to lose in the future. No
better illustration of this tendency could be given than the development
which had recently taken place in the field of our city politics,
hitherto the battle-ground of Irish politicians who had fought one
another for supremacy. Individualism had been rampant, competition
the custom; you bought an alderman, or a boss who owned four or five
aldermen, and then you never could be sure you were to get what you
wanted, or that the aldermen and the bosses would "stay bought." But
now a genius had appeared, an American genius who had arisen swiftly
and almost silently, who appealed to the imagination, and whose name was
often mentioned in a whisper,--the Hon. Judd Jason, sometimes known as
the Spider, who organized the City Hall and capitalized it; an ultimate
and logical effect--if one had considered it--of the Manchester school
of economics. Enlightened self-interest, stripped of sentiment, ends
on Judd Jasons. He ran the city even as Mr. Sherrill ran his department
store; you paid your price. It was very convenient. Being a genius, Mr.
Jason did not wholly break with tradition, but retained those elements
of the old muddled system that had their value, chartering steamboats
for outings on the river, giving colossal picnics in Lowry Park. The
poor and the wanderer and the criminal (of the male sex at least) were
cared for. But he was not loved, as the rough-and-tumble Irishmen had
been loved; he did not make himself common; he was surrounded by an aura
of mystery which I confess had not failed of effect on me. Once, and
only once during my legal apprenticeship, he had been pointed out to
me on the street, where he rarely ventured. His appearance was not
impressive....

Mr. Jason could not, of course, prevent Mr. Watling's election, even
did he so desire, but he did command the allegiance of several city
candidates--both democratic and republican--for the state legislature,
who had as yet failed to announce their preferences for United States
Senator. It was important that Mr. Watling's vote should be large, as
indicative of a public reaction and repudiation of Democratic national
folly. This matter among others was the subject of discussion one
July morning when the Republican State Chairman was in the city; Mr.
Grunewald expressed anxiety over Mr. Jason's continued silence. It was
expedient that somebody should "see" the boss.

"Why not Paret?" suggested Leonard Dickinson. Mr. Watling was not
pr