A PAVING CONTRACTOR PUTS ME ON THE PAVING
I was the only Republican elected that year. But for this exception the Democrats would have made a clean sweep of the city. If the editor had not charged me with being illiterate Iwould neither have been nominated nor elected. When I appeared before audiences in the "swell end" of town and wrote my lessons on my little slate, I gained their sympathy. They believed in fair play. And I found I had not lost their support by thrashing the editor.
Nearly all of the mill workers in Elwood voted for me. Isupposed that I had made many personal enemies among the men by refusing to take their grievances up with the bosses when Ithought the men were wrong. But the election proved they were my friends after all. The confidence of my own fellows pleased me greatly. Later on, the men as a further token of their good will clubbed together and gave me a gold watch. This gave me greater joy, no doubt, than Napoleon felt when, with his own hand, he placed a gold crown upon his head.
When it came time to qualify and be sworn into office I found trouble. The Republican boss was disgruntled because only one Republican was elected while the Democrats got everything else.
He wanted me to give up the office. "Let the tail go with the hide," he said. "Let 'em have it all." His idea was to give the Democrats a closed family circle, so that when temptation came along, they would feel safe in falling for it. He feared that a Republican in the house to watch them would scare them away from the bait. He wanted them to take bribes and be ruined by the scandal, and that would bring the Republicans back to power. It was a good enough way to "turn the rogues out" by first letting them become rogues, but my heart was not set on party success only. I believed in protecting the public. So I went ahead and got bondsmen to qualify me. But as often as I got men to sign my bond, the boss went them and got them off again. A firm of lawyers, Greenlee & Call, stood by me in my struggle to make my bond. These men were ten years older than I. I was twenty-five.
They acted as godfathers to me. They gave me the use of their library, and throughout my term as city clerk I spent my nights poring over their law books. I became well grounded in municipal law and municipal finance. I was able to pay back their kindness some years later when C. M. Greenlee aspired to be judge of the Superior Court of Madison County. I went to the convention as a delegate and worked hard for Judge Greenlee until he was nominated, and elected.
The city administration of which I was a member let many contracts. As I said before, a cross-roads town had become a city and there were miles of paving and sewer to put in, and scores of public buildings to go up. Old Francis Harbit was the Democratic mayor, and he didn't intend that the contractors should graft on the city nor give boodle to the officials. I remember one stirring occasion. There was a big contract for sewers to be let, and if a certain bid should go through, the contractor would profit greatly. Big Jeff Rowley (I'll call him) was the grafting contractor who had ruined the Republican administration. He was six feet, two inches tall in his stocking feet. He had put in his sealed bid and then had approached everybody with his proposition. His overtures were scorned and he was told that we were not out for boodle but were "playing the game on the square"(that had been my campaign slogan). It finally dawned on the corrupt old bully that the lowest bid would get the contract. He then came into my office and took down his bid to revise it. It was such a big contract that he could not afford to lose it. Itold him that if his bid was not back in time I would so note it.
