Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/350

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

what the people say to us." It was the old question whether the end justifies the means.

They quarrelled over it, those two good friends. It was a quiet quarrel and it is being made up now, but they parted then for many years, Ogle returning to his farm, U'Ren to the lobby at Salem.

And U'Ren used the lobbyist's means to attain his end. He and Frank Williams watched their "friends" and made new ones. Brownell was true; also he was clever. He didn't pretend to believe in the "crank" measure. "I've got to vote for it," he would say to his "practical" colleagues. "My district is chock-full of 'Popsand I have to placate them. And what does the initiative and referendum amount to anyway? It's got to go through two sessions. Pass it now and we can beat it next time." But Brownell's best service was in trading. Once, for example, Williams, one of Lincoln's old secret-service men, learned that two Senators were quarrelling over an appropriation for a normal school. U'Ren arranged through Brownell to get appropriations for both. Two normal schools for two "I. & R." votes! And it was either at this session or the next that U Ren and his friends connived at what he calls a "vicious gerrymander."