Now came _the_ problem--to elect.
We hear much of many wonders of combination and concentration of
_industrial_ power 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 the _political_ power
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 offices to 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 Supreme Court 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 to talk 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 a hundred-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 for the 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."