Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/104



The amendments were absurd, ridiculous, impossible. Colby refused to accept them, and he meanwhile had been busy seeing his colleagues. The Speaker and four-fifths of the members were for the resolution. Yet, when it came up again on Thursday, only ten men voted “yes”!

This was only a preliminary skirmish in the long fight of that session of 1905. It was a defeat, but it was better than a victory since it aroused public interest and attracted to Trenton citizens and committees of citizens to take object lessons in a “good business government” in action. The Orange men — on hand in force insisted upon having their limited franchises bill introduced, and Colby presented it. It went to committee for burial, but there were hearings, on it, and Colby says the sight of citizens delivering carefully prepared arguments to a committee of legislators whom he knew to be dummies with no will of their own, no minds of their own, no ears for anything but the orders which they already had received to “hang onto that bill” this spectacle, common as it was, and typical of all our legislatures from the youngest state to Congress itself, the humiliation of it struck deep into the growing intelligence of the young legislator. And evidently it made an impression on Jerseymen; the papers described the scene mercilessly, and