his pennies. A man had been found who had
at least a speaking acquaintance with me, and plans already set on
foot to round me up.

I was inclined at first to treat this new development as a joke. But
as Rafferty talked on he set me to thinking. I didn't know anything
about the merits of the two present candidates but was strongly
prejudiced to believe that the Democratic candidate, on general
principles, was the worst one. However quite apart from this, wasn't
Rafferty to-day a better citizen than I? Even admitting for the sake
of argument that Sweeney was a crook, wasn't Rafferty who was trying
his humble best to get him elected a better American than I who was
willing to sit down passively and allow him to be elected? Rafferty at
any rate was getting into the fight. His motive may have been selfish
but I think his interest really sprang first from an instinctive
desire to get into the game. Here he had come to a new country where
every man had not only the chance to mix with the affairs of the ward,
the city, the state, the nation, but also a good chance to make
himself a leader in them. Sweeney himself was an example.

For twenty-five years or more Rafferty's countrymen had appreciated
this opportunity for power and gone after it. The result everyone
knows. Their victory in city politics at least had been so decisive
year after year that the native born had practically laid down his
arms as I had. And the reason for this perennial victory lay in just
this fact that men like Rafferty were busy from the time they landed
and men like me were lazily indifferent.

Three months before, a dozen speakers couldn't have made me see this.
I had no American spirit back of me then to make me appreciate it. You
might better have talked to a sleepy Russian Jew a week off the
steamer. He at least would have sensed the sacred power for liberty
which the voting privilege bestows.

I began to ask questions of Rafferty about the two men. He didn't know
much about the other fellow except that he was "agin honest labor and
a tool of the thrusts." But on Sweeney he grew eloquent.

"Sure," he said. "There's a mon after ye own heart, me biy. Faith he's
dug in ditches himself an he knows wot a full dinner pail manes."

"What's his business?" I asked.

"A contracthor," he said. "He does big jobs for the city."

He let himself loose on what Sweeney proposed to do for the ward if
elected. He would have the government undertake the dredg