Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/111



personified all the discontent that opposed the control of the state by the corrupt corporation of the state, he, Colby, was the man to run for Senator. How ? There was the primary law. Record, the father of that law, suggested the use of it to beat the Republican boss in his own party. “ But,” he said, “don’t stop there. Adopt a platform. Promise specific things and go to the people with these definite promises. And put up a full ticket: senator and assemblymen and county officers—everything.”

Mark Fagan has in Jersey City a “group plan” of government. A picked lot of fellows get together, discuss, and agree upon policies and plans. Colby took that idea, and he accepted also the suggestion to join issue with fighters in other counties. So two groups, one from Essex and the other from Hudson, came together and out of their deliberations grew a platform and what is known as “The New Idea Movement.”

They adopted Colby’s Orange issue: limited franchises; Record’s: franchise taxation; Fagan’s: equal taxation; and Colby, Record and others added one new one: an expression at legislative elections of a popular choice for United States Senators.

It isn’t necessary to follow the campaigns, for there were two — the first a fight at th