Until that certification came the leaders, having no candidate who
stood a chance of winning, were ready to make a losing campaign and
throw the election to the Democrats--not a serious misfortune at a time
when the machines of the two parties had become simply friendly rival
agents for the same rich master.

There was a sharp fight in the convention. The anti-machine element,
repudiating Whitman under the leadership of a shrewd and honest young
man named Joe Bannister, had attacked Hull in the most shocking way.
Bannister had been reading Victor Dorn's New Day and had got a notion
of David Hull as man and mayor different from the one made current by
the newspapers. He made a speech on the floor of the convention which
almost caused a riot and nearly cost Davy the nomination. That
catastrophe was averted by adjournment. Davy gave Dick Kelly's second
lieutenant, Osterman, ten thousand in cash, of which Osterman said
there was pressing need "for perfectly legitimate purposes, I assure
you, Mr. Mayor." Next day the Bannister faction lost forty and odd
sturdy yeomen from districts where the crops had been painfully short,
and Davy was nominated.

In due time the election was held, and Mayor Hull became Governor Hull
by a satisfactory majority for so evenly divided a State. He had
spent--in contributions to the machine campaign fund--upwards of one
hundred thousand dollars. But that seemed a trifling sacrifice to make
for reform principles and for keeping the voice of the people the voice
of God. He would have been elected if he had not spent a cent, for the
Democratic machine, bent on reorganizing back to a sound basis with all
real reformers or reformers tainted with sincerity eliminated, had
nominated a straight machine man--and even the politicians know that
the people who decide elections will not elect a machine man if they
have a chance to vote for any one else. It saddened David Hull, in the
midst of victory, that his own town and county went against him,
preferring the Democrat, whom it did not know, as he lived at the other
end of the State. Locally the offices at stake were all captured by
the "Dorn crowd." At last the Workingmen's League had a judge; at last
it could have a day in court. There would not be a repetition of the
great frauds of the Hull-Harbinger campaign.

By the time David had sufficient leisure to reopen the heart department
of his ambition, Jane was deep in the effort to show Docto