to enable him to carry the election
by the usual means--a big campaign fund properly distributed in the
doubtful states. I said to Senator Scarborough of Indiana soon after
Cromwell's candidacy was announced: "What do you think of Goodrich's
man?"

Scarborough, though new to the Senate then, had shown himself far and
away the ablest of the opposition Senators. He had as much intellect as
any of them; and he had what theorists, such as he, usually lack, skill
at "grand tactics"--the management of men in the mass. His one
weakness--and that, from my standpoint, a great one--was a literal
belief in democratic institutions and in the inspiring but in practice
pernicious principle of exact equality before the law.

"Cromwell's political sponsors," was his reply, "are two as shrewd
bankers as there are in New York. I have heard it said that a fitting
sign for a bank would be: 'Here we do nothing for nothing for nobody.'"

An admirable summing up of Cromwell's candidacy. And I knew that it
would so appear to the country, that no matter how great a corruption
fund Goodrich might throw into the campaign, we should, in that time of
public exasperation, be routed if Cromwell was our standard-bearer--so
utterly routed that we could not possibly get ourselves together again
for eight, perhaps twelve years. There might even be a re-alignment of
parties with some sort of socialism in control of one of them. If
control were to be retained by the few who have the capital and the
intellect to make efficient the nation's resources and energy, my
projects must be put through at once.

I had accumulated a fund of five hundred thousand dollars for my
"presidential flotation"--half of it contributed by Roebuck in exchange
for a promise that his son-in-law should have an ambassadorship if
Burbank were elected; the other half set aside by me from the "reserve"
I had formed out of the year-by-year contributions of my combine. By the
judicious investment of that capital I purposed to get Burbank the
nomination on the first ballot--at least four hundred and sixty of the
nine hundred-odd delegates.

In a national convention the delegates are, roughly speaking, about
evenly divided among the three sections of the country--a third from
east of the Alleghanies; a third from the West; a third from the South.
It was hopeless for us to gun for delegates in the East; that was the
especial bailiwick of Senator Goodrich. The most we could do there wou