第81章

Issuing from the depths of the people, he understood.They were learning a little something at last.They were discovering that the ever higher prices for everything and stationary or falling wages and salaries had some intimate relation with politics; that at the national capitol, at the state capitol, in the county courthouse, in the city hall their share of the nation's vast annual production of wealth was being determined--and that the persons doing the dividing, though elected by them, were in the employ of the plutocracy.Kelly, seeing and comprehending, felt that it behooved him to get for his masters--and for himself--all that could be got in the brief remaining time.Not that he was thinking of giving up the game; nothing so foolish as that.It would be many a year before the plutocracy could be routed out, before the people would have the intelligence and the persistence to claim and to hold their own.In the meantime, they could be fooled and robbed by a hundred tricks.He was not a constitutional lawyer, but he had practical good sense, and could enjoy the joke upon the people in their entanglement in the toils of their own making.Through fear of governmental tyranny they had divided authority among legislators, executives and judges, national, state, local.And, behold, outside of the government, out where they had never dreamed of looking, had grown up a tyranny that was perpetuating itself by dodging from one of these divided authorities to another, eluding capture, wearing out the not too strong perseverance of popular pursuit.

But, thanks to Victor Dorn, the local graft was about to be taken away from the politicians and the plutocracy.How put off that unpleasant event? Obviously, in the only way left unclosed.The election must be stolen.

It is a very human state of mind to feel that what one wants somehow has already become in a sense one's property.It is even more profoundly human to feel that what one has had, however wrongfully, cannot justly be taken away.So Mr.Kelly did not regard himself as a thief, taking what did not belong to him; no, he was holding on to and defending his own.

Victor Dorn had not been in politics since early boyhood without learning how the political game is conducted in all its branches.

Because there had never been the remotest chance of victory, Victor had never made preelection polls of his party.So the first hint that he got of there being a real foundation for the belief of some of his associates in an impending victory was when he found out that Kelly and House were ``colonizing'' voters, and were selecting election officers with an eye to ``dirty work.''

These preparations, he knew, could not be making for the same reason as in the years before the ``gentlemen's agreement''

between the Republican and the Democratic machines.Kelly, he knew, wanted House and the Alliance to win.Therefore, the colonizations in the slums and the appointing of notorious buckos to positions where they would control the ballot boxes could be directed only against the Workingmen's League.Kelly must have accurate information that the League was likely, or at least not unlikely, to win.

Victor had thought he had so schooled himself that victory and defeat were mere words to him.He soon realized how he had overestimated the power of philosophy over human nature.During that campaign he had been imagining that he was putting all his ability, all his energy, all his resourcefulness into the fight.

He now discovered his mistake.Hope--definite hope--of victory had hardly entered his mind before he was organizing and leading on such a campaign as Remsen City had never known in all its history--and Remsen City was in a state where politics is the chief distraction of the people.Sleep left him; he had no need of sleep.Day and night his brain worked, pouring out a steady stream of ideas.He became like a gigantic electric storage battery to which a hundred, a thousand small batteries come for renewal.He charged his associates afresh each day.And they in turn became amazingly more powerful forces for acting upon the minds of the people.

In the last week of the campaign it became common talk throughout the city that the ``Dorn crowd'' would probably carry the election.Kelly was the only one of the opposition leaders who could maintain a calm front.Kelly was too seasoned a gambler even to show his feelings in his countenance, but, had he been showing them, his following would not have been depressed, for he had made preparations to meet and overcome any majority short of unanimity which the people might roll up against him.The discouragement in the House-Alliance camps became so apparent that Kelly sent his chief lieutenant, Wellman, successor to the fugitive Rivers, to House and to David Hull with a message.It was delivered to Hull in this form:

``The old man says he wants you to stop going round with your chin knocking against your knees.He says everybody is saying you have given up the fight.''

``Our meetings these last few days are very discouraging,'' said Davy gloomily.

``What's meetin's?'' retorted Wellman.``You fellows that shoot off your mouths think you're doing the campaigning.But the real stuff is being doped up by us fellows who ain't seen or heard.

The old man says you are going to win.That's straight.He knows.It's only a question of the size of your majority.So pull yourself together, Mr.Hull, and put the ginger back into your speeches, and stir up that there gang of dudes.What a gang of Johnnies and quitters they are!''

Hull was looking directly and keenly at the secret messenger.

Upon his lips was a question he dared not ask.Seeing the impudent, disdainful smile in Wellman's eyes, he hastily shifted his glance.It was most uncomfortable, this suspicion of the hidden meaning of the Kelly message--a suspicion ALMOST confirmed by that mocking smile of the messenger.Hull said with embarrassment:

``Tell Mr.Kelly I'm much obliged.''