legislature with an increased majority and was elected speaker of
the House according to program. His speech of acceptance was the most
eloquent that had ever been heard in the assembly hall. The most radical
of his party felt that the committees appointed by him were in their
personnel a little too friendly to the vested interests of Verden,
but the _World_ took the high ground that he could render his party no
higher service than absolute fair play, that the bills for the rights of
the people ought to pass on their merits and not by tricky politics.

Never before had there been seen at the State House a lobby like the
one that filled it now. The barrel was tapped so that the glint of gold
flowed through the corridors, into committee rooms, and to out of the
way corners where legislators fought for their honor against an attack
that never ceased. Sometimes the corruption was bold. More often it
was insidious. To see how one by one men hitherto honest surrendered to
bribery was a sight pathetic and tragic.

The Farnum cousins were the centers around whom the reformers rallied.
James directed their counsels in the House and Jeff pounded away in the
_World_ with vital trenchant editorials and news stories. Every day
that paper carried to the farthest corner of the state bulletins of the
battle. Farmers and miners and laboring men watched its roll of honor to
see if the local representatives were standing firm. As the weeks
passed the fight grew more bitter. Now and again men fell by the wayside
disgraced. But the pressure from their constituents was so strong that
Jeff believed his bill would go through.

His friends forced it through the committee and pushed it to a vote.
House Bill 33, as the initiative and referendum amendment was called,
passed the lower legislative body with a small majority. The pool rooms
offered five to four that it would carry in the senate.

It was on the night of the twenty-first of December that the amendment
passed the House. On the morning of the twenty-third the _Herald_ sprang
a front page sensation. It charged that the editor of the _World_ had
ruined a girl named Nellie Anderson at a house where he had boarded and
that she had subsequently disappeared. It featured also a story of how
he had been seen to enter his rooms at midnight with a woman of the
street, who remained there until morning reveling with him. Attached to
this were the affidavits of two detectives, a police officer, a