Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/358

 there. Other contracts like this are in the the safe-deposit vaults of Portland, and they illustrate the state of corruption W. S. U'Ren worked his reforms through. And all U'Ren did was to trade, dicker, and connive. I've told the worst of it—yes, practically all of it; and it may not be considered as very bad; certainly it never was selfish; but it was corruption. So I ask:

"Isn't U'Ren only our damned rascal?"

I put the question to U'Ren himself one day. I was at his home, a small cottage on a point of land that looks up the Willamette River to the famous Falls. One afternoon, when the country lawyer was telling me his story, the wrong as well as the right of it," and we were in the midst of one of his deals, his wife looked into the parlour and asked him if he wouldn't get her some wood. He rose and we went out to the wood-shed; and, as he chopped, I said:

"How well off, are you, U'Ren?"

He rested his axe to answer: "I think, he said, "that I am one of the richest men in Oregon."

"How is that? Have you made money?"

"My earnings average about $1,800 a year. But that isn't what I mean. I haven't any money, but I haven't any wants either, not for myself."

"What about your conscience?" I persisted.