bill be reported favorably.  This was voted down without debate by the “combine,” some of whom kept a wooden stolidity of look, while others leered at me with sneering insolence.  I then moved that it be reported unfavorably, and again the motion was voted down by the same majority and in the same fashion.  I then put the bill in my pocket and announced that I would report it anyhow.  This almost precipitated a riot, especially when I explained, in answer to statements that my conduct would be exposed on the floor of the Legislature, that in that case I should give the Legislature the reasons why I suspected that the men holding up all report of the bill were holding it up for purposes of blackmail.  The riot did not come off; partly, I think, because the opportune production of the chair-leg had a sedative effect, and partly owing to wise counsels from one or two of my opponents.

Accordingly I got the bill reported to the Legislature and put on the calendar.  But here it came to a dead halt.  I think this was chiefly because most of the newspapers which noticed the matter at all treated it in such a cynical spirit as to encourage the men who wished to blackmail.  These papers reported the introduction of the bill, and said that “all the hungry legislators were clamoring for their share of the pie”; and they accepted as certain the fact that there was going to be a division of “pie.”  This succeeded in frightening honest men, and also in relieving the rogues; the former were afraid they would be suspected of receiving money if they voted for the bill, and the latter were given a shield behind which to stand until they were paid.  I was wholly unable to move the bill forward in the Legislature, and finally a representative of the railway told me that he thought he would like to take the bill out of my hands, that I did not seem able to get it through, and that perhaps some “older and more experienced” leader could be more successful.  I was pretty certain what this meant, but of course I had no kind of proof, and moreover I was not in a position to say that I could promise success.  Accordingly, the bill was given into the charge of a veteran, whom I believe to have been a personally honest man, but who was not inquisitive about the motives influencing his colleagues.  This gentleman, who went by a nickname which I shall incorrectly call “the bald eagle of Weehawken,” was efficient and knew his job.  After a couple of weeks a motion to put the bill through was made by “the bald eagle”; the “black horse cavalry,” whose feelings had undergone a complete change in the intervening time, voted unanimously for it, in company with all the decent members; and that was the end.  Now here was a bit of work in the interest of a corporation and in the interest of a community, which the corporation at first tried honestly to have put through on its merits.  The blame for the failure lay primarily in the supine indifference of the community to legislative wrong-doing, so long as only the corporations were blackmailed.