Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/116



Lentz said something about the campaign being run as usual, and, Colby says, “I should have jumped up then and there to declare that it would not be run as usual. I didn’t. Don’t know why I didn’t, but I didn’t. I just hadn’t my wits about me, and I let it pass.”

The next day the papers were full of the “Love Feast.” “Colby and the boss were together.” Colby thinks this was a very “bad break,” and so do some of his friends, but mistakes don’t count in these criminal days, and he corrected his promptly. He came out with a letter demanding that his own, not the county committee, should run the campaign. This was a repudiation of the organization. Lentz refused to give up, so he ran one campaign, and Colby’s committee, with William P. Martin for chairman, ran the other. The machine men cut Colby at the polls, but he won in spite of them. The normal Republican majority in Essex County ranges from ten to twelve thousand. Colby’s was 19,986, and some of the other men on his ticket ran a few hundred ahead of him.

The election of Everett Colby and his ticket ranked in significance with the victories that fall of Jerome in New York, of Weaver’s ticket in Philadelphia, of Judge Dempsy’s for Mayor of Cincinnati, of Tom Johnson in Cleveland, of