第79章

In that Remsen City campaign the one party that could profit by the full and clear truth, and therefore was eager for the truth as to everything and everybody, was the Workingmen's League.The Kelly crowd, the House gang, the Citizens' Alliance, all had their ugly secrets, their secret intentions different from their public professions.All these were seeking office and power with a view to increasing or perpetuating or protecting various abuses, however ardently they might attack, might perhaps honestly intend to end, certain other and much smaller abuses.

The Workingmen's League said that it would end every abuse existing law did not securely protect, and it meant what it said.

Its campaign fund was the dues paid in by its members and the profits from the New Day.Its financial books were open for free inspection.Not so the others--and that in itself was proof enough of sinister intentions.

Under Victor Dorn's shrewd direction, the League candidates published, each man in a sworn statement, a complete description of all the property owned by himself and by his wife.``The character of a man's property,'' said the New Day, ``is an indication of how that man will act in public affairs.

Therefore, every candidate for public trust owes it to the people to tell them just what his property interests are.The League candidates do this--and an effective answer the schedules make to the charge that the League's candidates are men who have `no stake in the community.' Now, let Mr.Sawyer, Mr.Hull, Mr.

Galland and the rest of the League's opponents do likewise.Let us read how many shares of water and ice stock Mr.Sawyer owns.

Let us hear from Mr.Hull about his traction holdings--those of the Hull estate from which he draws his entire income.As for Mr.Galland, it would be easier for him to give the list of public and semi-public corporations in which he is not largely interested.But let him be specific, since he asks the people to trust him as judge between them and those corporations of which he is almost as large an owner as is his father-in-law.''

This line of attack--and the publication of the largest contributors to the Republican and Democratic- Reform campaign fund--caused a great deal of public and private discussion.

Large crowds cheered Hull when he, without doing the charges the honor of repeating them, denounced the ``undignified and demagogic methods of our desperate opponents.'' The smaller Sawyer crowds applauded Sawyer when he waxed indignant over the attempts of those ``socialists and anarchists, haters of this free country and spitters upon its glorious flag, to set poor against rich, to destroy our splendid American tradition of a free field and no favors, and let the best man win!''

Sawyer, and Davy, all the candidates of the machines and the reformers for that matter, made excellent public appearances.

They discoursed eloquently about popular rights and wrongs.They denounced corruption; they stood strongly for the right and renounced and denounced the devil and all his works.They promised to do far more for the people than did the Leaguers; for Victor Dorn had trained his men to tell the exact truth --the difficulty of doing anything for the people at any near time or in any brief period because at a single election but a small part of the effective offices could be changed, and sweeping changes must be made before there could be sweeping benefits.``We'll do all we can,'' was their promise.``Their county government and their state government and their courts won't let us do much.

But a beginning has to be made.Let's make it!''

David Hull's public appearance was especially good.Not so effective as it has now become, because he was only a novice at campaigning in that year.But he looked, well--handsome, yet not too handsome, upper class, but not arrogant, serious, frank and kindly.And he talked in a plain, honest way--you felt that no interest, however greedy, desperate and powerful, would dare approach that man with an improper proposal-- and you quite forgot in real affairs the crude improper proposal is never the method of approach.When Davy, with grave emotion, referred to the ``pitiful efforts to smirch the personal character of candidates,'' you could not but burn with scorn of the Victor Dorn tactics.What if Hull did own gas and water and ice and traction and railway stocks? Mustn't a rich man invest his money somehow? And how could he more creditably invest it than in local enterprises and in enterprises that opened up the country and gave employment to labor? What if the dividends were improperly, even criminally, earned? Must he therefore throw the dividends paid him into the street? As for a man of such associations and financial interests being unfit fairly to administer public affairs, what balderdash! Who could be more fit than this educated, high minded man, of large private means, willing to devote himself to the public service instead of drinking himself to death or doing nothing at all.You would have felt, as you looked at Davy and listened to him, that it was little short of marvelous that a man could be so self-sacrificing as to consent to run the gauntlet of low mudslingers for no reward but an office with a salary of three thousand a year.And you would have been afraid that, if something was not done to stop these mudslingers, such men as David Hull would abandon their patriotic efforts to save their country--and then WHAT would become of the country?