Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/241

 time, though now of no moment, since it has cured itself as will most exasperations if left long enough to themselves. Its importance, if it have any importance at all, may be ascribed to its effect of having saved me from any such fatal classification, unless I were far enough away from home, where almost anyone may be regarded as a reformer. To be sure, as I was just saying, in the days immediately following my first election, I was regarded by many of the sacred and illuminated host of reformers in the land as one of them, since I was asked to join in all sorts of movements for all sorts of prohibitions,—of the use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco and cigarettes, and I know not what other vices abhorred by those who are not addicted to them,—but it was my good luck, as it seems now to have been, to be saved from that fate by as good and faithful an enemy as ever helped a politician along. The Democrats had been placed in power that year in Ohio, and with Tom Johnson, many of us felt that it was an opportunity to secure certain changes in the laws of Ohio relating to the government of cities, that is, we felt it was time to secure our own reforms; everyone else, of course, felt the same way about his reforms. We had organized late in the previous year an association of the mayors of the cities in the state for the purpose of making changes in the municipal code that would give the cities a more mobile form of government and greater powers, in other words, it was the first definite movement in favor of home rule for cities, a liberation for which we struggled for al