Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/310



says ex-Boss Buckley, of San Francisco, who tried him out.

Business men ought to elect a “big” business man mayor. Rudolph Spreckels is the very type. He wouldn’t look up to anyone and no politician, no matter whom he represented, could get Mayor Spreckels to “take programme,” as they say in the West. But big business men “despise politics” and scorn office-holding; they are too proud, or something, to “ appeal to the people,” and they have a class aversion to publicity. Mr. Spreckels, possessed of the virtues, has some of the faults of his class. He, too, despises politics; he told me he never had voted in his life; and he promises, with pride, not to take office. It is sometimes a duty to take office; it is as ridiculous for a citizen in a republic to boast that he won t as it would be to announce with pride that he will not go to the front in time of war. As for the fine instinct of your sensitive gentlemen for privacy, criminals have that. And as for rendering an account to the people, somebody has to; and Mr. Spreckels lets Heney issue the statements of the prosecution to the public.

Now I have shown, I think, why business men should be for Rudolph Spreckels. Why haven’t I shown why real democrats should be against him? There are two good reasons: one is that