terests back of the political machines
poured out money like water to elect a ticket that would be friendly
to capital. An eight-hour-day bill to apply to miners and underground
workers had been passed by the last legislature and a supreme court
must be elected to declare this law unconstitutional. Moreover, a United
States senator was to be chosen, so that the personnel of the assembly
was a matter of great importance.

Through the subsidized columns of the _Advocate_ and the _Herald_ all
the venom of outraged public plunder was emptied on the heads of
Jeff Farnum and Captain Chunn. They were rebels, blackmailers, and
anarchists. Jeff's life was held up to public scorn as dissolute and
licentious. He had been expelled from college and consorted only with
companions of the lowest sort. A free thinker and an atheist, he wanted
to tear down the pillars which upheld society. Unless Verden and the
state repudiated him and his gang of trouble breeders the poison of
their opinions would infect the healthy fabric of the community.

There was about Jeff a humility, a sort of careless generosity, that
could take with a laugh a hit at himself. But in the days that followed
he was often made to wince when good men drew away from him as from a
moral pervert. Twice he was hissed from the stage when he attempted
to talk, or would have been, if he had not quietly waited until the
indignant protesters were exhausted. It amused him to see that his old
college acquaintance "Sissie" Thomas and Billy Gray, the ballot box
stuffer of the Second Ward, were among the most vehement of those who
thus scorned him. So do the extremes of virtue and vice find common
ground when the blasphemer raises his voice against intrenched capital.

The personal calumny of the enemy showed how hard hit the big bosses
were, how beneath their feet they felt the ground of public opinion
shift. It had been only a year since Big Tim O'Brien, boss of the city
by permission of the public utility corporations, had read Jeff's first
editorial against ballot box stuffing. In it the editor of the _World_
had pledged that paper never to give up the fight for the people until
such crookedness was stamped out. Big Tim had laughed until his paunch
shook at the confidence of this young upstart and in impudent defiance
had sent him a check for fifty dollars for the Honest Election League.

Neither Big Tim nor the respectable buccaneers back of him were laughing
now. They wer