Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/327

 and think, to read and—dream. While he learned his trade, and learned to love it, and while he worked the farm and took pride in his straight rows of corn, his ambition ran off to politics. But not to the game. Congress was his goal. That was where the lawgivers gathered. To fit himself to make laws, he must study law and, in Denver, he entered an office as a student, but not with the idea of making law his career. One of the firm, Merrick A. Rogers, encouraged U'Ren there. "Money-getting isn't a very high object, not for a life," he used to say. And despite his terror of poverty, U'Ren has always regarded the practice of his profession as a secondary consideration. He is a legislator.

Politics comes first with U'Ren. He makes his living with his left hand; his right is for the state. And that such citizenship can be effective is demonstrated by this remarkable fact: The Father of the Initiative and Referendum, the first legislator of Oregon, has held office but once in his career. He has done what he has done as a citizen in politics.

His first experience of the game was in Denver when he was a law student. The Presidential campaign of 1880 was on and U'Ren had just come of age. The Republican party needed the help of all good men and true, and first-voters