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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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