was done by others; Woodruff, admirably capable and
most careful to spare my feelings, received the demands of my clients
from their lawyers and transmitted them to the party leaders in the
legislature with the instructions how the machinery was to be used in
making them into law. As I was financing the machines of both parties,
his task was not difficult, though delicate.

But now that I began to look over Woodruff's legislative program in
advance, I was amazed at the rapacity of my clients, rapacious though I
knew them to be. I had been thinking that the independent
newspapers--there were a few such, but of small circulation and
influence--were malignant in their attacks upon my "friends." In fact,
as I soon saw, they had told only a small part of the truth. They had
not found out the worst things that were done; nor had they grasped how
little the legislature and the governor were doing other than the
business of the big corporations, most of it of doubtful public benefit,
to speak temperately. An hour's study of the facts and I realized as
never before why we are so rapidly developing a breed of
multi-millionaires in this country with all the opportunities to wealth
in their hands. I had only to remember that the system which ruled my
own state was in full blast in every one of the states of the Union.
Everywhere, no sooner do the people open or propose to open a new road
into a source of wealth, than men like these clients of mine hurry to
the politicians and buy the rights to set up toll-gates and to fix their
own schedule of tolls.

However, the time had now come when I must assert myself. I made no
radical changes in that first program of Burbank's term. I contented
myself with cutting off the worst items, those it would have ruined
Burbank to indorse. My clients were soon grumbling, but Woodruff handled
them well, placating them with excuses that soothed their annoyance to
discontented silence. So ably did he manage it that not until Burbank's
third year did they begin to come directly to me and complain of the way
they were being "thrown down" at the capitol.

Roebuck, knowing me most intimately and feeling that he was my author
and protector, was frankly insistent. "We got almost nothing at the last
session," he protested, "and this winter--Woodruff tells me we may not
get the only thing we're asking."

I was ready for him, as I was for each of the ten. I took out the list
of measures passed or killed at