Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/88



some of us might, once upon a time, have been legislators; but boss rule was so old there that we didn’t, we couldn’t think for ourselves. We had lost the art of independent thought and work. We were dummies. We took orders, we waited for orders, we depended upon orders. Dummy legislators, that’s what we were.

“Oh, I was unhappy! I saw all this, but only dimly; I wouldn’t let myself see it clearly. You know how a man jollies himself along with lies to save his face. The Democrats drew a better bill, still not good, and Fagan and Record accepted that; they had no pride in their pet measure; and they didn’t care whether the Democrats or the Republicans got the credit of authorship. They wanted an income from railroad property in Jersey City. But the bill was buried in committee and I, the leader, should have got it out. I couldn’t have got it out. And when the Mayor came to me and asked me why I didn’t have it reported, I told him the truth. ‘I can’t,’ I told him. I wasn’t really a leader. I was the real leader’s dummy.

“You understand that the crime was not that we wouldn’t pass the bill, but that we wouldn’t consider it. I was willing to vote against it, if there were good reasons. I wasn’t against corporations. But why couldn’t we have the bill