Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/78



He was in politics, and havjng got in as many another fool young American has. got in, he was taken up and taken in, as the rest are. Lentz flattered Colby; then he passed him on to" Governor Voorhees, who flattered him. “Seeing the Governor” was honour enough for the year 1901*, but when the Governor asked him if he wanted to get into politics and the young man said he did, and the Governor offered to appoint him to an office, the novice was overwhelmed with gratitude and modesty. He didn’t know that to be a Commissioner on the State Board of Education was simply to be put to a harmless test — by the machine. Colby thought of his education and worried about his fitness, but he took the place, and he did very well, very well, indeed. Then Boss Lentz made him chairman of the executive committee of the Republican organization of West Orange.

“I thought Lentz was a great fellow,” he says now, “a great man.” Lentz loomed as large to Colby, probably, as Durham looked to a Philadelphian, Cox to a Cincinnati Republican, Ruef to a San Franciscan, or Murphy to a New Yorker. The bosses live on the images we create of them, out of our own silliness.

The chairmanship—“actual practical politics, with great responsibility”—came in 1902.