, after Mr. Converse had announced that the
meeting was open for general discussion; "it really does seem to me that
we stand a good show of getting control of the next legislature.
But after we do get control what prospect is there of passing any
legislation that will help us? Wherever there is a water system in this
state the municipality has been so loaded down with debts our machine
politics have plastered into it that the legal debt limit has been
reached. The only way this water question can be cleared up is by taking
the systems away from those monopolists--making them the property of
towns and cities. But if towns and cities can't borrow any more money,
just how is this to be done? Mr. Converse hasn't told us! We can clean
up politics, perhaps, but it seems to me that we'll never be able to
clean up the dirtiest and most dangerous mess."

On the silence that followed broke a voice which made Dodd, his ear to
the grating, grate his teeth. His hatred recognized this speaker. It was
Walker Farr.

"I apologize for venturing to speak in this meeting," he said. "But if
that gentleman's question isn't answered here and now in some way I'm
afraid men will go away discouraged. I have heard the same question,
Mr. Converse, as I have traveled about the state lately. I have thought
about this matter constantly, in my poor fashion. And because I went
into that job of pondering with an open mind is the reason, perhaps, why
a strange idea has come to me. You know they say that strange notions
are born out of ignorance. The better way would have been, possibly, to
submit the plan first of all to your legal mind, Mr. Converse. I will
keep silence now and confer with you, sir, if you think best." His tone
was wistful.

"Talk it out in open meeting," cried the cordial voice of Mr. Converse.
"Free speech and all of us taken into confidence--that's the spirit of
this movement of ours!"

"Has it ever occurred to anybody to form a new municipality for water
purposes only? I have studied your state constitution, and the language
in which the debt limit of five percent is provided I find applies
strictly to towns and cities. Suppose the citizens of Marion, together
with the adjoining towns of Weston and Turner, all of them now served
by the Consolidated, should unite simply as individuals for the common
purpose of owning and operating their own water-plant--form, say a water
district?"

"An independent body politic and corporate?"