of the clergy to lead them rallied instantly about the machine, and for six weeks reveled in an inspection of all the city's vices, and mouseled in the slums and stews of the tenderloin for examples of the depravity which they declared it was the purpose and design of the Independents to intensify and perpetuate. Their own candidate had been in power for a year and a half and these conditions had existed unmolested, but when some of our speakers indicated this inconsistency in their attitude they only raged the more.
But notwithstanding all this, the issue was clear; the machine had helped to make it clear, not only by its long opposition to Jones, but more recently by its efforts for the street railway company. It was the old issue between privilege and democracy, that has marked the cleavage in society in all ages. The people were trying to take back their own government, for the purpose, first, of preventing the street railway company from securing another lease of the city's streets for a quarter of a century, by which, incidentally, the company would realize profits on about twenty-five million dollars of watered stock. But the people were not to be deceived; they were not to be turned off the trail so easily; and the entire ticket was elected, so that at the beginning of that new year the Independents were in control of every branch of the government, not only in the city, but in the county as well.
