“I’ve been thinking of a general Tenement-house bill, but I don’t think I shall try for that this winter.  It’s a big subject, which needs very careful study, in which a lot of harm may be done by ignorance.  There’s no doubt that anything which hurts the landlord, hurts the tenant, and if you make the former spend money, the tenant pays for it in the long run.  Yet health must be protected.  I shall try to find out what can be done.”

“I wish you would get into the legislature yourself, Mr. Stirling.”

“I shall not try for office.  I want to go on with my profession.  But I shall hope to work in politics in the future.”

Peter took another day off, and spent a few minutes of it with the other most promising candidate.  He did not see very much of him, for they were interrupted by another caller, and Peter had to leave before he could have a chance to continue the interview.

“I had a call to-day from that fellow Stirling, who’s a delegate from the sixth ward,” the candidate told a “visiting statesman” later.  “I’m afraid he’ll give us trouble.  He asks too many questions.  Fortunately Dewilliger came to see me, and though I shouldn’t have seen him ordinarily, I found his call very opportune as a means of putting an end to Stirling’s cross-examination.”

“He’s the one doubtful man on the city’s delegation,” said the statesman.  “It happened through a mistake.  It will be very unfortunate if we can’t cast a solid city vote.”

Peter talked more in the next few days.  He gave the “b’ys” his impressions of the two candidates, in a way which made them trust his conclusions.  He saw his two fellow delegates, and argued long and earnestly with them.  He went to every saloon-keeper in the district, and discussed the change in the liquor law which was likely to be a prominent issue in the campaign, telling them what he had been able to draw from both candidates about the subject.

“Catlin seems to promise you the most,” he told them, “and I don’t want to say he isn’t trying to help you.  But if you get the law passed which he promises to sign, you won’t be much better off.  In the first place, it will cost you a lot of money, as you know, to pass it; and then it will tempt people to go into the business, so that it will cut your profits that way.  Then, you may stir up a big public sentiment against you in the next election, and so lay yourselves open to unfriendly legislation.  It is success, or trying to get too much, which has beaten every party, sooner or later, in this country.  Look at slavery.  If the Southerners had left things as they were under the Missouri Compromise, they never would have stirred up the popular outbreak that destroyed slavery.  Now, Porter is said to be unfriendly to you, because he wants a bill to limit the number of licenses, and to increase the fee to new saloons.  Don’t you see that is all in your favor, though apparently against you?  In the first place, you are established, and the law will be drawn so as to give the old dealer precedence over a new one in granting fresh licenses.  This limit will really give the established saloon more trade in the future, by reducing competition.  While the increase in fee to new saloons will do the same.”