mpted in a way that
is simply laughable. What should we say if a hundred busy men were to
get together to-morrow, and decide that they would open a great bank, to
fight the clearing-house banks of New York? Yet this, in effect, is what
the reformers have done over and over again in politics. They say to the
men who have been kept in power for years by the people, 'You are
scoundrels. The people who elected you are ignorant We know how to do
it better. Now we'll turn you out.' In short, they tell the majority
they are fools, but ask their votes. The average reformer endorses
thoroughly the theory 'that every man is as good as another, and a
little better.' And he himself always is the better man. The people
won't stand that. The 'holier than thou' will defeat a man quicker in
this country than will any rascality he may have done."

"But don't you think the reformer is right in principle?"

"In nine cases out of ten. But politics does not consist in being right.
It's in making other people think you are. Men don't like to be told
that they are ignorant and wrong, and this assumption is the basis of
most of the so-called educational campaigns. To give impetus to a new
movement takes immense experience, shrewdness, tact, and many other
qualities. The people are obstructive--that is conservative--in most
things, and need plenty of time."

"Unless _you_ tell them what they are to do," laughed Watts. "Then they
know quick enough."

"Well, that has taken them fifteen years to learn. Don't you see how
absurd it is to suppose that the people are going to take the opinions
of the better element off-hand? At the end of a three months' campaign?
Men have come into my ward and spoken to empty halls; they've flooded it
with campaign literature, which has served to light fires; their papers
have argued, and nobody read them. But the ward knows me. There's hardly
a voter who doesn't. They've tested me. Most of them like me. I've lived
among them for years. I've gone on their summer excursions. I've talked
with them all over the district. I have helped them in their troubles. I
have said a kind word over their dead. I'm godfather to many. With
others I've stood shoulder to shoulder when the bullets were flying.
Why, the voters who were children when I first came here, with whom I
use to sit in the angle, are almost numerous enough now to carry an
election as I advise. Do you suppose, because speakers, unknown to them,
say I'm wrong,