Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/430

 Over the Governor s J^eto.

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OVER THE GOVERNOR'S VETO. BY DOUGLAS MALLOCH. IT happened a number of years ago, and the time is enough remote and the peo ple most interested enough removed from the public eye to permit me to tell the tale. It is a task I have long desired to undertake; not because I think I can do it so well, but because I had a hand in the affair myself, and desire, if the story is told at all, that it be told rightly. What I may set down here may not be as smoothly written nor as em bellished with adjectives and such as it would be if it had been written by one of these chaps who make the writing of yarns a busi ness. A more clever man, I suppose, would not put down things just as they occurred or words just as they were spoken, but would group them together and touch them out as an artist works with paints and canvas. I have not the skill to do that; but the story. I hope, will contain in sincerity what it lacks in fine language. I am one of those men who have been honored by being made a member of the House of Representatives of this great com monwealth, but so honored far enough bad." to now be forgotten. Even when I was at Lansing I never made the welkin ring to any great extent; and a man in the Legislature who does not make the welkin ring every few days and say sensational things to the other side of the House for the newspapers to put big type over, need not expect to be long in the minds of the people after he has laid in his supply of stationery and started .for home in the spring after final adjourn ment. I suppose this story really begins with the morning I walked into the executive office and found the Governor looking down Mich igan avenue and puffing a cigar furiously. Whenever the Governor puffed he puffed fu riously, whether he was puffing a cigar, puff

ing his way up the capitol steps or puffing himself in the Detroit newspapers The Gov ernor was mad about something, I could see that. 1 think I would have escaped, but the Governor caught sight of me, and, nodding me to a chair, began: "I have been hoping all the morning that some honest man would come in here. I'm going to be frank with you, for I think you are one of the honest men in this Legis lature. I want to talk to you about this bill of Senator Rivers'. I am not going to be a bit bashful about telling you what I think about it. I think it is a fool bill. Read what the papers say about it. Ask any man who isn't interested in it what he thinks about it and what the people up his way think about it, and you will find them of one opinion." "I didn't think the bill was of so much importance," I ventured to say. "Any bill is of importance," said the Gov ernor, "when the people of this State get to talking about it. I can't see it would cut such an awful figure myself, but the people think it will, and that amounts to the same thing. If that bill passes this Legislature every man who votes for it signs his own death warrant politically. It wouldn't be so bad, if that was all, but they will take the party in this Stau- with them." I began to see what the Governor was driving at, and why the Governor was mad. "As you know," continued the Governor, "that bill has already passed the Senate. It is now up to you people in the House to say what happens to it. I have just got a wire from the Speaker that his sister is sick and he can't get down here before Wednesday. I figured on the Speaker's help in killing this bill in the House. Well, he won't be here. Now, all I have to say is that if you want to do me and the party and the State a service.