big badge and the "honorable" of an alderman. The brewer was a Jew, and
had no brains, but he was harmless, and would put up a rare campaign
fund. Scully had accepted the offer, and then gone to the Republicans
with a proposition. He was not sure that he could manage the "sheeny,"
and he did not mean to take any chances with his district; let the
Republicans nominate a certain obscure but amiable friend of Scully's,
who was now setting tenpins in the cellar of an Ashland Avenue saloon,
and he, Scully, would elect him with the "sheeny's" money, and the
Republicans might have the glory, which was more than they would get
otherwise. In return for this the Republicans would agree to put up no
candidate the following year, when Scully himself came up for reelection
as the other alderman from the ward. To this the Republicans had
assented at once; but the hell of it was--so Harper explained--that
the Republicans were all of them fools--a man had to be a fool to be
a Republican in the stockyards, where Scully was king. And they didn't
know how to work, and of course it would not do for the Democratic
workers, the noble redskins of the War Whoop League, to support the
Republican openly. The difficulty would not have been so great except
for another fact--there had been a curious development in stockyards
politics in the last year or two, a new party having leaped into being.
They were the Socialists; and it was a devil of a mess, said "Bush"
Harper. The one image which the word "Socialist" brought to Jurgis was
of poor little Tamoszius Kuszleika, who had called himself one, and
would go out with a couple of other men and a soap-box, and shout
himself hoarse on a street corner Saturday nights. Tamoszius had tried
to explain to Jurgis what it was all about, but Jurgis, who was not of
an imaginative turn, had never quite got it straight; at present he was
content with his companion's explanation that the Socialists were the
enemies of American institutions--could not be bought, and would not
combine or make any sort of a "dicker." Mike Scully was very much
worried over the opportunity which his last deal gave to them--the
stockyards Democrats were furious at the idea of a rich capitalist
for their candidate, and while they were changing they might possibly
conclude that a Socialist firebrand was preferable to a Republican bum.
And so right here was a chance for Jurgis to make himself a place in
the world, explained "Bush" Harper;