sposed of, and the campaign proceeded.

Now came every conceivable sort of charge. If he were not defeated, all
reputable merchants would surely leave the city. Capital was certainly
being scared off. There would be idle factories and empty stomachs. Look
out for hard times. No one but a fool would invest in a city thus
hampered.

In reply the mayor preached a fair return by corporations for benefits
received. He, or rather his organization, took a door-to-door census of
his following, and discovered a very considerable increase in the number
of those intending to vote for him. The closest calculations of the
enemy were discovered, the actual number they had fixed upon as
sufficient to defeat him. This proved to the mayor that he must have
three hundred more votes if he wished to be absolutely sure. These he
hunted out from among the enemy, and had them pledged before the
eventual morning came.

The night preceding election ended the campaign, for the enemy at least,
in a blaze of glory, so to speak. Dozens of speakers for both causes
were about the street corners and in the city meeting room.

Oratory poured forth in streams, and gasoline-lighted band-wagons
rattled from street to street, emitting song and invective. Even a great
parade was arranged by the anti-mayoral forces, in which horses and men
to the number of hundreds were brought in from nearby cities and palmed
off as enthusiastic citizens.

"Horses don't vote," a watchword handed out by the mayor, took the edge
off the extreme ardor of this invading throng, and set to laughing the
hundreds of his partisans, who needed such encouragement.

Next day came the vote, and then for once, anyhow, he was justified.
Not only was a much larger vote cast than ever, but he thrashed the
enemy with a tail of two hundred votes to spare. It was an inspiring
victory from one point of view, but rather doleful for the enemy. The
latter had imported a carload of fireworks, which now stood sadly unused
upon the very tracks which, apparently, must in the future be raised.
The crowning insult was offered when the successful forces offered to
take them off their hands at half price.

For a year thereafter (a mayor was elected yearly there), less was heard
of the commercial destruction of the city. Gas stood, as decided, at
eighty cents a thousand. A new manual training school, built at a very
nominal cost, a monument to municipal honesty, was also in evidence. The
public wat