rawn by our ablest lawyers and reviewed by the craftiest
of the great corporation lawyers of New York City. Its purpose, most
shrewdly and slyly concealed, was to exempt the railways from
practically all taxation. It was so subtly worded that this would be
disclosed only when the companies should be brought to court for
refusing to pay their usual share of the taxes. Such measures are
usually "straddled" through a legislature,--that is, neither party takes
the responsibility, but the boss of each machine assigns to vote for
them all the men whose seats are secure beyond any ordinary assault of
public indignation. In this case, of the ninety-one members of the lower
house, thirty-two were assigned by Dunkirk and seventeen by Silliman to
make up a majority with three to spare.

My boss, Dominick, got wind that Dunkirk and Silliman were cutting an
extra melon of uncommon size. He descended upon the capitol and served
notice on Dunkirk that the eleven Dominick men assigned to vote for the
bill would vote against it unless he got seven thousand dollars apiece
for them,--seventy-seven thousand dollars. Dunkirk needed every one of
Dominick's men to make up his portion of the majority; he yielded after
trying in vain to reduce the price. All Dominick would say to him on
that point, so I heard afterward, was:

"Every day you put me off, I go up a thousand dollars a head."

We who were to be voted so profitably for Dunkirk, Silliman, Dominick,
and the railroads, learned what was going on,--Silliman went on a "tear"
and talked too much. Nine of us, _not_ including myself, got together
and sent Cassidy, member from the second Jackson County district, to
Dominick to plead for a share. I happened to be with him in the Capital
City Hotel bar when Cassidy came up, and, hemming and hawing, explained
how he and his fellow insurgents felt.

Dominick's veins seemed cords straining to bind down a demon struggling
to escape. "It's back to the bench you go, Pat Cassidy,--back to the
bench where I found you," he snarled, with a volley of profanity and
sewage. "I don't know nothing about this here bill except that it's for
the good of the party. Go back to that gang of damned wharf rats, and
tell 'em, if I hear another squeak, I'll put 'em where I got 'em."

Cassidy shrank away with a furtive glance of envy and hate at me, whom
Dominick treated with peculiar consideration,--I think it was because I
was the only man of education and of any p