Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich Part 23

They merely repeated "as for the United States Senate-" and then shook their heads and took long drinks of whiskey and soda.

Then, naturally, speaking of the rottenness of the federal government had led them to talk of the rottenness of the state legislature. How different from the state legislatures that they remembered as young men! Not merely different in the matter of graft, but different, so Mr. Newberry said, in the calibre of the men. He recalled how he had been taken as a boy of twelve by his father to hear a debate. He would never forget it. Giants! he said, that was what they were. In fact, the thing was more like a Witenagemot than a legislature. He said he distinctly recalled a man, whose name he didn't recollect, speaking on a question he didn't just remember what, either for or against he just couldn't recall which; it thrilled him. He would never forget it. It stayed in his memory as if it were yesterday.

But as for the present legislature-here Mr. d.i.c.k Overend sadly nodded a.s.sent in advance to what he knew was coming-as for the present legislature-well-Mr. Newberry had had, he said, occasion to visit the state capital a week before in connection with a railway bill that he was trying to-that is, that he was anxious to-in short in connection with a railway bill, and when he looked about him at the men in the legislature-positively he felt ashamed; he could put it no other way than that-ashamed.

After which, from speaking of the crookedness of the state government Mr. Newberry and Mr. d.i.c.k Overend were led to talk of the crookedness of the city government! And they both agreed, as above, that things were worse than in Russia. What secretly irritated them both most was that they had lived and done business under this infernal corruption for thirty or forty years and hadn't noticed it. They had been too busy.

The fact was that their conversation reflected not so much their own original ideas as a general wave of feeling that was pa.s.sing over the whole community.

There had come a moment-quite suddenly it seemed-when it occurred to everybody at the same time that the whole government of the city was rotten. The word is a strong one. But it is the one that was used. Look at the aldermen, they said-rotten! Look at the city solicitor, rotten! And as for the mayor himself-phew!

The thing came like a wave. Everybody felt it at once. People wondered how any sane, intelligent community could tolerate the presence of a set of corrupt scoundrels like the twenty aldermen of the city. Their names, it was said, were simply a byword throughout the United States for rank criminal corruption. This was said so widely that everybody started hunting through the daily papers to try to find out who in blazes were aldermen, anyhow. Twenty names are hard to remember, and as a matter of fact, at the moment when this wave of feeling struck the city, n.o.body knew or cared who were aldermen, anyway.

To tell the truth, the aldermen had been much the same persons for about fifteen or twenty years. Some were in the produce business, others were butchers, two were grocers, and all of them wore blue checkered waistcoats and red ties and got up at seven in the morning to attend the vegetable and other markets. n.o.body had ever really thought about them-that is to say, n.o.body on Plutoria Avenue. Sometimes one saw a picture in the paper and wondered for a moment who the person was; but on looking more closely and noticing what was written under it, one said, "Oh, I see, an alderman," and turned to something else.

"Whose funeral is that?" a man would sometimes ask on Plutoria Avenue. "Oh just one of the city aldermen," a pa.s.serby would answer hurriedly. "Oh I see, I beg your pardon, I thought it might be somebody important."

At which both laughed.

It was not just clear how and where this movement of indignation had started. People said that it was part of a new wave of public morality that was sweeping over the entire United States. Certainly it was being remarked in almost every section of the country. Chicago newspapers were attributing its origin to the new vigour and the fresh ideals of the middle west. In Boston it was said to be due to a revival of the grand old New England spirit. In Philadelphia they called it the spirit of William Penn. In the south it was said to be the rea.s.sertion of southern chivalry making itself felt against the greed and selfishness of the north, while in the north they recognized it at once as a protest against the sluggishness and ignorance of the south. In the west they spoke of it as a revolt against the spirit of the east and in the east they called it a reaction against the lawlessness of the west. But everywhere they hailed it as a new sign of the glorious unity of the country.

If therefore Mr. Newberry and Mr. Overend were found to be discussing the corrupt state of their city they only shared in the national sentiments of the moment. In fact in the same city hundreds of other citizens, as disinterested as themselves, were waking up to the realization of what was going on. As soon as people began to look into the condition of things in the city they were horrified at what they found. It was discovered, for example, that Alderman Schwefeldampf was an undertaker! Think of it! In a city with a hundred and fifty deaths a week, and sometimes even better, an undertaker sat on the council! A city that was about to expropriate land and to spend four hundred thousand dollars for a new cemetery, had an undertaker on the expropriation committee itself! And worse than that! Alderman Undercutt was a butcher! In a city that consumed a thousand tons of meat every week! And Alderman O'Hooligan-it leaked out-was an Irishman! Imagine it! An Irishman sitting on the police committee of the council in a city where thirty-eight and a half out of every hundred policemen were Irish, either by birth or parentage! The thing was monstrous.

So when Mr. Newberry said "It's worse than Russia!" he meant it, every word.

Now just as Mr. Newberry and Mr. d.i.c.k Overend were finishing their discussion, the huge bulky form of Mayor McGrath came ponderously past them as they sat. He looked at them sideways out of his eyes-he had eyes like plums in a mottled face-and, being a born politician, he knew by the very look of them that they were talking of something that they had no business to be talking about. But,-being a politician-he merely said, "Good evening, gentlemen," without a sign of disturbance.

"Good evening, Mr. Mayor," said Mr. Newberry, rubbing his hands feebly together and speaking in an ingratiating tone. There is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest man caught in the act of speaking boldly and fearlessly of the evil-doer.

"Good evening, Mr. Mayor," echoed Mr. d.i.c.k Overend, also rubbing his hands; "warm evening, is it not?"

The mayor gave no other answer than that deep guttural grunt which is technically known in munic.i.p.al interviews as refusing to commit oneself.

"Did he hear?" whispered Mr. Newberry as the mayor pa.s.sed out of the club.

"I don't care if he did," whispered Mr. d.i.c.k Overend.

Half an hour later Mayor McGrath entered the premises of the Thomas Jefferson Club, which was situated in the rear end of a saloon and pool room far down in the town.

"Boys," he said to Alderman O'Hooligan and Alderman Gorfinkel, who were playing freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool tables, "you want to let the boys know to keep pretty dark and go easy. There's a lot of talk I don't like about the elections going round the town. Let the boys know that just for a while the darker they keep the better."

Whereupon the word was pa.s.sed from the Thomas Jefferson Club to the George Washington Club and thence to the Eureka Club (coloured), and to the Kossuth Club (Hungarian), and to various other centres of civic patriotism in the lower parts of the city. And forthwith such a darkness began to spread over them that not even honest Diogenes with his lantern could have penetrated their doings.

"If them stiffs wants to make trouble," said the president of the George Washington Club to Mayor McGrath a day or two later, "they won't never know what they've b.u.mped up against."

"Well," said the heavy mayor, speaking slowly and cautiously and eyeing his henchman with quiet scrutiny, "you want to go pretty easy now, I tell you."

The look which the mayor directed at his satellite was much the same glance that Morgan the buccaneer might have given to one of his lieutenants before throwing him overboard.

Meantime the wave of civic enthusiasm as reflected in the conversations of Plutoria Avenue grew stronger with every day.

"The thing is a scandal," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. "Why, these fellows down at the city hall are simply a pack of rogues. I had occasion to do some business there the other day (it was connected with the a.s.sessment of our soda factories) and do you know, I actually found that these fellows take money!"

"I say!" said Mr. Peter Spillikins, to whom he spoke, "I say! You don't say!"

"It's a fact," repeated Mr. Fyshe. "They take money. I took the a.s.sistant treasurer aside and I said, 'I want such and such done,' and I slipped a fifty dollar bill into his hand. And the fellow took it, took it like a shot."

"He took it!" gasped Mr. Spillikins.

"He did," said Mr. Fyshe. "There ought to be a criminal law for that sort of thing."

"I say!" exclaimed Mr. Spillikins, "they ought to go to jail for a thing like that."

"And the infernal insolence of them," Mr. Fyshe continued. "I went down the next day to see the deputy a.s.sistant (about a thing connected with the same matter), told him what I wanted and pa.s.sed a fifty dollar bill across the counter and the fellow fairly threw it back at me, in a perfect rage. He refused it!"

"Refused it," gasped Mr. Spillikins, "I say!"

Conversations such as this filled up the leisure and divided the business time of all the best people in the city.

In the general gloomy outlook, however, one bright spot was observable. The "wave" had evidently come just at the opportune moment. For not only were civic elections pending but just at this juncture four or five questions of supreme importance would be settled by the incoming council. There was, for instance, the question of the expropriation of the Traction Company (a matter involving many millions); there was the decision as to the renewal of the franchise of the Citizens' Light Company-a vital question; there was also the four hundred thousand dollar purchase of land for the new addition to the cemetery, a matter that must be settled. And it was felt, especially on Plutoria Avenue, to be a splendid thing that the city was waking up, in the moral sense, at the very time when these things were under discussion. All the shareholders of the Traction Company and the Citizens' Light-and they included the very best, the most high-minded, people in the city-felt that what was needed now was a great moral effort, to enable them to lift the city up and carry it with them, or, if not all of it, at any rate as much of it as they could.

"It's a splendid movement!" said Mr. Fyshe (he was a leading shareholder and director of the Citizens' Light), "what a splendid thing to think that we shan't have to deal for our new franchise with a set of corrupt rapscallions like these present aldermen. Do you know, Furlong, that when we approached them first with a proposition for a renewal for a hundred and fifty years they held us up! Said it was too long! Imagine that! A hundred and fifty years (only a century and a half) too long for the franchise! They expect us to install all our poles, string our wires, set up our transformers in their streets and then perhaps at the end of a hundred years find ourselves compelled to sell out at a beggarly valuation. Of course we knew what they wanted. They meant us to hand them over fifty dollars each to stuff into their rascally pockets."

"Outrageous!" said Mr. Furlong.

"And the same thing with the cemetery land deal," went on Mr. Lucullus Fyshe. "Do you realize that, if the movement hadn't come along and checked them, those scoundrels would have given that rogue Schwefeldampf four hundred thousand dollars for his fifty acres! Just think of it!"

"I don't know," said Mr. Furlong with a thoughtful look upon his face, "that four hundred thousand dollars is an excessive price, in and of itself, for that amount of land."

"Certainly not," said Mr. Fyshe, very quietly and decidedly, looking at Mr. Furlong in a searching way as he spoke. "It is not a high price. It seems to me, speaking purely as an outsider, a very fair, reasonable price for fifty acres of suburban land, if it were the right land. If, for example, it were a case of making an offer for that very fine stretch of land, about twenty acres, is it not, which I believe your Corporation owns on the other side of the cemetery, I should say four hundred thousand is a most modest price."

Mr. Furlong nodded his head reflectively.

"You had thought, had you not, of offering it to the city?" said Mr. Fyshe.

"We did," said Mr. Furlong, "at a more or less nominal sum-four hundred thousand or whatever it might be. We felt that for such a purpose, almost sacred as it were, one would want as little bargaining as possible."

"Oh, none at all," a.s.sented Mr. Fyshe.

"Our feeling was," went on Mr. Furlong, "that if the city wanted our land for the cemetery extension, it might have it at its own figure-four hundred thousand, half a million, in fact at absolutely any price, from four hundred thousand up, that they cared to put on it. We didn't regard it as a commercial transaction at all. Our reward lay merely in the fact of selling it to them."

"Exactly," said Mr. Fyshe, "and of course your land was more desirable from every point of view. Schwefeldampf's ground is enc.u.mbered with a growth of cypress and evergreens and weeping willows which make it quite unsuitable for an up-to-date cemetery; whereas yours, as I remember it, is bright and open-a loose sandy soil with no trees and very little gra.s.s to overcome."

"Yes," said Mr. Furlong. "We thought, too, that our ground, having the tanneries and the chemical factory along the farther side of it, was an ideal place for-" he paused, seeking a mode of expressing his thought.

"For the dead," said Mr. Fyshe, with becoming reverence. And after this conversation Mr. Fyshe and Mr. Furlong senior understood one another absolutely in regard to the new movement.

It was astonishing in fact how rapidly the light spread.