Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/33



Thus Mark Fagan was started in politics. When he took the Republican nomination and his popularity showed, the fellows that got him into the fight got out. They had to; they were called off by the bosses who ran the two parties as one. That made Mark fight the harder. Left high and dry by “the organization,” he went to the people of his district.

“I was bound to win,” he says, “and I felt that if I was beaten it would be because I wasn’t known to enough of the voters. And, anyhow, I wanted to know my people in my ward.”

So he started at 5.45 one morning at one corner of his ward, and he went systematically through it, knocking at every door, seeing every man, woman, and child; he climbed 3,700 flights of stairs in seventeen nights; and he promised to “serve the people of his ward faithfully and honestly.” Mark was elected, and dirty Jersey City was amazed.

Now comes the first remarkable thing about this remarkable man. The corruption, political and financial, of the United States is built up on the betrayal of the people by the leaders, big and little, whom they trust, and the treason begins in the ward. The ward leader, having the full, fine, personal faith of his neighbours, takes their confidence and their votes, and he delivers these