orations, the other combinations of wealth, through
their agents, and through the corrupt politicians. Johnson became
the spokesman of public protest and the reform governor of the
State.

After that came battling for the Lord at Armageddon--the most
intoxicating experience in American political history, for a man of
Johnson's temperament. It was a revolution, not in a government,
but in a party. Bonds were loosed. Immense personal enlargement
came to those who had known the ties of regularity. It was an hour
of freedom, unbridled political passion, unrestrained political
utterance. Docility did not exist. Vast crowds thrilled with new
hopes yelled themselves hoarse over angry words.

Association with Roosevelt on the Progressive ticket lifted Johnson
from a local to a national importance. The whole country was the
audience which leaped at his words. It was a revolution in tittle,
a taste, a sample of what the real thing would be, with its
breaking of restraints, its making of the mob a perfect instrument
to play upon, its unleashing of passion to which to give tongue.
Johnson has felt its wild stimulation and like a man who has used
drugs the habit is upon him.

Moreover, his one chance lies that way. I have said that he is, by
accident, radical. Let us imagine a great outburst of popular
passion for reaction. And suppose that Johnson was, when it
arrived, a political blank, as he was when Heney was shot. Johnson
would have raised his angry voice against radicalism, just as
readily as for it.

The essential thing with him is popular passion, not a political
philosophy. He has no political philosophy. He has no real
convictions. He does not reason or think deeply. His mentality is
slight. He is the voice of many; instinctively he gives tongue to
what the many feel; that is all.

Suppose the strong-lunged Californian were a political blank, just
reaching the national consciousness, when the reaction against
Wilson began and when the public swung to conservatism.

You know those vast tin amplifiers employed in big convention
halls, or in out-door meetings, to carry the voice of the speaker
to the remotest depths of the audience; Johnson is a vast tin
amplifier of the voice of the mass. When the people had become
"docile" he would have thundered "docility" to the uttermost bounds
of the universe, if he had not by earlier utterances been
definitely placed on the side opposed to docility.

But he had been definite