Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/42



ation was the way to raise money to make the city pleasant.

They outlined a policy. They took in others to form a cabinet: Edgar B. Bacon, Frank J. Higgins, Edward Fry, and Robert Carey — all these, and Record and Fagan, are Mark Fagan. They discuss questions as they arise, and the Mayor decides; they agree, but Mark is the Mayor. Some people say Record is the boss, but he laughs.

“The big grafters know better,” he says. “They failed to handle Mark, and when they found that I was ‘next’ they asked me to sell him out. I didn’t tell them that I wouldn’t; I told them I couldn’t. And I can’t, and they know I can’t. I can advise, I can instruct, and the man will try, actually try hard to see things as I do. For he trusts me, and he wants to be shown. He wants to know. But he decides; and there’s something in him — I don’t know what it is — something that tells him what is right. No. I’ve been a help, a great help, to him, but so have the others of us, and we have helped him to decide to do things no one of us alone would have had the nerve to do. And there’s where he is great. It all comes down to this: We all agree on the right thing to do, and we do it; but when the howl goes up and the