. He "took off his coat" and

worked hard and well for the election of the man who had euchred him out

of the nomination. When he returned to Washington to finish his term,

he began a double, desperate assault upon my friendship. The direct

assault was unsuccessful,--I understood it, and I was in no need of

lieutenants. More than I could easily take care of were already striving

to serve me, scores of the brightest, most ambitious young men of the

state eager to do my bidding, whatever it might be, in the hope that in

return I would "take care of" them, would admit them to the coveted

inclosure round the plum tree. The plum tree! Is there any kind of fruit

which gladdens the eyes of ambitious man, that does not glisten upon

some one of its many boughs, heavy-laden with corporate and public

honors and wealth?

Burbank's indirect attack, through his wife and Carlotta, fared better.

The first of it I distinctly recall was after a children's party at our

house. Carlotta singled out Mrs. Burbank for enthusiastic commendation.

"The other women sent nurses with their children," said she, "but Mrs.

Burbank came herself. She was so sweet in apologizing for coming. She

said she hadn't any nurse, and that she was so timid about her children

that she never could bring herself to trust them to nurses. And really,

Harvey, you don't know how nice she was all the afternoon. She's the

kind of mother I approve of, the kind I try to be. Don't you admire

her?"

"I don't know her," said I. "The only time I met her she struck me as

being--well, rather silent."

"That's it," she exclaimed triumphantly. "She doesn't care a rap for

men. She's absorbed in her children and her husband." Then, after a

pause, she added: "Well, she's welcome to him. I can't see what she

finds to care for."

"Why?" said I.

"Oh, he's distinguished-looking, and polite, offensively polite to

women--he doesn't understand them at all--thinks they like deference and

flattery, the low-grade molasses kind of flattery. He has a very nice

smile. But he's so stilted and tiresome, always serious,--and such a

pose! It's what I call the presidential pose. No doubt he'll be

President some day."

"Why?" said I. It is amusing to watch a woman fumble about for reasons

for her intuitions.

Carlotta did uncommonly well. "Oh, I don't know. He's the sort of

high-average American that the people go crazy about. He--he--_looks_

like a President, that sort of--solemn--no-sense-of-humor, _Sunday_

look,--you know what I mean. Anyhow, he's going to be President."

I thought not. A few days later, while what Carlotta had said was fresh

in my mind, he overtook me walking to the capitol. As we went on

together, I was smiling to myself. He certainly did look and talk like a

President. He was of the average height, of the average build, and of a

sort of average facial mold; he had hair that was a compromise among the

average shades of brown, gray, and black, with a bald spot just where

most men have it.

His pose--I saw that Carlotta was shrewdly right. He was acutely

self-conscious, and was acting his pose every instant. He had selected

it early in life; he would wear it, even in his nightshirt, until death.

He said nothing brilliant, but neither did he say anything that would

not have been generally regarded as sound and sensible. His impressive

manner of delivering his words made one overvalue the freight they

carried. But I soon found, for I studied him with increasing interest,

thanks to my new point of view upon him,--I soon found that he had one

quality the reverse of commonplace. He had magnetism.

Whenever a new candidate was proposed for Mazarin's service, he used to

ask, first of all, "Has he luck?" My first question has been, "Has he

magnetism?" and I think mine is the better measure. Such of one's luck

as is not the blundering blindness of one's opponents is usually the

result of one's magnetism. However, it is about the most dangerous of

the free gifts of nature,--which are all dangerous. Burbank's merit lay

in his discreet use of it. It compelled men to center upon him; he

turned this to his advantage by making them feel, not how he shone, but

how they shone. They went away liking him because they had new reasons

for being in love with themselves.

I found only two serious weaknesses. The first was that he lacked the

moral courage boldly to do either right or wrong. That explained why, in

spite of his talents for impressing people both privately and from the

platform, he was at the end of his political career. The second weakness

was that he was ashamed of his very obscure and humble origin. He knew

that his being "wholly self-made" was a matchless political asset, and

he used it accordingly. But he looked on it somewhat as the beggar looks

on the deformity he exhibits to get alms.

Neither weakness made him less valuable to my purpose,--the first one,

if anything, increased his value. I wanted an instrument that was

capable, but strong only when I used it.

I wanted a man suitable for development first into governor of my state,

and then into a President. I could not have got the presidency for

myself, but neither did I want it. My longings were all for power,--the

reality, not the shadow. In a republic the man who has the real power

must be out of view. If he is within view, a million hands stretch to

drag him from the throne. He _must_ be out of view, putting forward his

puppets and changing them when the people grow bored or angry with them.

And the President--in all important matters he must obey his party,

which is, after all, simply the "interests" that finance it; in

unimportant matters, his so-called power is whittled down by the party's

leaders and workers, whose requirements may not be disregarded. He

shakes the plum tree, but he does it under orders; others gather the

fruit, and he gets only the exercise and the "honor."

I had no yearning for puppetship, however exalted the title or sonorous

the fame; but to be the power that selects the king-puppet of the

political puppet-hierarchy, to be the power that selects and rules

him,--that was the logical development of my career.

In Burbank I thought I had found a man worthy to wear the puppet

robes,--one who would glory in them. He, like most of the other

ambitious men I have known, cared little who was behind the throne,

provided he himself was seated upon it, the crown on his head and the

crowds tossing the hats that shelter their dim-thinking brains. Also, in

addition to magnetism and presence, he had dexterity and distinction and

as much docility as can be expected in a man big enough to use for

important work.

In September I gave him our party nomination for governor. In our

one-sided state that meant his election.

As I had put him into the governorship not so much for use there as for

use thereafter, it was necessary to protect him from my combine, which

had destroyed his two immediate predecessors by over-use,--they had

become so unpopular that their political careers ended with their terms.

Protect him I must, though the task would be neither easy nor pleasant.

It involved a collision with my clients,--a square test of strength

between us. What was to me far more repellent, it involved my personally

taking a hand in that part of my political work which I had hitherto

left to Woodruff and his lieutenants.

One does not in person chase and catch and kill and dress and serve the

chicken he has for dinner; he orders chicken, and hears and thinks no

more about it until it is served. Thus, all the highly disagreeable part

of my political work was done by others; Woodruff, admirably capable and

most careful to spare my feelings, received the demands of my clients

from their lawyers and transmitted them to the party leaders in the

legislature with the instructions how the machinery was to be used in

making them into law. As I was financing the machines of both parties,

his task was not difficult, though delicate.

But now that I began to look over Woodruff's legislative program in

advance, I was amazed at the rapacity of my clients, rapacious though I

knew them to be. I had been thinking that the independent

newspapers--there were a few such, but of small circulation and

influence--were malignant in their attacks upon my "friends." In fact,

as I soon saw, they had told only a small part of the truth. They had

not found out the worst things that were done; nor had they grasped how

little the legislature and the governor were doing other than the

business of the big corporations, most of it of doubtful public benefit,

to speak temperately. An hour's study of the facts and I realized as

never before why we are so rapidly developing a breed of

multi-millionaires in this country with all the opportunities to wealth

in their hands. I had only to remember that the system which ruled my

own state was in full blast in every one of the states of the Union.

Everywhere, no sooner do the people open or propose to open a new road

into a source of wealth, than men like these clients of mine hurry to

the politicians and buy the rights to set up toll-gates and to fix their

own schedule of tolls.

However, the time had now come when I must assert myself. I made no

radical changes in that first program of Burbank's term. I contented

myself with cutting off the worst items, those it would have ruined

Burbank to indorse. My clients were soon grumbling, but Woodruff handled

them well, placating them with excuses that soothed their annoyance to

discontented silence. So ably did he manage it that not until Burbank's

third year did they begin to come directly to me and complain of the way

they were being "thrown down" at the capitol.

Roebuck, knowing me most intimately and feeling that he was my author

and protector, was frankly insistent. "We got almost nothing at the last

session," he protested, "and this winter--Woodruff tells me we may not

get the only thing we're asking."

I was ready for him, as I was for each of the ten. I took out the list

of measures passed or killed at the last session in the interest of the

Power Trust. It contained seventy-eight items, thirty-four of them

passed. I handed it to him.

"Yes,--a few things," he admitted, "but all trifles!"

"That little amendment to the Waterways law must alone have netted you

three or four millions already."

"Nothing like that. Nothing like that."

"I can organize a company within twenty-four hours that will pay you

four millions in cash for the right, and stock besides."

He did not take up my offer.

"You have already had thirteen matters attended to this winter," I

pursued. "The one that can't be done--Really, Mr. Roebuck, the whole

state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan Christian University are

your dummies. It would be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred

thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to them, so that they can

presently sell it to you for a song."

He reddened. "Newspaper scandal!" he blustered, but changed the subject

as soon as he had shown me and re-shown himself that his motives were

pure.

I saw that Burbank's last winter was to be crucial. My clients were

clamorous, and were hinting at all sorts of dire doings if they were not

treated better. Roebuck was questioning, in the most malignantly

friendly manner, "whether, after all, Harvey, the combine isn't a

mistake, and the old way wasn't the best." On the other hand Burbank was

becoming restless. He had so cleverly taken advantage of the chances to

do popular things, which I had either made for him or pointed out to

him, that he had become something of a national figure. When he got

eighty-one votes for the presidential nomination in our party's national

convention his brain was dizzied. Now he was in a tremor lest my clients

should demand of him things that would diminish or destroy this sapling

popularity which, in his dreams, he already saw grown into a mighty tree

obscuring the national heavens.

I gave many and many an hour to anxious thought and careful planning

that summer and fall. It was only a few days before Doc Woodruff

appeared at Fredonia with the winter's legislative program that I saw my

way straight to what I hoped was broad day. The program he brought was

so outrageous that it was funny. There was nothing in it for the Ramsay

interests, but each of the other ten had apparently exhausted the

ingenuity of its lawyers in concocting demands that would have wrecked

for ever the party granting them.

"Our friends are modest," said I.

"They've gone clean crazy," replied Woodruff. "And if you could have

heard them talk! It's impossible to make them see that anybody has any

rights but themselves."

"Well, let me have the details," said I. "Explain every item on this

list; tell me just what it means, and just how the lawyers propose to

disguise it so the people won't catch on."

When he finished, I divided the demands into three classes,--the

impossible, the possible, and the practicable. "Strike out all the

impossible," I directed. "Cut down the possible to the ten that are

least outrageous. Those ten and the practicable must be passed."

He read off the ten which were beyond the limits of prudence, but not

mob-and-hanging matters. "We can pass them, of course," was his comment.

"We could pass a law ordering the state house burned, but--"

"Precisely," said I. "I think the consequences will be interesting." I

cross-marked the five worst of the ten possibilities. "Save those until

the last weeks of the session."

Early in the session Woodruff began to push the five least bad of the

bad measures on to the calendar of the legislature, one by one. When the

third was introduced, Burbank took the Limited for Washington. He

arrived in time to join my wife and my little daughter Frances and me at

breakfast. He was so white and sunken-eyed and his hands were so

unsteady that Frances tried in vain to take her solemn, wondering,

pitying gaze from his face. As soon as my study door closed behind us,

he burst out, striding up and down.

"I don't know _what_ to think, Sayler," he cried, "I don't _know_ what

to think! The demands of these corporations have been growing, growing,

growing! And now--You have seen the calendar?"

"Yes," said I. "Some of the bills are pretty stiff, aren't they? But the

boys tell me they're for our best friends, and that they're all

necessary."

"No doubt, no doubt," he replied, "but it will be impossible to

reconcile the people." Suddenly he turned on me, his eyes full of fear

and suspicion. "Have _you_ laid a plot to ruin me, Sayler? It certainly

looks that way. Have you a secret ambition for the presidency--"

"Don't talk rubbish, James," I interrupted. Those few meaningless votes

in the national convention had addled his common sense. "Sit down,--calm

yourself,--tell me all about it."

He seated himself and ran his fingers up and down his temples and

through his wet hair that was being so rapidly thinned and whitened by

the struggles and anxieties of his ambition. "My God!" he cried out,

"how I am punished! When I started in my public career, I looked

forward and saw just this time,--when I should be the helpless tool in

the hands of the power I sold myself to. Governor!" He almost shouted

the word, rising and pacing the floor again. "Governor!"--and he laughed

in wild derision.

I watched him, fascinated. I, too, at the outset of my career, had

looked forward, and had seen the same peril, but I had avoided it.

Wretched figure that he was!--what more wretched, more pitiable than a

man groveling and moaning in the mire of his own self-contempt?

"Governor!" I said to myself, as I saw awful thoughts flitting like

demons of despair across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and

rejoiced,--shuddered at the narrowness of my own escape; pitied the man

who seemed myself as I might have been; and rejoiced that I had had my

mother with me and in me to impel me into another course.

"Come, come, Burbank," said I, "you're not yourself; you've lost

sleep--"

"Sleep!" he interrupted, "I have not closed my eyes since I read those

cursed bills."

"Tell me what you want done," was my suggestion. "I'll help in any way

I can,--any way that's practicable."

"Oh, I understand your position, Sayler," he answered, when he had got

control of himself again, "but I see plainly that the time has come when

the power that rules me,--that rules us both,--has decided to use me to

my own destruction. If I refuse to do these things, it will destroy

me,--and a hundred are eager to come forward and take my place. If I do

these things, the people will destroy me,--and neither is that of the

smallest importance to our master."

His phrases, "the power that rules us both," and "our master," jarred on

me. So far as he knew, indeed, so far as "our master" knew, were not he

and I in the same class? But that was no time for personal vanity. All I

said was: "The bills must go through. This is one of those crises that

test a man's loyalty to the party."

"For the good of the party!" he muttered with a bitter sneer. "Crime

upon crime--yes, crime, I say--that the party may keep the favor of the

powers! And to what end? to what good? Why, that the party may continue

in control and so may be of further use to its rulers." He rested his

elbows on the table and held his face between his hands. He looked

terribly old, and weary beyond the power ever to be rested again. "I

stand with the party,--what am I without it?" he went on in a dull

voice. "The people may forget, but, if I offend the master,--he never

forgives or forgets. I'll sign the bills, Sayler,--_if_ they come to me

as party measures."

Burbank had responded to the test.

A baser man would have acted as scores of governors, mayors, and judges

have acted in the same situation--would have accepted popular ruin and

would have compelled the powers to make him rich in compensation. A

braver man would have defied it and the powers, would have appealed to

the people--with one chance of winning out against ten thousand chances

of being disbelieved and laughed at as a "man who thinks he's too good

for his party." Burbank was neither too base nor too brave; clearly, I

assured myself, he is the man I want. I felt that I might safely relieve

his mind, so far as I could do so without letting him too far into my

secret plans.

I had not spent five minutes in explanation before he was up, his face

radiant, and both hands stretched out to me.

"Forgive me, Harvey!" he cried. "I shall never distrust you again. I put

my future in your hands."