Stories of Achievement Volume III Part 9

I would not have changed places that day with any genius of the fine arts who had three masterpieces to unveil to an admiring world.

I did not know, of course--but I was soon to learn--that the Legislature's time was almost wholly taken up with the routine work of government, that most of the bills pa.s.sed were concerned with appropriations and such necessary details of administration, and that only twenty or thirty bills such as ours--dealing with other matters--could possibly be pa.s.sed, among the hundreds offered. It was Boss Graham who warned us that we had better concentrate on one measure, if we wished to succeed with any at all, and we decided to put all our strength behind the "three-fourths jury" bill. Since Graham seemed to doubt its const.i.tutionality, I went to the Attorney General for his opinion, and he referred me to his a.s.sistant--whom I convinced.

I came back with the a.s.sistant's decision that the Legislature had power to pa.s.s such a law, and Gardener promptly introduced it in the Senate.

It proved at once mildly unpopular, and after a preliminary debate, in which the senators rather laughed at it as visionary and unconst.i.tutional, it was referred to the Attorney General for his opinion. We waited, confidently. To our amazement he reported it unconst.i.tutional, and the very a.s.sistant who had given me a favourable opinion before, now conducted the case against it. Nothing daunted, Gardener fought to get it referred to the Supreme Court, under the law; and the Senate sent it there. I got up an elaborate brief, had it printed at our expense, and spent a day in arguing it before the Supreme Court judges. They held that the Court had already twice found the Legislature possessed of plenary powers in such matters, and Gardener brought the bill back into the Senate triumphantly, and got a favourable report from the Judiciary Committee.

By this time, Boss Graham was seriously alarmed. He had warned Gardener that the bill was distasteful to him and to those whom he called his "friends." It was particularly distasteful, it seemed, to the Denver City Tramway Company. And he could promise, he said, that if we dropped the bill, the railway company would see that we got at least four thousand dollars' worth of litigation a year to handle. To both Gardener and myself, flushed with success and roused to the battle, this offer seemed an amusing confession of defeat on the part of the opposition; and we went ahead more gaily than ever.

We were enjoying ourselves. If we had been a pair of chums in college, we could not have had a better time. Whenever I could get away from my court cases and my office work, I rushed up to watch the fight in the Senate, as eagerly as a Freshman hurrying from his studies to see his athletic room-mate carry everything before him in a football game. The whole atmosphere of the Capitol--with its corridors of coloured marble, its vistas of arch and pillar, its burnished metal bal.u.s.trades, its great staircases--all its majesty of rich grandeur and solidity of power--affected me with an increased respect for the functions of government that were discharged there and for the men who had them to discharge. I felt the reflection of that importance beaming upon myself when I was introduced as "Senator Gardener's law partner, sir"; and I accepted the bows and greetings of lobbyists and legislators with all the pleasure in the world.

When Gardener got our bill up for its final reading in the Senate, I was there to watch, and it tickled me to the heart to see him. He made a fine figure of an orator, the handsomest man in the Senate; and he was not afraid to raise his voice and look as independent and determined as his words. He had given the senators to understand that any one who opposed his bill would have him as an obstinate opponent on every other measure; and the Senate evidently realized that it would be wise to let him have his way. The bill was pa.s.sed. But it had to go through the Lower House, too, and it was sent there, to be taken care of by its opponents--with the tongue in the cheek, no doubt.

I met Boss Graham in the corridor. "h.e.l.lo, Ben," he greeted me.

"What's the matter with that partner of yours?" I laughed; he looked worried. "Come in here," he said. "I'd like to have a talk with you."

He led me into a quiet side room and shut the door. "Now look here,"

he said. "Did you boys ever stop to think what a boat you'll be in with this law that you're trying to get, if you ever have to defend a corporation in a jury suit? Now they tell me down at the tramway offices"--the offices of the Denver City Tramway Company--"that they're going to need a lot more legal help. There's every prospect that they'll appoint you boys a.s.sistant counsel. But they can't expect to do much, even with you bright boys as counsel, if they have this law against them. You know that all the money there is in law is in corporation business. I don't see what you're fighting for."

I explained, as well as I could, that we were fighting for the bill because we thought it was right--that it was needed. He did not seem to believe me; he objected that this sort of talk was not "practical."

"Well," I ended, "we've made up our minds to put it through. And we're going to try."

"You'll find you're making a mistake, boy," he warned me. "You'll find you're making a mistake."

We laughed over it together--Gardener and I. It was another proof to us that we had our opponents on their knees. We thought we understood Graham's position in the matter; he had made no disguise of the fact that he was intimate and friendly with Mr. William G. Evans--the great "Bill" Evans--head of the tramway company and an acknowledged power in politics. And it was natural to us that Graham should do what he could to induce us to spare his friends. That was all very well, but we had made no pledges; we were under no obligations to any one except the public whom we served. Gardener was making himself felt. He did not intend to stultify himself, even for Graham's good "friends." I, of course, went along with him, rejoicing.

He had another bill in hand (House Bill 235) to raise the tax on large foreign insurance companies so as to help replenish the depleted treasury of the state. Governor Thomas had been appealing for money; the increased tax was conceded to be just, and it would add at least $100,000 in revenue to the public coffers. Gardener handled it well in the Senate, and--though we were indirectly offered a bribe of $2,500 to drop it--he got it pa.s.sed and returned it to the Lower House. He had two other bills--one our "anguish of mind" provision and the second a bill regulating the telephone companies; but he was not able to move them out of committee. The opposition was silent but solid.

It became my duty to watch the two bills that we had been able to get as far as the House calendar on final pa.s.sage--to see that they were given their turn for consideration. The jury bill came to the top very soon, but it was pa.s.sed over, and next day it was on the bottom of the list. This happened more than once. And once it disappeared from the calendar altogether. The Clerk of the House, when I demanded an explanation, said that it was an oversight--a clerical error--and put it back at the foot. I began to suspect jugglery, but I was not yet sure of it.

One day while I was on this sentry duty, a lobbyist who was a member of a fraternal order to which I belonged, came to me with the fraternal greeting and a thousand dollars in bills. "Lindsey," he said, "this is a legal fee for an argument we want you to make before the committee, as a lawyer, against that insurance bill. It's perfectly legitimate.

We don't want you to do anything except in a legal way. You know our other lawyer has made an able argument, showing how the extra tax will come out of the people in increased premiums"--and so on. I refused the money and continued trying to push along the bill. In a few days he came back to me, with a grin. "Too bad you didn't take that money,"

he said. "There's lots of it going round. But the joke of it is, I got the whole thing fixed up for $250. Watch Cannon." I watched Cannon--Wilbur F. Cannon, a member of the House and a "floor leader"

there. He had already voted in favour of the bill. But--to antic.i.p.ate somewhat the sequence of events--I saw Wilbur F. Cannon, in the confusion and excitement of the closing moments of the session, rush down the aisle toward the Speaker's chair and make a motion concerning the insurance bill--to what effect I could not hear. The motion was put, in the midst of the uproar, and declared carried; and the bill was killed. It was killed so neatly that there is to-day no record of its decease in the official account of the proceedings of the House!

Expert treason, bold and skilful! [4]

Meanwhile, I had been standing by our jury bill. It went up and it went down on the calendar, and at last when it arrived at a hearing it was referred back to the Judiciary Committee with two other anti-corporation bills. The session was drawing toward the day provided by the const.i.tution for its closing, and we could no longer doubt that we were being juggled out of our last chance by the Clerk and the Speaker--who was Mr. William G. Smith, since known as "Tramway Bill." [5]

"All right," Gardener said. "Not one of Speaker Smith's House bills will get through the Senate until he lets our jury bill get to a vote."

He told Speaker Smith what he intended to do and next day he began to do it.

That afternoon, tired out, I was resting, during a recess of the House, in a chair that stood in a shadowed corner, when the Speaker hurried by heavily, evidently unaware of me, and rang a telephone. I heard him mention the name of "Mr. Evans," in a low, husky voice. I heard, sleepily, not consciously listening; and I did note at first connect "Mr. Evans" with William G. Evans of the tramway company. But a little later I heard the Speaker say: "Well, unless Gardener can be pulled off, we'll have to let that 'three-fourths' bill out. He's raising h.e.l.l with a lot of our measures over in the Senate. . . What? . . .

Yes. . . . Well, get at it pretty quick."

Those hoa.r.s.e, significant words wakened like the thrill of an electric shock--wakened to an understanding of the strength of "special interests" that were opposed to us--and wakened in me, too, the anger of a determination to fight to a finish. The Powers that had "fixed"

our juries, were now fixing Legislature. They had laughed at us in the courts; they were going to laugh at us in the Capitol!

Speaker Smith came lumbering out. He was a heavily built man, with a big jaw. And when he saw me there, confronting him, his face changed from a look of displeased surprise to one of angry contempt--lowering his head like a bull--as if he were saying to himself: "What! That d---- little devil! I'll bet he heard me!" But he did not speak. And neither did I. He went off about whatever business he had in hand, and I caught up my hat and hastened to Gardener to tell him what I had heard.

When the House met again, in committee of the whole, the Speaker, of course, was not in the Chair, and Gardener found him in the lobby.

Gardener had agreed with me to say nothing of the telephone conversation but he threatened Smith that unless our jury bill was "reported out" by the Judiciary Committee and allowed to come to a vote, he would oppose every House bill in the Senate and talk the session to death. Smith fumed and bl.u.s.tered, but Gardener, with the blood in his face, out-bl.u.s.tered and out-fumed him. The Speaker, later in the day, vented some of his spleen by publicly threatening to eject me from the floor of the House as a lobbyist. But he had to allow the bill to come up, and it was finally pa.s.sed, with very little opposition--for reasons which I was afterward to understand.

It had yet to be signed by the Speaker; and it had to be signed before the close of the session or it could not become a law. I heard rumours that some anti-corporation bills were going to be "lost" by the Chief Clerk, so that they might not be signed; and I kept my eye on him. He was a fat-faced, stupid-looking, flabby creature--by name D. H.

d.i.c.kason--who did not appear capable of doing anything very daring. I saw the chairman of the Enrolling Committee place our bill on d.i.c.kason's desk, among those waiting for the Speaker's signature; and--while the House was busy--I withdrew it from the pile and placed it to one side, conspicuously, so that I could see it from a distance.

When the time came for signing--sure enough! the Clerk was missing, and some bills were missing with him. The House was crowded--floor and galleries--and the whole place went into an uproar at once. n.o.body seemed to know which bills were gone; every member who had an anti-corporation bill thought it was his that had been stolen; and they all together broke out into denunciations of the Speaker, the Clerk, and everybody else whom they thought concerned in the outrage. One man jumped up on his chair and tried to dominate the pandemonium, shouting and waving his hands. The galleries went wild with noisy excitement.

Men threatened each other with violence on the floor of the House, cursing and shaking their fists. Others rushed here and there trying to find some trace of the Clerk. The Speaker, breathless from calling for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit down and let them rage.

At last, from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an abject terror. He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin, providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works; but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to the bas.e.m.e.nt and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and it was the Senator now who had him by the neck.

They thrust him back into his chair, got the confusion quieted, and with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the desperate haste of men working against time. And our jury bill was signed!

It was signed; and we had won! (At least we thought so.) And I walked out of the crowded glare of the session's close, into an April midnight that was as wide as all eternity and as quiet. It seemed to me that the stars, even in Colorado, had never been brighter; they sparkled in the clear blackness of the sky with a joyful brilliancy. A cool breeze drew down from the mountains as peacefully as the breath in sleep. It was a night to make a man take on his hat and breathe out his last vexation in a sigh.

We had won. What did it matter that the Boss, the Speaker, the Clerk and so many more of these miserable creatures were bought and sold in selfishness? That spring night seemed to answer for it that the truth and beauty of the world were as big above them as the heavens that arched so high above the puny dome-light, of the Capitol. Had not even we, two "boys"--as they called us--put a just law before them and made them take up the pen and sign it? If we had done so much without even a whisper from the people and scarcely a line from the public press to aid and back us, what would the future not do when we found the help that an aroused community would surely give us? Hope? The whole night was hushed and peaceful with hope. The very houses that I pa.s.sed--walking home up the tree-lined streets--seemed to me in some way so quiet because they were so sure. All was right with the world.

We had won.

[1] A New England family, to which the poet Whittier was related.

[2] This is one of the few fict.i.tious names used in the story. Judge Lindsey wishes it disguised "for old sake's sake."

[3] Many of the conversations reported in this volume are given from memory, and they are liable to errors of memory in the use of a word or a turn of expression. But they are not liable to error in substance.

They are the unadorned truth, clearly recollected.--B. B. L.

[4] Wilbur F. Cannon is now Pure Food Commissioner in Colorado.

[5] Smith is now tax agent in the tramway offices.