politicians are politicians; they have always been corrupt
as long as I have known them, and in my opinion they always will be.
The Northeastern is the largest property holder in the State, pays the
biggest tax, and has the most at stake. The politicians could ruin us in
a single session of the Legislature--and what's more, they would do it.
We'd have to be paying blackmail all the time to prevent measures that
would compel us to go out of business. This is a fact, and not a theory.
What little influence I exert politically I have to maintain in order to
protect the property of my stockholders from annihilation. It isn't to
be supposed," he concluded, "that I'm going to see the State turned over
to a man like Humphrey Crewe. I wish to Heaven that this and every other
State had a George Washington for governor and a majority of Robert
Morrises in the Legislature. If they exist, in these days, the people
won't elect 'em--that's all. The kind of man the people will elect,
if you let 'em alone, is--a man who brings in a bill and comes to you
privately and wants you to buy him off."

"Oh, father," Victoria cried, "I can't believe that of the people I see
about here! They seem so kind and honest and high-principled."

Mr. Flint gave a short laugh.

"They're dupes, I tell you. They're at the mercy of any political
schemer who thinks it worth his while to fool 'em. Take Leith, for
instance. There's a man over there who has controlled every office in
that town for twenty-five years or more. He buys and sells votes and
credentials like cattle. His name is Job Braden."

"Why," said Victoria, "I saw him at Humphrey Crewe's garden-party."

"I guess you did," said Mr. Flint, "and I guess Humphrey Crewe saw him
before he went."

Victoria was silent, the recollection of the talk between Mr. Tooting
and Mr. Crewe running through her mind, and Mr. Tooting's saying that
he had done "dirty things" for the Northeastern. She felt that this
was something she could not tell her father, nor could she answer his
argument with what Tom Gaylord had said. She could not, indeed, answer
Mr. Flint's argument at all; the subject, as he had declared, being too
vast for her. And moreover, as she well knew, Mr. Flint was a man whom
other men could not easily answer; he bore them down, even as he
had borne her down. Involuntarily her mind turned to Austen, and she
wondered what he had said; she wondered how he would have answered her
father--whether