Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/55



which, if unchecked, means the virtual control of our state and our party by corporations.

“As a citizen I say that this condition is dangerous and demoralizing. As a public official I protest against this injustice done to Jersey City. As a member of the Republican party I deplore its subserviency to corporate greed and injustice. No political party can long receive the support of the people with such a record as this Republican legislature is making. . . . ”

Whatever form the issue takes upon which an honest man in politics makes his first fight, if he fights on, he finally will come to the real American issue: representative government. He may start out like Mayor Fagan for good government, or like Folk to prosecute boodlers, or like President Roosevelt to regulate railroad rates; before he gets through, he will have to ask the people to answer the question: “Who is to rule—the disinterested majority or the specially interested, corrupt few ? ” And to make their answer, the people have to beat the boss, who is the agent of the businesses that rule and are destroying representative democracy.

Mayor Fagan’s letter to Governor Murphy raised the great question in New Jersey. It took at first the form that the gentle Mayor