The price of place

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

Contents

CHAPm PACT

I "Play the Game" . • 3

n The Future Opens 17

II The Future Opens

MARSH walked home slowly, turning over in his mind what McManus had said to him. He was uneasy, for he didn't know how far Mc- Manus would ask him to go. McManus had financial and political connections in the East, was frequently called to Washington for consultation with the party leaders there, was a member of the Republican National Committee and potent in state aifairs. Furthermore McManus, operating as the friend of the people and the unselfish leader of the party, looked on it all as a game whereby the ends always justified the means. He was interested only in the results and the results of the results, which, generally, and as often as he could make them so, were for the benefit of McManus and his lieutenants. He was a stem boss, but had the reputation of dividing equitably, and he stood by his friends. Marsh understood perfectly that McManus' only theory of politics was that politics is necessary to secure power and that power is useful in helping along personal plans.

At the same time Marsh knew it would be to the advantage of his future to remain on friendly

»7 terms with McManus, for without McManus' support Marsh could not hope to remain in Congress. Marsh took a backward look at his own career. He was forty-one years old, married and had a daughter of fifteen. He was a practising lawyer, who made about six thousand dollars a year and had never had an office except a streetrailway receivership, given to him by a political judge, that netted him five thousand dollars, of which he was compelled to give a quarter to the McManus organisation. He was born in a small village about twenty miles from Morganville, worked hard, came to Morganville when he was eighteen and studied law. He passed his examinations with credit and took a clerkship In a leading firm at that, the county seat. After a few years he had opened an office of his own and had done well, as the law business went in that territory. All his life he had been a public speaker and interested and active in politics. He had an elocutionary ^ft. When he was a small boy he declaimed Spartacus to the Gladiators and similar robust orations in the dis« trict school. He worked up through the rural debating societies and was a leader in the moot trials organised by the clerks in his student days. As soon as he was admitted to the bar he began campaign speaking in a small way. He had developed, through his work in the courtroom and on the stump, into an effective public speaker, with a facility for flowery and impassioned perorations and a trick of alliteration that made his

THE FUTURE OFENS 19

speeches sound more impressive than they really were. His voice was musical and strong and his delivery graceful and at times dramatic

He was a good student, kept in close and intelligent touch with public affairs. Once or twice when the occasion seemed opportune, he had broken away from the McManus organisation and had sided with the independents. There always was a faction in the district fighting McManus. This exhibition of independence had puzzled Mc- Manus, but had not deterred him from nominating Marsh when he wanted a man to win. McManus needed Marsh, not only to give respectability to his organisation, but because Marsh was strong and effective and capable of large development. Marsh had not been, to a great extent, cognisant of the machine methods of McManus, for McManus had used him for outside work and not in the inner councils. Marsh thoroughly believed that his triumph at the polls was due to his own good standing in the community and to his strong political beliefs, which, though generally in accord with those of the party, still were progressive enough to suit the independents in a great measure.

He liked the law, but his great love was for politics and his great passion for power and place. All his life he had had but one idea, and that was to become an important man in the country. He thought himself a great orator — and he was a very good one and might reasonably hope to develop in time to be a great one — and he w^s greedy for applause. He had visions of himself in Congress swaying his colleagues with the force and eloquence of his words, and he saw opening before him vistas, not only of political triumphs but of social triumphs as well. He considered the man who held a big office as having proved his superiority over his neighbours; and though he was outwardly modest and not looking for notoriety, he sought the society of men he thought could help him, and saw to it that his name was in the newspapers as often as it could be put there in a complimentary manner. He had worked harder to make himself one of the big men of Morganville than he had to make money, and he had lived up to and a little beyond his income. Ordinarily at the end of the year there were bills amounting to a thousand dollars or so unpaid, and no way to provide for them except by future earnings.

Marsh was somewhat of a sentimentalist, and by nature not so aggressive as he seemed. However, he had carefully built up a reputation for keen, businesslike decision, which he relieved at times by some act of kindness and consideration that won him approval. He was liked by his colleagues at the bar and popular throughout his district as a good mixer. He had a facility for remembering names and faces and incidents, and he cultivated that assiduously. He also had a hearty sincerity of manner, never effusive, but genuine in all its manifestations. To all outside views he seemed a serious, studious, earnest,

THE FUTURE OPENS 21

honest man, widi the good of the people at heart and fervent in his support of his party. He was enough of a politician to go a considerable distance in making his own ideas conform with the tenets of his party. He said to himself that he could do more to bring about good politics by being in powerful place on the inside instead of fighting from the outside. He was firmly determined to urge and secure reforms, espedally in the extension of popular government, a question he had studied much but about which he had talked little. He had no idea, either real or vague, of doing anything else in Congress than giving his best service to his people and his country, but back of it all was an intense ambition, a craving for high position, and he was certain that if he could attain the place he desired he then could do many things that were beyond him as a private citizen.

Marsh had telephoned the result to his wife as soon as he was certain he was elected, and she was waiting for him.

"Well, Molly," he shouted exultantly as he came into the living-room where she was sitting, " we're going to Congress."

She rose to meet him and he took her in his afms and kissed her. She said nothing.

" You don't seem very much impressed with the news," he complained.

" Of course I am, Jim. Don't be silly I But I was planning my dresses."

" Your dresses I Is that the first thing you think about? "

" Jim," said Mrs. Marsh, withdrawing herself from his arms, ^' I am now a Congressman's wife, and I shall be expected to take my proper place in society in Washington. Of course I must think of my dresses and the dresses for Dorothy, but I'm glad — I'm glad — it means so much to all of us."

Mrs Marsh was slender, alert and thirty-seven. She had an attractive face, knew how to keep her complexion fresh, had good taste in gowns and much tact and ability as a hostess. She was not a beauty and never had been, but she was graceful, vivacious, healthy, good-tempered, active, and had won her way as the social leader of her set by hard and persistent campaigning and by the exercise of great strategy and diplomacy. She had a quick mind, was just a little ahead of her friends in adopting the new fashions, but had excellent discernment and never took up the extreme modes. She was adaptable and eager to learn, and studied the social columns of the out-of-town newspapers and the fashion books from New York and elsewhere with satisfactory results. She dabbled discreetly in club doings, but never with any but the clubs that were most fashionable, and she kept her visiting list carefully pruned, and considered it a triumph when she added to that list the name of a lady who had seemed a little above her in position. She was the daughter of a local merchant, and had married Marsh

JHE FUTURE OPENS 23

when she was nineteen, a year after she had completed her course in the Morganville high school.

'* Molly,'* said Marsh, " this dress business is an angle that hadn't appealed to me before. * How much will they cost ? "

"Why, Jim," she replied, "I don't know. How can I tell? I suppose five hundred dollars for myself and Dorothy."

" Five hundred dollars I "

" Certainly I You want your wife to be properly dressed, don't you? There is so much to get, for none of the gowns I have been wearing here will do. I must have everything new. You know, Jim," she continued earnestly, " it wouldn't do to go to one of those big houses in Washington with a gown on that had seen service here in poky Morganville."

I suppose not."

You aren't very enthusiastic about it." Maybe not; but this campaign cost me about all I had in cash and I went into debt some. They taxed me pretty heavily and I had to pay my own expenses. Why, the money McManus got from the congressional campaign committee he used in his own way, and I'm about strapped, to tell the truth."

" Oh, well, we don't go to Washington until December of next year, and you can make a lot before that time, can't you, Jim? "

" I'll have to," he replied grimly.

44 44 44

Ill

THE FIRST: "why NOT?"

LEADER McMANUS took Marsh to Washington with him for a few days during the session of the Congress which preceded the body to which Marsh had been elected. Corrected returns showed that Marsh had carried his district by some thirteen hundred, " redeemed " it, as the party papers all said, and he had made one or two speeches at ratification meetings that had been warmly commended. McManus had said little and had kept away from Marsh, who was working hard at his law practice and reading up on governmental affairs, in order to be able to plunge into his new work. He was disturbed because he would have no actual opportunity, beyond being representative-elect, to demonstrate his capacity as a statesman, as the Congress to which he was elected would not go into session for a year; but he finally concluded that might not be so much of a detriment as it seemed, for the elapsed time would give him a chance to get his law business into shape and secure some money to help out on expenses In Washington.

It was the second time Marsh had been in Washington. He had attended the inauguration of President Harrison, in 1889, coming on an excursion, and had galloped through the big buildings and had called on his representative; but he remembered very little except the crowds and the rain, and he was vastly interested in all he saw. They went to the largest hotel, where McManus took a parlour and two bedrooms, a finer suite than Marsh ever had occupied in a hotel or elsewhere, and began a round of \asit9. McManus spent money freely. He hired cabs, had elaborate dinners, bought expensive wines and cigars and would not let Marsh pay for anything.

" It's on me," he said, " all of it. I want to get you started right down here, and there's no sense in your blowing yourself. It's on me."

Marsh resented this air of proprietorship shown by McManus, and he resented it still more when he was introduced by McManus as ^* my congressman," but he said nothing. He resolved at the earliest feasible moment to show McManus he was his own congressman, but he went with McManus wherever McManus suggested. Marsh was surprised to see the easy terms McManus was on with men whose names figured in the newspapers every day as the greatest statesmen of the country. He heard McManus call them " Joe " and " John " and all the rest, and saw them salute McManus as " Bob, old boy 1 " and at once become confidential with him. He waited impatiently in outside offices while Mc- M^nus talked with famous senators and notable representatives, and when they went to the White House and he was presented to the president, he was astonished to find the president not only called McManus *^ Bob," but put his arm about his shoulder and led him away to a corner of the room for a personal and intimate talk.

Marsh's vanity was hurt He considered himself a man of considerable dignity and consequence, and he was a representative-elect, a man on whom they must all figure when the next Congress convened. To his disgust he was received in the most casual manner by the leaders of his party in both Senate and House. They were glad to meet him, inquired carefully as to his name, said they would be pleased to help him when he came to take up his duties, and then turned to other things. A few of them talked to him a little about politics in his state, but that was about all. Every one seemed to have confidences to exchange with McManus and Marsh obtained a new view of the power of that leader in national affairs. McManus took him to the man who would be speaker of the new House and recommended Marsh for good committee places.

" m do the best I can," said that personage, "but the pressure is tremendous. All the new men want to go on Ways and Means or Appropriations, you understand, right off the bat."

" I know all about that/' McManus replied,

"but you take care of Marsh here. He's all right, and he'll stand without hitching."

Marsh resented that, too, but said nothing. In his mind he determined not only to show the prospective speaker that he might do worse than put him in Ways and Means or Appropriations, but also to prove to McManus there was no mortgage on his freedom in the possession of that autocratic boss.

It was all an enchanted land to Marsh. By virtue of his forthcoming position he was admitted to places beyond the ordinary visitor. He saw at closer range the men he had been reading about all his life. He studied the operations of both Senate and House, listened to the debates and speeches and said to himself that he could do better than any of them, went to a dinner party or two given at the hotel by McManus, and was seized with a sense of his own importance. In a short tinie he was to be a member of this great law-making body. He was to be a statesman. He was to have his place there on the floor, to take part in the deliberations, to help frame the laws, to speak to an audience that would be nationwide, and he saw again those vistas of increasing power and higher place. Indeed, one night when he was out alone for a walk, he went up on Pennsylvania Avenue past the treasury, and stood for a long time looking at the White House. Then he walked slowly round the ellipse and gazed at the big portico, and staring over the iron fence he determined that even so tremendous a goal as the White House was not beyond him.

"Why not?" he said. "Why not?"

As he stood there three men came along, walking slowly and talking earnestly. He recognised two of them. They were senators, he was sure of that, and well-known senators, too. He had often seen their pictures in the papers and he had observed them on the floor of the Senate chamber.

They stopped near him.

" Damn him I If he thinks he can coerce me into doing what he wants by threatening to withhold my patronage, let him go ahead," one of them exclaimed. " Tm still a senator, and Til show him that I'm not to be intimidated by any president of the United States."

" Cheer up, Bill I " said another of the party. " He's only bluffing and so are you. When the time comes you'll get together in five minutes."

" I'm not bluffing 1 " shouted the angry senator. " I'll show him."

The others laughed and pulled the fist-shaker along with them, patting him on the back and telling him it was a waste of energy to make those demonstrations before them.

Marsh wondered what it was all about. He had heard nothing of any quarrel between a senator and the president. When he returned to the hotel he asked McManus about it.

"Oh," said McManus, "it's nothing. The president wants a thing done that is pretty hard to do, and some of the senators have kicked about it. He is insistent and is threatening to withhold patronage unless he gets his way. Those old boys over there in the Senate are as greedy as any politician for their share of the pie, and they're sore. But they will come round. They always do. By the way, I fixed it for you to-day so you can have a couple of assistant door-keepers and a place on the temporary roll for our fellows."

" m look over the ground," said Marsh, " and pick out some good men."

" Needn't bother," McManus replied. " I've picked them out for you."

This made Marsh's gorge rise. He was on the point of protesting, but he thought it better to wait until he had a chance to show McManus by deeds instead of trying to influence him by words. McManus apparently considered the matter settled and did not refer to it again.

" Bob," said Marsh, as they were on the train going home, " you seem to know most of the big men back in Washington."

" Yes."

" And to have a lot of influence with them."

" I do."

McManus turned and looked Marsh in the eye: "Why not?" he asked. "Why not, when I've been playing the game on the level with most of them for thirty years? I know them and they know me."

" But you never have taken office."

" Marsh," said McManus, leaning forward, " there is one good rule you always should follow

Qo THE PRICE OF PLACE

—never try to take anything you can't get. I couldn't be elected pound-master, and you know it; but I can elect other people, and you know that too. Besides, I'd much rather own an officeholder than have an office own me.''

There was a pause of ten minutes. McManus smoked his cigar and looked out of the window. Marsh smoked his cigar and looked at the toes of his shoes.

" Bob," asked Marsh finally, " do you claim to own me? "

^^ I make no claims of any kind," McManus replied, with considerable emphasis. ^' I took you to Washington to show you what I can do for you if you continue right. It's all up to you. If you want my support you can have it. If you don't want it that's for you to decide. But let me say this — you can't get anywhere without me and you can go a hell of a ways with me. All you've got to do is to play the game."

" Do you mean you want me to be dishonest? "

" Dishonest 1" shouted McManus. "No, I don't want you to be dishonest! What good would you be to me or anybody else if you were dishonest in the sense you use the word? I'm not putting crooks into office; I'm trying to keep them out. You've been listening to a lot of gufi about politics and politicians put out by a bunch of reformers and uplifters who wouldn't know an Australian ballot If they saw one coming down the street and wouldn't know whether they ought to back in or roll into a polling place, who never took part in a ward caucus, and who say all politics is dishonest because they can't get out of politics what they want themselves.

"No, I don't want you to be dishonest. I'll be the first to expose you if you are. What I do want is for you to look at this game with the right slant. I don't like that word graft a little bit, but it's the only one I can use to explain what I do mean. Now listen. Marsh, there are two kinds of graft — ^plain graft and honest graft. Perquisites is better, but that doesn't exactly fit. What I mean is that if you play the game, go to bat with the boys who are in control and prove yourself regular and dependable, you will get your share of it and, incidentally, so will I. There are a whole heap of things coming off every session of Congress that are straight as a string, and you can get in on them if you will. It doesn't mean any betrayal of your constituents, or any sacrifice of your honor, or anything at all but just plain, hard, common sense, and not such a hell of a lot of that. If you play ball with the boys the boys will play ball with you. Our Congress is the greatest tit-for-tat institution in the known world. The organisation runs the game, and if you are with the organisation you are in the game and get your share. If you try to buck the organisation you lose out three ways — at home, in Congress and with me. You won't be asked to do anything you can't do consistently or conscientiously, unless your conscience is tenderer than I think it is. The labourer is always worthy of his hire. Things will come your way if you help put things in the way of the other fellows. It's a give-and-take proposition anyway you look at it, and you've got to give something before you can take anything."

" But, Bob, I don't quite get what you mean by honest graft."

"You don't have to — yet," said McManus. " But when the time comes I'll be round to put you wise."

IV Another Rube Congressman

THE Honorable James Marsh and Mrs. Marsh came to Washington ten days before the session of Congress began in December. They decided to leave Dorothy, the daughter, with her grandmother in Morganville so that she might continue at school, and planned to go to a hotel for a time until they could fit themselves into the life at the capital in their proper sphere. Marsh knew no hotel except the one he had stayed at with McManus, and he went there. He asked for a parlour, a bedroom and a bath, and was given a small suite on the seventh floor overlooking the roofs of some adjacent buildings. The rooms were comfortable and the service excellent Mrs. Marsh was delighted.

That afternoon she put on one of her prettiest gowns and went down early. She had seen a long hall, or corridor, rather, bisecting the hotel, ^nd had observed this was lined with sofas and tig carved and padded chairs. There were great parlours and restaurant rooms on either side of Ais corridor, which were decorated lavishly with palms and flowering shrubs and potted plants. At five o'clock the waiters put small tables along this corridor, and dozens of handsomely dressed women came in to have tea. A big orchestra played in a balcony. There was much bustle and animation, and the women visited from table to table, while men walked through, stopped here and there to chat or lingered long enough for a cup of tea. She observed that some of the women were old and elaborately dressed and that some of them were young and still more elaborately dressed. She walked through the corridor, noticed that some of the men glanced at her momentarily and then took a seat to watch the proceedings.

It was a lively and interesting scene. The orchestra played unceasingly, devoting itself to the popular airs of the day, and the women came and went in groups of two and three and four. She sat for an hour, thinking pleasurably of the coming afternoons when she would be of the party, and not merely in it as she was then, a participator and not a spectator, but she was uneasy about lier dress. It was the ultimate achievement of the local dressmaker at Morganville, but she did not see any other like it. To be sure, she had gone to the modiste in the city for her evening gowns, but this frock was her idea of what she would need in her afternoon social duties, and she was worried, and wondered if it were possible that she was not so strictly in the fashion as she had thought to be. Soon after six o'clock she went up to the suite. Marsh came in. She decided she would put on

ANOTHER RUBE CONGRESSMAN 35

her simplest evening gown and insisted that Marsh should wear his dinner jacket.

" What's the use ? " asked Marsh. " Fm tired. Let's go down just as we are and get a bite."

" No," Mrs. Marsh replied decisively, ** Fm not going down there on my first night in an afternoon dress. At six o'clock all the men began appearing in dinner jackets and in dress-suits, and I know the women will have on their best, and Fm not going to start out feeling uncomfortable the very first night."

Marsh growled something about a dinner jacket being unsuitable, and said he might as well put on his full evening regalia. Mrs. Marsh insisted the dinner jacket would do, and Marsh put it on, and his growls grew to full-voiced imprecations when he clumsily tried to hook his wife's gown. She was pretty when she was ready to go. Marsh stood sulkily in the parlour waiting for her.

" Now, see here, Jim Marsh," she said, " there's no use of your acting like this. You've got to make up your mind that I am going to be a part of the social life in this city and you've got to help me. I'm your wife and I am entitled to take my proper place. I know what to do, even if you don't, and you might as well decide, first as last, diat you'll do as I say in social matters."

" Huh," sneered Marsh, " I don't see anything very social about dining in a hotel."

** That's because you don't know. I was down there this afternoon at teatime, and I saw a whole lot of women there I just know — I felt it — are social leaders. They will all be in to dinner also, and I am not going down there looking as if I don't understand what is what."

" But,'* persisted Marsh, " what's the rush? We only arrived here this morning. I don't see the harm in dining quietly to-night and taking our ease at it, instead of being all dressed up like horses and buggies."

Mrs. Marsh looked sharply at him. " If you do not appreciate your position here I do," she said. " Also I appreciate my position. As I have said, I do not intend to be a mere unknown wife of a congressman. I intend to be prominent in society, and you've got to help me. That's all there is to that."

" Oh, all right, all right," Marsh replied " Of course I'll help you, my dear. I intend that you shall be all you desire to be in that way, and," he added conciliatingly, " you can do it too. Never fear that."

They went down. The dining-rooms were crowded. Much to Mrs. Marsh's surprise a large proportion of the diners were in street clothes, but here and there she noticed a table where the women were resplendent in jewels and low-cut gowns and the men were in evening dress.

" Looks to me," said Marsh, " as if there were a few here who ain't in such a hurry as you are, Molly."

Mrs. Marsh sniffed. A dining-room captain approached them as they stood uncertain in the

ANOTHER RUBE CONGRESSMAN 37

door of the largest restaurant room. ** A table for two ? " he inquired.