Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich by Stephen Leacock (read book .TXT) 📗

which such good people as Mr. Newberry and Mr. Peter Spillikins never heard at all and never guessed.

Each week and every day brought fresh triumphs to the onward march of the movement.

"Yes, gentlemen," said Mr. Fyshe to the assembled committee of the Clean Government League a few days later, "I am glad to be able to report our first victory. Mr. Boulder and I have visited the state capital and we are able to tell you definitely that the legislature will consent to change our form of government so as to replace our council by a Board."

"Hear, hear!" cried all the committee men together.

"We saw the governor," said Mr. Fyshe. "Indeed he was good enough to lunch with us at the Pocahontas Club. He tells us that what we are doing is being done in every city and town of the state. He says that the days of the old-fashioned city council are numbered. They are setting up boards everywhere."

"Excellent!" said Mr. Newberry.

"The governor assures us that what we want will be done. The chairman of the Democratic State Committee (he was good enough to dine with us at the Buchanan Club) has given us the same assurance. So also does the chairman of the Republican State Committee, who was kind enough to be our guest in a box at the Lincoln Theatre. It is most gratifying," concluded Mr. Fyshe, "to feel that the legislature will give us such a hearty, such a thoroughly American support."

"You are sure of this, are you?" questioned Mr. Newberry. "You have actually seen the members of the legislature?"

"It was not necessary," said Mr. Fyshe. "The governor and the different chairmen have them so well fixed—that is to say, they have such confidence in the governor and their political organizers that they will all be prepared to give us what I have described as thoroughly American support."

"You are quite sure," persisted Mr. Newberry, "about the governor and the others you mentioned?"

Mr. Fyshe paused a moment and then he said very quietly, "We are quite sure," and he exchanged a look with Mr. Boulder that meant volumes to those who would read it.

"I hope you didn't mind my questioning you in that fashion," said Mr. Newberry, as he and Mr. Fyshe strolled home from the club. "The truth is I didn't feel sure in my own mind just what was meant by a 'Board,' and 'getting them to give us government by a Board.' I know I'm speaking like an ignoramus. I've really not paid as much attention in the past to civic politics as I ought to have. But what is the difference between a council and a board?"

"The difference between a council and a board?" repeated Mr. Fyshe.

"Yes," said Mr. Newberry, "the difference between a council and a board."

"Or call it," said Mr. Fyshe reflectively, "the difference between a board and a council."

"Precisely," said Mr Newberry.

"It's not altogether easy to explain," said Mr. Fyshe. "One chief difference is that in the case of a board, sometimes called a Commission, the salary is higher. You see the salary of an alderman or councillor in most cities is generally not more than fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars. The salary of a member of a board or commission is at least ten thousand. That gives you at once a very different class of men. As long as you only pay fifteen hundred you get your council filled up with men who will do any kind of crooked work for fifteen hundred dollars; as soon as you pay ten thousand you get men with larger ideas."

"I see," said Mr. Newberry.

"If you have a fifteen hundred dollar man," Mr. Fyshe went on, "you can bribe him at any time with a fifty-dollar bill. On the other hand your ten-thousand-dollar man has a wider outlook. If you offer him fifty dollars for his vote on the board, he'd probably laugh at you."

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Newberry, "I see the idea. A fifteen-hundred-dollar salary is so low that it will tempt a lot of men into office merely for what they can get out of it."

"That's it exactly," answered Mr. Fyshe.

From all sides support came to the new league. The women of the city—there were fifty thousand of them on the municipal voters list—were not behind the men. Though not officials of the league they rallied to its cause.

"Mr. Fyshe," said Mrs. Buncomhearst, who called at the office of the president of the league with offers of support, "tell me what we can do. I represent fifty thousand women voters of this city—"

(This was a favourite phrase of Mrs. Buncomhearst's, though it had never been made quite clear how or why she represented them.)

"We want to help, we women. You know we've any amount of initiative, if you'll only tell us what to do. You know, Mr. Fyshe, we've just as good executive ability as you men, if you'll just tell us what to do. Couldn't we hold a meeting of our own, all our own, to help the league along?"

"An excellent idea," said Mr. Fyshe.

"And could you not get three or four men to come and address it so as to stir us up?" asked Mrs. Buncomhearst anxiously.

"Oh, certainly," said Mr. Fyshe.

So it was known after this that the women were working side by side with the men. The tea rooms of the Grand Palaver and the other hotels were filled with them every day, busy for the cause. One of them even invented a perfectly charming election scarf to be worn as a sort of badge to show one's allegiance; and its great merit was that it was so fashioned that it would go with anything.

"Yes," said Mr. Fyshe to his committee, "one of the finest signs of our movement is that the women of the city are with us. Whatever we may think, gentlemen, of the question of woman's rights in general—and I think we know what we do think—there is no doubt that the influence of women makes for purity in civic politics. I am glad to inform the committee that Mrs. Buncomhearst and her friends have organized all the working women of the city who have votes. They tell me that they have been able to do this at a cost as low as five dollars per woman. Some of the women—foreigners of the lower classes whose sense of political morality is as yet imperfectly developed—have been organized at a cost as low as one dollar per vote. But of course with our native American women, with a higher standard of education and morality, we can hardly expect to do it as low as that."

Nor were the women the only element of support added to the league.

"Gentlemen," reported Dr. Boomer, the president of the university, at the next committee meeting, "I am glad to say that the spirit which animates us has spread to the students of the university. They have organized, entirely by themselves and on their own account, a Students' Fair Play League which has commenced its activities. I understand that they have already ducked Alderman Gorfinkel in a pond near the university. I believe they are looking for Alderman Schwefeldampf tonight. I understand they propose to throw him into the reservoir. The leaders of them—a splendid set of young fellows—have given me a pledge that they will do nothing to bring discredit on the university."

"I think I heard them on the street last night," said Mr. Newberry.

"I believe they had a procession," said the president.

"Yes, I heard them; they were shouting 'Rah! rah! rah! Clean Government! Clean Government! Rah! rah!' It was really inspiring to hear them."

"Yes," said the president, "they are banded together to put down all the hoodlumism and disturbance on the street that has hitherto disgraced our municipal elections. Last night, as a demonstration, they upset two streetcars and a milk wagon."

"I heard that two of them were arrested," said Mr. Dick Overend.

"Only by an error," said the president. "There was a mistake. It was not known that they were students. The two who were arrested were smashing the windows of the car, after it was upset, with their hockey sticks. A squad of police mistook them for rioters. As soon as they were taken to the police station, the mistake was cleared up at once. The chief-of-police telephoned an apology to the university. I believe the league is out again tonight looking for Alderman Schwefeldampf. But the leaders assure me there will be no breach of the peace whatever. As I say, I think their idea is to throw him into the reservoir."

In the face of such efforts as these, opposition itself melted rapidly away. The Plutorian Times was soon able to announce that various undesirable candidates were abandoning the field. "Alderman Gorfinkel," it said, "who, it will be recalled, was thrown into a pond last week by the students of the college, was still confined to his bed when interviewed by our representative. Mr. Gorfinkel stated that he should not offer himself as a candidate in the approaching election. He was, he said, weary of civic honours. He had had enough. He felt it incumbent on him to step out and make way for others who deserved their turn as well as himself: in future he proposed to confine his whole attention to his Misfit Semi-Ready Establishment which he was happy to state was offering as nobby a line of early fall suiting as was ever seen at the price."

There is no need to recount here in detail the glorious triumph of the election day itself. It will always be remembered as the purest, cleanest election ever held in the precincts of the city. The citizens' organization turned out in overwhelming force to guarantee that it should be so. Bands of Dr. Boomer's students, armed with baseball bats, surrounded the polls to guarantee fair play. Any man wishing to cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth: all those attempting to introduce any element of brute force or rowdyism into the election were cracked over the head. In the lower part of the town scores of willing workers, recruited often from the humblest classes, kept order with pickaxes. In every part of the city motor cars, supplied by all the leading businessmen, lawyers, and doctors of the city, acted as patrols to see that no unfair use should be made of other vehicles in carrying voters to the polls.

It was a foregone victory from the first—overwhelming and complete. The cohorts of darkness were so completely routed that it was practically impossible to find them. As it fell dusk the streets were filled with roaring and surging crowds celebrating the great victory for clean government, while in front of every newspaper office huge lantern pictures of Mayor McGrath the Champion of Pure Government, and O. Skinyer, the People's Solicitor, and the other nominees of the league, called forth cheer after cheer of frenzied enthusiasm.

They held that night in celebration a great reception at the Mausoleum Club on Plutoria Avenue, given at its own suggestion by the city. The city, indeed, insisted on it.

Nor was there ever witnessed even in that home of art and refinement a scene of greater charm. In the spacious corridor of the club a Hungarian band wafted Viennese music from Tyrolese flutes through the rubber trees. There was champagne bubbling at a score of sideboards where noiseless waiters poured it into goblets as broad and flat as floating water-lily leaves. And through it all moved the shepherds and shepherdesses of that beautiful Arcadia—the shepherds in their Tuxedo jackets, with vast white shirt-fronts broad as the map of Africa, with spotless white waistcoats girdling their equators, wearing heavy gold watch-chains and little patent shoes blacker than sin itself—and the shepherdesses in foaming billows of silks of every colour of the kaleidoscope, their hair bound with glittering headbands or coiled with white feathers, the very symbol of municipal purity. One would search in vain the pages of pastoral literature to find the equal of it.

And as they talked, the good news spread from group to group that it was already known that the new franchise of the Citizens' Light was to be made for two centuries so as to give the company a fair chance to see what it could do. At the word of it, the grave faces of manly bondholders flushed with pride, and the soft eyes of listening shareholders laughed back in joy. For they had no doubt or fear, now that clean government had come. They knew what the company could do.

Thus all night long, outside of the club, the soft note of the motor horns arriving and departing wakened the sleeping leaves of the elm trees with their message of good tidings. And all night long, within its lighted corridors, the bubbling