Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/113



it was right. After that I went out to my noonday meetings and I didn’t try to find out what they thought. I told them what I thought about things.”

Colby’s class suffers from class consciousness, as much, if not more, than labour does. If he had gone forth as a rich man to the poor, or as a capitalist to labour, or as a business man offering a good business administration to a people incompetent for self-government, he would have had to buy votes or be beaten. But going as he

did, as a man to men, and promising things that were directed at the reform, not of politicians and the police, and dirty streets, etc., etc., but of the grosser vices of his own class, even though he did not mention class, those people sized up “this rich young club fellow” as they sized up the ex-gilder and undertaker, Mark Fagan, and they put their faith in him as the Missourians did in Folk, as the people of Wisconsin did in La Follette, and as the people of San Francisco did in Heney. The American people seem not to know the difference between clean streets and dirty streets, but they do know the difference between hypocrisy and sincerity, between plutocracy and democracy. They’ll help you beat the boss if you’ll show that you see as plainly as they do who is back of the boss.

The machine blundered. The bosses always