"Boys," said Mr. Smith to the two hostlers, stepping out on to the
sidewalk in front of the hotel,--"hoist that there British Jack over the
place and hoist her up good."
Then he stood and watched the flag fluttering in the wind.
"Billy," he said to the desk clerk, "get a couple more and put them up
on the roof of the caff behind the hotel. Wire down to the city and get
a quotation on a hundred of them. Take them signs 'American Drinks' out
of the bar. Put up noo ones with 'British Beer at all Hours'; clear out
the rye whiskey and order in Scotch and Irish, and then go up to the
printing office and get me them placards."
Then another thought struck Mr. Smith.
"Say, Billy," he said, "wire to the city for fifty pictures of King
George. Get 'em good, and get 'em coloured. It don't matter what they
cost."
"All right, sir," said Billy.
"And Billy," called Mr. Smith, as still another thought struck him
(indeed, the moment Mr. Smith went into politics you could see these
thoughts strike him like waves), "get fifty pictures of his father, old
King Albert."
"All right, sir."
"And say, I tell you, while you're at it, get some of the old queen,
Victorina, if you can. Get 'em in mourning, with a harp and one of them
lions and a three-pointed prong."
It was on the morning after the Conservative Convention. Josh Smith had
been chosen the candidate. And now the whole town was covered with flags
and placards and there were bands in the streets every evening, and
noise and music and excitement that went on from morning till night.
Election times are exciting enough even in the city. But there the
excitement dies down in business hours. In Mariposa there aren't any
business hours and the excitement goes on _all_ the time.
Mr. Smith had carried the Convention before him. There had been a feeble
attempt to put up Nivens. But everybody knew that he was a lawyer and a
college man and wouldn't have a chance by a man with a broader outlook
like Josh Smith.
So the result was that Smith was the candidate and there were placards
out all over the town with SMITH AND BRITISH ALLEGIANCE in big letters,
and people were wearing badges with Mr. Smith's face on one side and
King George's on the other, and the fruit store next to the hotel had
been cleaned out and turned into committee rooms with a gang of workers
smoking cigars in it all day and half the night.
There were other placards, too, with BAGSHAW AND LIBERTY, BAGSHAW AND
PROSPERITY, VOTE FOR THE OLD MISSINABA STANDARD BEARER, and up town
beside the Mariposa House there were the Bagshaw committee rooms with
a huge white streamer across the street, and with a gang of Bagshaw
workers smoking their heads off.
But Mr. Smith had an estimate made which showed that nearly two cigars
to one were smoked in his committee rooms as compared with the Liberals.
It was the first time in five elections that the Conservative had been
able to make such a showing as that.
One might mention, too, that there were Drone placards out,--five or six
of them,--little things about the size of a pocket handkerchief, with a
statement that "Mr. Edward Drone solicits the votes of the electors of
Missinaba County." But you would never notice them. And when Drone tried
to put up a streamer across the Main Street with DRONE AND HONESTY the
wind carried it away into the lake.
The fight was really between Smith and Bagshaw, and everybody knew it
from the start.
I wish that I were able to narrate all the phases and the turns of the
great contest from the opening of the campaign till the final polling
day. But it would take volumes.
First of all, of course, the trade question was hotly discussed in the
two newspapers of Mariposa, and the Newspacket and the Times-Herald
literally bristled with statistics. Then came interviews with the
candidates and the expression of their convictions in regard to tariff
questions.
"Mr. Smith," said the reporter of the Mariposa Newspacket, "we'd like
to get your views of the effect of the proposed reduction of the
differential duties."
"By gosh, Pete," said Mr. Smith, "you can search me. Have a cigar."
"What do you think, Mr. Smith, would be the result of lowering the _ad
valorem_ British preference and admitting American goods at a reciprocal
rate?"
"It's a corker, ain't it?" answered Mr. Smith. "What'll you take, lager
or domestic?"
And in that short dialogue Mr. Smith showed that he had instantaneously
grasped the whole method of dealing with the press. The interview in the
paper next day said that Mr. Smith, while unwilling to state positively
that the principle of tariff discrimination was at variance with sound
fiscal science, was firmly of opinion that any reciprocal interchange
of tariff preferences with the United States must inevitably lead to a
serious per capita reduction of the national industry.
"Mr. Smith," said the chairman of a delegation of the manufacturers of
Mariposa, "what do you propose to do in regard to the tariff if you're
elected?"
"Boys," answered Mr. Smith, "I'll put her up so darned high they won't
never get her down again."
"Mr. Smith," said the chairman of another delegation, "I'm an old free
trader--"
"Put it there," said Mr. Smith, "so'm I. There ain't nothing like it."
"What do you think about imperial defence?" asked another questioner.
"Which?" said Mr. Smith.
"Imperial defence."
"Of what?"
"Of everything."
"Who says it?" said Mr. Smith.
"Everybody is talking of it."
"What do the Conservative boys at Ottaway think about it?" answered Mr.
Smith.
"They're all for it."
"Well, I'm fer it too," said Mr. Smith.
These little conversations represented only the first stage, the
argumentative stage of the great contest. It was during this period, for
example, that the Mariposa Newspacket absolutely proved that the price
of hogs in Mariposa was decimal six higher than the price of oranges in
Southern California and that the average decennial import of eggs into
Missinaba County had increased four decimal six eight two in the last
fifteen years more than the import of lemons in New Orleans.
Figures of this kind made the people think. Most certainly.
After all this came the organizing stage and after that the big public
meetings and the rallies. Perhaps you have never seen a county being
"organized." It is a wonderful sight.
First of all the Bagshaw men drove through crosswise in top buggies and
then drove through it again lengthwise. Whenever they met a farmer they
went in and ate a meal with him, and after the meal they took him out to
the buggy and gave him a drink. After that the man's vote was absolutely
solid until it was tampered with by feeding a Conservative.
In fact, the only way to show a farmer that you are in earnest is to go
in and eat a meal with him. If you won't eat it, he won't vote for you.
That is the recognized political test.
But, of course, just as soon as the Bagshaw men had begun to get the
farming vote solidified, the Smith buggies came driving through in the
other direction, eating meals and distributing cigars and turning all
the farmers back into Conservatives.
Here and there you might see Edward Drone, the Independent candidate,
wandering round from farm to farm in the dust of the political buggies.
To each of the farmers he explained that he pledged himself to give no
bribes, to spend no money and to offer no jobs, and each one of them
gripped him warmly by the hand and showed him the way to the next farm.
After the organization of the county there came the period of the public
meetings and the rallies and the joint debates between the candidates
and their supporters.
I suppose there was no place in the whole Dominion where the trade
question--the Reciprocity question--was threshed out quite so thoroughly
and in quite such a national patriotic spirit as in Mariposa. For a
month, at least, people talked of nothing else. A man would stop another
in the street and tell him that he had read last night that the average
price of an egg in New York was decimal ought one more than the price of
an egg in Mariposa, and the other man would stop the first one later in
the day and tell him that the average price of a hog in Idaho was point
six of a cent per pound less (or more,--he couldn't remember which for
the moment) than the average price of beef in Mariposa.
People lived on figures of this sort, and the man who could remember
most of them stood out as a born leader.
But of course it was at the public meetings that these things were most
fully discussed. It would take volumes to do full justice to all the
meetings that they held in Missinaba County. But here and there single
speeches stood out as masterpieces of convincing oratory. Take, for
example, the speech of John Henry Bagshaw at the Tecumseh Corners School
House. The Mariposa Times-Herald said next day that that speech would go
down in history, and so it will,--ever so far down.
Anyone who has heard Bagshaw knows what an impressive speaker he is, and
on this night when he spoke with the quiet dignity of a man old in years
and anxious only to serve his country, he almost surpassed himself. Near
the end of his speech somebody dropped a pin, and the noise it made in
falling fairly rattled the windows.
"I am an old man now, gentlemen," Bagshaw said, "and the time must soon
come when I must not only leave politics, but must take my way towards
that goal from which no traveller returns."
There was a deep hush when Bagshaw said this. It was understood to imply
that he thought of going to the United States.
"Yes, gentlemen, I am an old man, and I wish, when my time comes to go,
to depart leaving as little animosity behind me as possible. But before
I _do_ go, I want it pretty clearly understood that there are more darn
scoundrels in the Conservative party than ought to be tolerated in any
decent community. I bear," he continued, "malice towards none and I wish
to speak with gentleness to all, but what I will say is that how any
set of rational responsible men could nominate such a skunk as the
Conservative candidate passes the bounds of my comprehension. Gentlemen,
in the present campaign there is no room for vindictive abuse. Let us
rise to a higher level than that. They tell me that my opponent, Smith,
is a common saloon keeper. Let it pass. They tell me that he has stood
convicted of horse stealing, that he is a notable perjurer, that he is
known as the blackest-hearted liar in Missinaba County. Let us not speak
of it. Let no whisper of it pass our lips.
"No, gentlemen," continued Bagshaw, pausing to take a drink of water,
"let us rather consider this question on the high plane of national
welfare. Let us not think of our own particular interests but let
us consider the good of the country at large. And to do this, let me
present to you some facts in regard to the price of barley in Tecumseh
Township."
Then, amid a deep stillness, Bagshaw read off the list of prices of
sixteen kinds of grain in sixteen different places during sixteen years.
"But let me turn," Bagshaw went on to another phase of the national
subject, "and view for a moment the price of marsh hay in Missinaba
County--"
When Bagshaw sat down that night it was felt that a Liberal vote in
Tecumseh Township was a foregone conclusion.
But here they hadn't reckoned on the political genius of Mr. Smith.
When he heard next day of the meeting, he summoned some of his leading
speakers to him and he said:
"Boys, they're beating us on them statissicks. Ourn ain't good enough."
Then he turned to Nivens and he said:
"What was them figures you had here the other night?"
Nivens took out a paper and began reading.
"Stop," said Mr. Smith, "what was that figure for bacon?"
"Fourteen million dollars," said Nivens.
"Not enough," said Mr. Smith, "make it twenty. They'll stand for it,
them farmers."
Nivens changed it.
"And what was that for hay?"
"Two dollars a ton."
"Shove it up to four," said Mr. Smith: "And I tell you," he added, "if
any of them farmers says the figures ain't correct, tell them to go to
Washington and see for themselves; say that if any man wants the proof
of your figures let him go over to England and ask,--tell him to go
straight to London and see it all for himself in the books."
After this, there was no more trouble over statistics. I must say though
that it is a wonderfully convincing thing to hear trade figures of this
kind properly handled. Perhaps the best man on this sort of thing in the
campaign was Mullins, the banker. A man of his profession simply has to
have figures of trade and population and money at his fingers' ends and
the effect of it in public speaking is wonderful.
No doubt you have listened to speakers of this kind, but I question
whether you have ever heard anything more typical of the sort of effect
that I allude to than Mullins's speech at the big rally at the Fourth
Concession.
Mullins himself, of course, knows the figures so well that he never
bothers to write them into notes and the effect is very striking.
"Now, gentlemen," he said very earnestly, "how many of you know just to
what extent the exports of this country have increased in the last ten
years? How many could tell what per cent. of increase there has been in
one decade of our national importation?"--then Mullins paused and looked
round. Not a man knew it.
"I don't recall," he said, "exactly the precise amount myself,--not at
this moment,--but it must be simply tremendous. Or take the question of
population," Mullins went on, warming up again as a born statistician
always does at the proximity of figures, "how many of you know, how many
of you can state, what has been the decennial percentage increase in our
leading cities--?"
There he paused, and would you believe it, not a man could state it.
"I don't recall the exact figures," said Mullins, "but I have them at
home and they are positively colossal."
But just in one phase of the public speaking, the candidacy of Mr. Smith
received a serious set-back.
It had been arranged that Mr. Smith should run on a platform of total
prohibition. But they soon found that it was a mistake. They had
imported a special speaker from the city, a grave man with a white tie,
who put his whole heart into the work and would take nothing for it
except his expenses and a sum of money for each speech. But beyond the
money, I say, he would take nothing.
He spoke one night at the Tecumseh Corners social hall at the same time
when the Liberal meeting was going on at the Tecumseh Corners school
house.
"Gentlemen," he said, as he paused half way in his speech,--"while we
are gathered here in earnest discussion, do you know what is happening
over at the meeting place of our opponents? Do you know that seventeen
bottles of rye whiskey were sent out from the town this afternoon
to that innocent and unsuspecting school house? Seventeen bottles of
whiskey hidden in between the blackboard and the wall, and every single
man that attends that meeting,--mark my words, every single man,--will
drink his fill of the abominable stuff at the expense of the Liberal
candidate!"
Just as soon as the speaker said this, you could see the Smith men at
the meeting look at one another in injured surprise, and before the
speech was half over the hall was practically emptied.
After that the total prohibition plank was changed and the committee
substituted a declaration in favour of such a form of restrictive
license as should promote temperance while encouraging the manufacture
of spirituous liquors, and by a severe regulation of the liquor traffic
should place intoxicants only in the hands of those fitted to use them.
Finally there came the great day itself, the Election Day that brought,
as everybody knows, the crowning triumph of Mr. Smith's career. There is
no need to speak of it at any length, because it has become a matter of
history.
In any case, everybody who has ever seen Mariposa knows just what
election day is like. The shops, of course, are, as a matter of custom,
all closed, and the bar rooms are all closed by law so that you have to
go in by the back way. All the people are in their best clothes and at
first they walk up and down the street in a solemn way just as they do
on the twelfth of July and on St. Patrick's Day, before the fun begins.
Everybody keeps looking in at the different polling places to see if
anybody else has voted yet, because, of course, nobody cares to vote
first for fear of being fooled after all and voting on the wrong side.
Most of all did the supporters of Mr. Smith, acting under his
instructions, hang back from the poll in the early hours. To Mr. Smith's
mind, voting was to be conducted on the same plan as bear-shooting.
"Hold back your votes, boys," he said, "and don't be too eager. Wait
till she begins to warm up and then let 'em have it good and hard."
In each of the polling places in Mariposa there is a returning officer
and with him are two scrutineers, and the electors, I say, peep in and
out like mice looking into a trap. But if once the scrutineers get a man
well into the polling booth, they push him in behind a little curtain
and make him vote. The voting, of course, is by secret ballot, so that
no one except the scrutineers and the returning officer and the two or
three people who may be round the poll can possibly tell how a man has
voted.
That's how it comes about that the first results are often so
contradictory and conflicting. Sometimes the poll is badly arranged
and the scrutineers are unable to see properly just how the ballots
are being marked and they count up the Liberals and Conservatives in
different ways. Often, too, a voter makes his mark so hurriedly and
carelessly that they have to pick it out of the ballot box and look at
it to see what it is.
I suppose that may have been why it was that in Mariposa the results
came out at first in such a conflicting way. Perhaps that was how it
was that the first reports showed that Edward Drone the Independent
candidate was certain to win. You should have seen how the excitement
grew upon the streets when the news was circulated. In the big rallies
and meetings of the Liberals and Conservatives, everybody had pretty
well forgotten all about Drone, and when the news got round at about
four o'clock that the Drone vote was carrying the poll, the people were
simply astounded. Not that they were not pleased. On the contrary.
They were delighted. Everybody came up to Drone and shook hands and
congratulated him and told him that they had known all along that what
the country wanted was a straight, honest, non-partisan representation.
The Conservatives said openly that they were sick of party, utterly done
with it, and the Liberals said that they hated it. Already three or four
of them had taken Drone aside and explained that what was needed in the
town was a straight, clean, non-partisan post-office, built on a piece
of ground of a strictly non-partisan character, and constructed under
contracts that were not tainted and smirched with party affiliation. Two
or three men were willing to show to Drone just where a piece of ground
of this character could be bought. They told him too that in the matter
of the postmastership itself they had nothing against Trelawney, the
present postmaster, in any personal sense, and would say nothing against
him except merely that he was utterly and hopelessly unfit for his job
and that if Drone believed, as he had said he did, in a purified civil
service, he ought to begin by purifying Trelawney.
Already Edward Drone was beginning to feel something of what it meant
to hold office and there was creeping into his manner the quiet
self-importance which is the first sign of conscious power.
In fact, in that brief half-hour of office, Drone had a chance to
see something of what it meant. Henry McGinnis came to him and asked
straight out for a job as federal census-taker on the ground that he
was hard up and had been crippled with rheumatism all winter. Nelson
Williamson asked for the post of wharf master on the plea that he
had been laid up with sciatica all winter and was absolutely fit for
nothing. Erasmus Archer asked him if he could get his boy Pete into one
of the departments at Ottawa, and made a strong case of it by explaining
that he had tried his cussedest to get Pete a job anywhere else and it
was simply impossible. Not that Pete wasn't a willing boy, but he was
slow,--even his father admitted it,--slow as the devil, blast him, and
with no head for figures and unfortunately he'd never had the schooling
to bring him on. But if Drone could get him in at Ottawa, his father
truly believed it would be the very place for him. Surely in the Indian
Department or in the Astronomical Branch or in the New Canadian Navy
there must be any amount of opening for a boy like this? And to all of
these requests Drone found himself explaining that he would take the
matter under his very earnest consideration and that they must remember
that he had to consult his colleagues and not merely follow the dictates
of his own wishes. In fact, if he had ever in his life had any envy of
Cabinet Ministers, he lost it in this hour.
But Drone's hour was short. Even before the poll had closed in Mariposa,
the news came sweeping in, true or false, that Bagshaw was carrying
the county. The second concession had gone for Bagshaw in a regular
landslide, six votes to only two for Smith,--and all down the township
line road (where the hay farms are) Bagshaw was said to be carrying all
before him.
Just as soon as that news went round the town, they launched the
Mariposa band of the Knights of Pythias (every man in it is a Liberal)
down the Main Street with big red banners in front of it with the motto
BAGSHAW FOREVER in letters a foot high. Such rejoicing and enthusiasm
began to set in as you never saw. Everybody crowded round Bagshaw on the
steps of the Mariposa House and shook his hand and said they were proud
to see the day and that the Liberal party was the glory of the Dominion
and that as for this idea of non-partisan politics the very thought
of it made them sick. Right away in the committee rooms they began
to organize the demonstration for the evening with lantern slides and
speeches and they arranged for a huge bouquet to be presented to Bagshaw
on the platform by four little girls (all Liberals) all dressed in
white.
And it was just at this juncture, with one hour of voting left, that
Mr. Smith emerged from his committee rooms and turned his voters on the
town, much as the Duke of Wellington sent the whole line to the charge
at Waterloo. From every committee room and sub-committee room they
poured out in flocks with blue badges fluttering on their coats.
"Get at it, boys," said Mr. Smith, "vote and keep on voting till they
make you quit."
Then he turned to his campaign assistant. "Billy," he said, "wire down
to the city that I'm elected by an overwhelming majority and tell them
to wire it right back. Send word by telephone to all the polling places
in the county that the hull town has gone solid Conservative and tell
them to send the same news back here. Get carpenters and tell them to
run up a platform in front of the hotel; tell them to take the bar door
clean off its hinges and be all ready the minute the poll quits."
It was that last hour that did it. Just as soon as the big posters
went up in the windows of the Mariposa Newspacket with the telegraphic
despatch that Josh Smith was reported in the city to be elected, and was
followed by the messages from all over the county, the voters hesitated
no longer. They had waited, most of them, all through the day, not
wanting to make any error in their vote, but when they saw the Smith men
crowding into the polls and heard the news from the outside, they went
solid in one great stampede, and by the time the poll was declared
closed at five o'clock there was no shadow of doubt that the county was
saved and that Josh Smith was elected for Missinaba.
I wish you could have witnessed the scene in Mariposa that evening. It
would have done your heart good,--such joy, such public rejoicing as you
never saw. It turned out that there wasn't really a Liberal in the whole
town and that there never had been. They were all Conservatives and had
been for years and years. Men who had voted, with pain and sorrow in
their hearts, for the Liberal party for twenty years, came out that
evening and owned up straight that they were Conservatives. They
said they could stand the strain no longer and simply had to confess.
Whatever the sacrifice might mean, they were prepared to make it.
Even Mr. Golgotha Gingham, the undertaker, came out and admitted that
in working for John Henry Bagshaw he'd been going straight against his
conscience. He said that right from the first he had had his misgivings.
He said it had haunted him. Often at night when he would be working away
quietly, one of these sudden misgivings would overcome him so that he
could hardly go on with his embalming. Why, it appeared that on the very
first day when reciprocity was proposed, he had come home and said to
Mrs. Gingham that he thought it simply meant selling out the country.
And the strange thing was that ever so many others had just the same
misgivings. Trelawney admitted that he had said to Mrs. Trelawney that
it was madness, and Jeff Thorpe, the barber, had, he admitted, gone home
to his dinner, the first day reciprocity was talked of, and said to Mrs.
Thorpe that it would simply kill business in the country and introduce
a cheap, shoddy, American form of haircut that would render true loyalty
impossible. To think that Mrs. Gingham and Mrs. Trelawney and Mrs.
Thorpe had known all this for six months and kept quiet about it! Yet I
think there were a good many Mrs. Ginghams in the country. It is merely
another proof that no woman is fit for politics.
The demonstration that night in Mariposa will never be forgotten. The
excitement in the streets, the torchlights, the music of the band of
the Knights of Pythias (an organization which is conservative in all but
name), and above all the speeches and the patriotism.
They had put up a big platform in front of the hotel, and on it were
Mr. Smith and his chief workers, and behind them was a perfect forest of
flags. They presented a huge bouquet of flowers to Mr. Smith, handed to
him by four little girls in white,--the same four that I spoke of above,
for it turned out that they were all Conservatives.
Then there were the speeches. Judge Pepperleigh spoke and said that
there was no need to dwell on the victory that they had achieved,
because it was history; there was no occasion to speak of what part he
himself had played, within the limits of his official position, because
what he had done was henceforth a matter of history; and Nivens, the
lawyer, said that he would only say just a few words, because anything
that he might have done was now history; later generations, he said,
might read it but it was not for him to speak of it, because it belonged
now to the history of the country. And, after them, others spoke in the
same strain and all refused absolutely to dwell on the subject (for more
than half an hour) on the ground that anything that they might have done
was better left for future generations to investigate. And no doubt this
was very true, as to some things, anyway.
Mr. Smith, of course, said nothing. He didn't have to,--not for four
years,--and he knew it.