t a few of the
most notorious, but least important, members of the gang; and I got one
conviction--which was reversed on trial-errors by the higher court.
The truth was that my power had no existence. Dominick still ruled,
through the judges and the newspapers. The press was silent when it
could not venture to deprecate or to condemn me.
But I fought on almost alone. I did not fail to make it clear to the
people why I was not succeeding, and what a sweep there must be before
Jackson County could have any real reform. I made an even more vigorous
campaign for reelection than I had made four years before. The farmers
stood by me fairly well, but the town went overwhelmingly against me.
Why? Because I was "bad for business" and, if reelected, would be still
worse. The corporations with whose law-breaking I interfered were
threatening to remove their plants from Pulaski,--that would have meant
the departure of thousands of the merchants' best customers, and the
destruction of the town's prosperity. I think the election was fairly
honest. Dominick's man beat me by about the same majority by which I had
been elected.
"Bad for business!"--the most potent of political slogans. And it will
inevitably result some day in the concentration of absolute power,
political and all other kinds, in the hands of the few who are strongest
and cleverest. For they can make the people bitterly regret and speedily
repent having tried to correct abuses; and the people, to save their
dollars, will sacrifice their liberty. I doubt if they will, in our time
at least, learn to see far enough to realize that who captures their
liberty captures them and, therefore, their dollars too.
By my defeat in that typical contest I was disheartened,
embittered,--and ruined. For, in my enthusiasm and confidence I had gone
deeply into debt for the expenses of the Reform campaign. At midnight of
election day I descended into the black cave of despair. For three weeks
I explored it. When I returned to the surface, I was a man, ready to
deal with men on the terms of human nature. I had learned my lesson.
For woman the cost of the attainment of womanhood's maturity is the
beautiful, the divine freshness of girlhood. For man, the cost of the
attainment of manhood's full strength and power is equally great, and
equally sad,--his divine faith in human nature, his divine belief that
abstract justice and right and truth rule the world.
Even now, when life is r
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