Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/41



they were gone, he didn’t know what to do. He needed help, and help came.

Among the appointments recommended to him by Colonel Dickinson was that of George L. Record, to be corporation counsel. Record, an able lawyer, had been the principal orator in the campaign, and the Mayor “took to him.” But it was whispered that Record was interested in a contracting company which was building waterworks for the city, and the Mayor, suspicious by this time of everybody, hesitated. Record was resentful, but he had had dreams of his own once. He had read Henry George and his dreams were*of economic reforms — taxation. But he had fought the bosses in vain, and was about ready to give up when, reflecting upon the rock they all had struck at the bottom of this mild Mayor’s character, he saw that “by Jove, here was an honest man who could make people believe in his honesty.” He went to see him. The water business was explained; Record had been engaged only as a broker, and he was out of it. He was free to take Mark’s pledge to be “loyal to the Mayor and the people of Jersey City.” They had a long, warm talk. The Mayor’s mind ran to the betterment of the physical conditions of life; Record’s to more fundamental reforms, but tax-