Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/100



taken in. But, no; they ruled and they ruled, not by reason, but by command.”

Tom McCarter did not want to talk it over with Colby. Irascible and dictatorial, the trolley boss bent his head forward at the young legislator, and, slapping his hands insultingly in his face, he said that anything but perpetual franchises in Jersey was “talk,” “child’s play”; and, raising his voice so that all in the room turned to hear, he cried: “We wouldn’t touch anything else with a ten-foot pole!” With that he turned his back on Colby, and walked off.

“It wasn’t a question,” Mr. Colby explained to me, as he recalled this scene, “it wasn’t a ques- tion of right and wrong as between two interests; it was, and it is, a question of who rules here.”

Colby listened to his neighbours. He explained to them how difficult it would be for them to get any relief from their legislature, how little he could do; but they were agreeing on plans when McCarter drove home the lesson Colby was learning. This time it was at a luncheon at Trenton. The legislature had met, and again all the rulers of the state were present, the rulers and their dummies, the office-holders and legislators. This time Tom McCarter went to Colby; that is to say, the business boss beckoned the assemblyman to him.