hen Rawson said in effect the same
thing as Jeff.

"And I'm going to have the pleasure of telling that damned little Killen
what I think of him," the politician added with savage satisfaction.

"Don't blame him. He's only a victim. What we must do is to change the
system that makes it possible to defeat the will of the people through
money," Jeff said.

"How are you going about it?" Rawson demanded incredulously.

"We'll go after the initiative and referendum right now while the people
are stirred up about this treachery. The very men who threw us down will
support us to try and square themselves. The bill will slip through as
if it were oiled," Jeff prophesied.

"Oh, hang your initiative and referendum. I'm a politician, not a
socialist reformer," grinned Rawson.

James said nothing.

Part 2

If the years were bringing Jeff a sharper realization of the forces that
control so much of life they were giving him too the mellowness that
can be in revolt without any surrender of faith in men. He could for
instance now look back on his college days and appreciate the kindness
and the patience of the teachers whom he had then condemned. They had
been conformists. No doubt they had compromised to the pressure of their
environment. But somehow he felt much less like judging men than he used
to in the first flush of his intellectual awakening. It was perhaps this
habit of making allowance for weakness, together with his call to the
idealism in them, that made him so effective a worker with men.

He was as easy as an old shoe, but people sensed the steel in him
instinctively. In his quiet way he was coming to be a power. For one
thing he was possessed of the political divination that understands how
far a leader may go without losing his following. He knew too how to get
practical results. It was these qualities that enabled him out of the
wreckage of the senatorial defeat to build a foundation of victory for
House Bill 77.

To bring into effect Jeff's pet measure of the initiative and referendum
necessitated an amendment to the state constitution, which must be
passed by two successive legislative assemblies and ratified by a vote
of the people in order to become effective. The bill had been slumbering
in committee, but immediately after the senatorial election Jeff
insisted on having it brought squarely to the attention of the House.

His feeling for the psychological moment was a true one and he succeeded
by a s