The reformers were making a great deal of noise, mostly threats.  They were passing to candidates specific questions as to their stand on the larger issues.  Many candidates who had subscribed and declared themselves dodged up to headquarters on the sly and assured the State chairman that they had pledged their positions because it seemed to be a reform year, and they had to do something to shut up the yawp of the reformers.  When they privately assured Presson that they would be found on the right side just the same after election, he took heart for a moment, and then was downcast after they were gone; it was tabulating liars—­an uncertain job.  Presson listened and took what courage he could, but the asterisks in his lists confessed his doubts.

“There’s a line of stars down those lists that would puzzle the man who invented political astronomy,” he told his intimates.  “But I don’t dare to go looking for the trouble right now.  It’ll be like a man looking for measles in his family of thirteen; it’ll break out if it’s there—­he won’t have to hunt for it.”

The Republican State Convention was called for late June.  The party managers believed that it would clarify the situation somewhat; “it would afford an opportunity for conference and free debate on the big questions where division of opinion existed,” so the party organs assured their readers day by day.  Chairman Presson asked them to drum this idea into the heads of the people.

But what he told himself and the secret council was that there needed to be a round-up where some of the wild steers could be thrown and branded before they should succeed in stampeding the main herd.  It was a situation that called for one of the good, old-fashioned “nights before.”  For a practical politician knows that speeches and band music do not make a convention; they merely ratify the real convention; the real convention is held “the night before,” behind closed doors at the headquarters hotel.

There were two candidates for the gubernatorial nomination.  The natural legatee of the old regime in his party was in line, of course.  He had been in line for ten years, as his predecessors had waited before him.  He had served apprenticeship after the usual fashion:  had given his money and his time; he had won the valuable title which only he who has suffered and has been bled can win, that of “the logical candidate.”

But that seemed not the halcyon year for “the logical candidate.”

The inevitable had happened in the matter of political succession.  There had been too long a line of successors.  The machine had become too close a corporation.  A machine, over-long in power, by the approved process of making itself strong makes itself weak.  It must pass around the offices.  When it picks the best men it makes enemies of all those it disappoints.  That includes principals and followers.  For a time these “best men” have enough of a personal following to repel boarders.  But party “best men” must make enemies in fortifying themselves and their friends.