Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/451

 had to do business with him. Yet even the latter liked “Ned Stuart.”

The Democrats and Independents nominated Lewis R. Emery, a rich oil man and wavering dilettante politician, an independent Republican, from the western end of the state. Then the floods were let loose and the capitol was used as the weapon in a desperate political struggle. The Republicans had intended to use it as a campaign argument, pointing to its wonderful success, the promptness with which it was completed, and its comparative inexpensiveness. The other side, however, secured the claque with outcries over the moneys expended and, as usual, they had the support of the newspapers. With great ingenuity they added the cost of the furniture, metallic cases and general equipment to the cost of the building. The game would have been intensely interesting as a spectacle, had it not been fraught with tragedy to men who had given the best intelligence to the construction of the building and who deserved well of their fellows, and had it not been for the injury done to the repute of Pennsylvania for which the players cared not a whit. Still the assailants of the capitol did not play their game effectively. They made one great and fatal tactical blunder. Had they withheld the assault until within two or three weeks of the election Stuart would have been beaten and Penrose undone. By making it in September they gave time for correction and for the popular impression to become to some extent stale. The true policy of the Republican leaders would have been to have come manfully to the support of the capitol, but they were cowed by the clamor and they drifted in a rudderless boat. Stuart promised an investigation, and thus tacitly and feebly gave himself into the hands of his opponents.

Seeing that it was a situation which demanded that some one go out to the firing line and that the politicians were without resources, together with Snyder, the auditor general, I put out a statement showing in detail every cent Rh