Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/188

 the right to vote, was always the signal for an outbreak, but he had more pluck than strength and could not be driven away.

In 1875, with my mother, wife and two children, I went to live at 1540 North Fifteenth Street, in the Twenty-ninth ward, and this continued to be my home for the next twenty-seven years. At this time the ward leader was Hamilton Disston, and a young man named William U. Moyer represented him in all active movements. Again I went to the executive committee. Once I broached the subject of going to councils, and Moyer said it would suit him very well, but I would have to arrange the matter with Disston. This did not suit me, since I had no thought of belonging to anybody there. I dropped the subject and every day grew more independent. Nelson F. Evans, a very worthy man with Calvinistic tendencies, president of a bank, who a few years later went to prison for the technical violation of some statute, Major William H. Lambert, the Philadelphia representative of the New York Mutual Life Insurance Company, with myself and some others, undertook to revolutionize the precinct. We hired a hall, notified every Republican, held a meeting which was largely attended and selected a ticket. For a time it looked as though we would succeed, but we failed at the last moment through the better discipline of our opponents and the superior practical knowledge which comes with it. The evening of the primary election turned out to be cold, and blasts of snow filled the air. The well-to-do citizens upon whom we relied sat at home by their fires in comfort. Their servants rode in carriages, hired by the more shrewd regulars, to the polls and voted against us. However, we caused anxiety and almost won.

About this time the preliminary symptoms were disclosed of a concerted effort upon the part of those in control of the Republican party to continue General Grant in the presidency after the expiration of his eight years of service in that office. I had never been very enthusiastic in my 174