Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/98

 selves and their voters and their council, but to go also to the legislature. Their petition was a very modest one; they wanted “their” state to forbid “their” council to grant any franchise for a period longer than twenty-five years.

The average Jerseyman thinks his state is well governed. His local government is bad, but politicians run that and he sees the results with his own eyes. The state is a government by lawyers, whom he knows by reputation at least; these lawyers are counsel for business men, like Senators Dryden and Kean, ex-Governor Murphy, and Tom McCarter — the kind of men he knows as good business men, and they tell him the state is all right. When the good men of Orange, finding that Tom McCarter was back of the politicians who misrepresented Orange, set about getting their good state government to check Tom’s chicaneries in Orange, the average Jerseyman learned why Senator Dryden and Governor Murphy and Tom McCarter called the state government “all right.” The state government also represented “business,” and it did not represent the average citizen of Jersey.

The men of Orange had to approach the state legislature through members of that body, and, naturally, they applied to their own Essex County legislators. What was their surprise to find that