Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/77



of one system which is perverting our government from a representative democracy to a plutocratic tyranny. When this was beaten into his head, Everett Colby fought like a citizen and a man. Wherefore his experiences are not only the story of a new political leader, but an inside view of the System in action.

When young Colby spoke of going into politics, somebody advised him to see Carl Lentz. This German-American was the Republican boss of Essex County. Bosses were as natural to our young American as the north wind or the road to Newark, and he went to Newark and he saw Carl Lentz. He says the boss talked to him a long while. Colby doesn’t recall what was said, but I can hear the boss drawing out and smacking his lips over an attractive young man of means; free with his money and, therefore, “useful”; the son of a railroad magnate and, therefore, “safe”; attractive and honest, therefore promising as a “good man” candidate, and cheap. All the boy wanted was to “make speeches”; he thought politics was oratory.

“He let me speak,” Colby says. “Small meetings for a while, then I held the crowd at larger meetings. I spoke till the advertised speaker came, when, amid the shouts for him, I sat down unnoticed, but well satisfied with myself.”