Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/89



out and debate it? That’s what Mayor Fagan couldn’t understand, and that’s what I asked in the caucus. We had orders, that was all; no reasons, except the one I remember they gave me in caucus a year later on a similar bill. When I asked, ‘Why not take it out and beat it in the open — if it’s so bad?’ they answered, in awed tones: ‘Why, the Penn would raise hell.’ There was the reason, the real reason.”

There, too, was the truth about Jersey. When the Mayor who represented the people of the second city in the state asked that legislature to consider a bill in their interest, that Jersey legislature couldn’t because it represented “the Penn,” a foreign corporation. “The Penn” ruled that state, and the ruler would “raise hell.”

Colby didn’t see this. “I didn’t want to see it,” he says. But Mark Fagan saw it, and he made Everett Colby see it; made him grasp with his mind what his eyes reflected. Mark, the gentle Mayor, raised hell. Defeated, with eyes wide open and ears alert, he took in the truth. The thing for a “practical politician” to do was to “take his medicine,” and go home and tell his people the lies he heard told to the public. But Mark Fagan had made promises, not only on the stump; he had gone about from house to house and had made his promises man to man, and for