rking scheme of the state government might bring about
hardship to some. This redounded too obviously to the benefit of one
particular corporation. The newspaper men--as thick as flies about the
halls of the state capitol at Springfield, and essentially watchful and
loyal to their papers--were quick to sense the true state of affairs.
Never were there such hawks as newspapermen. These wretches (employed
by sniveling, mud-snouting newspapers of the opposition) were not only
in the councils of politicians, in the pay of rival corporations, in
the confidence of the governor, in the secrets of the senators and
local representatives, but were here and there in one another's
confidence. A piece of news--a rumor, a dream, a fancy--whispered by
Senator Smith to Senator Jones, or by Representative Smith to
Representative Jones, and confided by him in turn to Charlie White, of
the Globe, or Eddie Burns, of the Democrat, would in turn be
communicated to Robert Hazlitt, of the Press, or Harry Emonds, of the
Transcript.

All at once a disturbing announcement in one or other of the papers, no
one knowing whence it came. Neither Senator Smith nor Senator Jones
had told any one. No word of the confidence imposed in Charlie White
or Eddie Burns had ever been breathed. But there you were--the thing
was in the papers, the storm of inquiry, opinion, opposition was on.
No one knew, no one was to blame, but it was on, and the battle had
henceforth to be fought in the open.

Consider also the governor who presided at this time in the executive
chamber at Springfield. He was a strange, tall, dark, osseous man who,
owing to the brooding, melancholy character of his own disposition, had
a checkered and a somewhat sad career behind him. Born in Sweden, he
had been brought to America as a child, and allowed or compelled to
fight his own way upward under all the grinding aspects of poverty.
Owing to an energetic and indomitable temperament, he had through years
of law practice and public labors of various kinds built up for himself
a following among Chicago Swedes which amounted to adoration. He had
been city tax-collector, city surveyor, district attorney, and for six
or eight years a state circuit judge. In all these capacities he had
manifested a tendency to do the right as he saw it and play
fair--qualities which endeared him to the idealistic. Honest, and with
a hopeless brooding sympathy for the miseries of the poor, he had as
cir