MACOCHEE’S FIRST CAMPAIGN FUND
SQUIRE GODDARD had been renominated as mayor of Macochee for the fifth time, and for three weeks had played his customary checker games with the firemen in the town hall, serene in the conviction that he could not fail of reëlection. Then suddenly he awakened to the fact that he had been the victim of a gum-shoe campaign. Election was but a week off, and something had to be done. So they raised a campaign fund. Now, Macochee, in that day, had never had a campaign fund. The state committee never put any money into Gordon County, even in a presidential year. The Republicans didn’t have to, and the Democrats knew better. The local candidates, of course, had little expenses of their own—for cigars, for carriages when there were township meetings out in the little red school-house, for printing the tickets (in the days before we had the Australian ballot), and for Ganson’s hack to use at the polls on election day, but they were stingy in these things. Macochee and Gordon County always went right, anyhow. Joe Boyle, Captain Bishop, Major Turner, old Bill Williams and John Ernest had been parceling the fat offices in the court-house among themselves ever since the war, and all a county convention ever had to do was to renominate the old ticket, and it went through in November without a scratch. Sometimes, because of curious constitutional prejudices against a county treasurer succeeding himself, they had to run Captain Bishop for county clerk, and let old Bill Williams have the treasury, but it only meant, after all, changing the combination a little, and beyond the trouble of moving some favorite old desk chairs, which had molded themselves to rheumatic backs, from one side of the court-house to the other, the ring remained undisturbed in that ancient, life-giving pile. Of course they had to find a new candidate for prosecuting attorney every six years, but, fortunately, the crop of young lawyers is one that never fails, whatever party is in power down in Washington.
And so, among a virgin electorate, the advent of a campaign fund was an impressive event. The people felt that they had entered upon a new era in their political life, just as they did when the council bought the new fire apparatus and began to agitate the question of bonding the town for water-works—a proposition, by the way, upon which the leading citizens sat down quickly enough, because it meant taxes—while the line of loafers leaning against the court-house fence increased, waiting for the distribution. They had vague notions about a campaign fund in Macochee. The amount was reputed to be five hundred dollars, and, technically, it was in the custody of the court-house ring, but as they had never had a campaign fund to disburse before, and could not decide how to proceed, it was temporarily locked in the county treasurer’s vault, where, not being interest on the public moneys, it was comparatively safe. Meanwhile they were sticking closer than brothers. They would not allow one of their number out of their sight. They went to their meals in relays, and held night sessions in the treasury, losing sleep and rest, so that all their latent diseases, rheumatics, phthisis, lumbago, gravel, and so on, were aggravated. They became cross, jealous and suspicious, full of envy, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, back-biters, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things. They swore as they had not sworn since the battle of Port Republic. They cursed each other, they cursed Horace Goddard, and when these subjects failed, they cursed young Halliday.
Young Halliday was at the bottom of all the deviltry in Macochee. He had not been out of Harvard a month before all the good people in the town were wagging their heads sadly and saying: “Tsck! Tsck! Tsck!” He parted his hair in the middle. He brought home a habit of dropping his r’s, and of pronouncing his a’s with a broad accent, as, for instance, when he said “rawther;” he smoked cigarettes, puffed a heavy brier pipe, wore red neckties and knickerbockers, and he drank beer. And he did something else, something that struck the moral fiber of the town on the raw. He changed his politics and became a Democrat!
Being a Democrat in Macochee is like being a Republican in Alabama. There are hardly enough Democrats in Macochee—outside of the fifth ward, which is Irish—to hold primaries, and they always have mass conventions to hide their political nakedness. Hank Defrees, the only Democratic lawyer in Macochee, insisted that conventions were necessary in order to keep up the party organization. He liked to go over to Columbus every two years as delegate to the state convention. It afforded him an outing and a chance at the whisky in the Neil House. Besides, it is something to go to the state convention with the solid vote of any county, even Gordon, in your vest pocket. The local Democrats humored Hank. He had been their only available timber for Common Pleas judge and prosecuting attorney, and he had been sacrificed on the altar of his party times enough, surely, to entitle him to whatever there was in sight.
But George Halliday had been reared a Republican. His father had been an Abolitionist, the friend of Salmon P. Chase, and his home had been known in its time as one of the stations of the underground railway. He had voted for John C. Fremont, and he had voted a straight Republican ticket ever since. George had responded to these home influences sympathetically, and had given early promise of that vital interest in politics for which Ohio mothers ardently look in their sons. His first experience in politics was in 1876, when he took an active part in the Hayes-Tilden campaign, crying after the little Catholic boys from the parochial school, on his homeward way at evening:
“Fried rats and pickled cats,
Are good enough for Democrats.”
And once he marched with a party of his playmates in a torchlight procession, under a transparency which announced exultantly:
“Hurrah for Hayes! He’s the man!
If we can’t vote, our daddies can!”
That was a fine campaign, extending far beyond autumn, and during the long winter evenings he had been allowed to sit up, sometimes until after nine o’clock, to hear his father read in the Cincinnati Gazette, of the bloody deeds of the Ku-Klux Klan. The strange, cabalistic words froze the very blood in his veins. At night he would hear the drumming of horses’ hoofs, and see white-sheeted forms galloping by in the gloom. Sometimes they halted and looked at him through big black eyeholes.
These were the Ku-Klux, and he was afraid, until the evening his father came home radiant, sat down to the supper table with a smile that gave a fine cheer to the room and said:
“Well, we got Hayes in.”
Later, when he was in the high school, he became a member of the Blaine and Logan marching club, wore a red oilcloth cape and carried a torch. As he trudged along Macochee’s streets, strangely unfamiliar in the darkness, breathing the smoke of the flaring torches, intoxicated by the tired throbbing of the bass drum, he would shout in unison with the hoarse voices of excited men:
“Blaine—Blaine,
James—G.—Blaine!”
Then the procession, debouching into the Square, was swallowed up by the crowd; nothing remained of it but extinguished reeking torches scattered here and there among the thousands of restless heads. George wriggled his way up to the festooned band stand, he saw the pale speakers and the countless vice-presidents—his father was one of the vice-presidents—and he listened to the inspiring song of the Glee Club:
“Dinna ye hear the slogan,
Jimmy Blaine and Johnny Logan?
The plumed knight and warrior bold
Are bound to gain the day.
The golden gates are creaking
While the Yankee boys are speaking,
And the Johnnies are retreating,
For we’re bound to gain the day.”
His eyes had been blurred by the tears, his heart had ached with the secret pain of patriotism. He had registered sweet vows; he never could forget—and yet, now, just as his education was complete and he was ready to enter upon his career, just as the new sign of the new firm of Halliday and Halliday, attorneys-at-law, was swinging at the foot of the stairs in the People’s National Bank block, he had turned Democrat. It was a sore subject at home. He and his father no longer discussed the tariff question. Mrs. Halliday said it made her nervous, as it might anybody.
That winter Halliday did nothing more serious than to attend a Catholic fair in Father Hennessey’s church, and make a speech awarding the prize some one had won in the raffle. But in the spring, Hank Defrees, loafing around among the boys, told them the thing to do was to nominate George for mayor on the Democratic ticket, and it was done. When old Horace Goddard heard of the nomination, he chuckled until his great belly shook, and actually invited Captain Bishop and the rest of the boys, who had gathered at the post-office to wait for the seven o’clock mail, around to Cramer’s drug store to have a drink. The cronies all laughed as they drank—though they said, with soberness, that they felt sorry for old Judge Halliday himself.
It was a cruel thing to do, and it was young Halliday’s idea alone. He was a youth with aspirations, and he saw in the nomination something more than the mere compliment Hank Defrees had intended. Therefore Squire Goddard’s checker game was interrupted by a black-coated delegation of Protestant clergymen. It was a Monday morning, and they must have come straight from preachers’ meeting with their impudent questions. They wanted to know whether or not it was true that the liquor laws had not been enforced, and how he stood on the saloon question generally. The old squire puffed profusely and made promises. The next day a committee of saloon-keepers was called. The old man blew out his varicose cheeks and sputtered:
“I’ve ran for mayor o’ this ’ere town now goin’ on five times, and I’m dog damned if I ever heerd such a lot o’ fool questions before!”
The next day it was rumored that Father Hennessey had told his parishioners that Squire Goddard could not be trusted. Then the storm broke. The W. C. T. U. held a mass meeting and issued an appeal to save the boys. That night husbands were put on the rack of domestic inquisition. They had it pointed out to them that there was a drunkard in every fifth family—statistics proved it—and parents didn’t want their boys exposed any longer to such temptations. No one knew where the statistical lightning was going to strike.
“Suppose you want to intrust the regulation of the rum power to the Democrats, do you?” sneered the husbands, with ironical grunts, thereby moving the previous question and closing the debate. Nevertheless, after that the mayor was kept busy explaining, which is the direst necessity that can befall a candidate. He encountered Halliday in the Square one day, and blazed forth:
“You’re gittin’ too smart ’round this town all to onct, young feller. You know more’n your pap a’ready, an’ if he can’t l’arn ye no respec’ fer yer elders, I will.” He shook a palsied fist at the youth, as he added, in a tone almost pitiable: “An’ I’ll tell him jest what you done, too.”
Defeat might have killed the old man, and the campaign was beginning to tell on him. But when they raised the fund, it was as a hot and sweetened toddy to warm the cockles of his heart. While he had no adequate concept of it, and while the manner of its working was a mystery to him, he did not doubt its efficacy. He felt safe. Also, as the subject of the only campaign fund Gordon County had ever known, he felt a supreme importance, which swelled out his chest and filled him with a ripe content. He even found himself taking the opposition with some zest, now that it was certain to be non-effective. Three days more, thought the squire, and it would be all over. He imagined some sort of civic triumph for himself. He dreamed of a serenade by the Macochee Silver Cornet Band, in the evening, under the shade of the pine trees about his home. He dramatized himself as bowing and smiling on the front porch. He would go out just as he was, in his shirt-sleeves and slippers, his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose, and the Cincinnati paper in his hand. It would be thus more spontaneous, more democratic. Mandy would stand behind him, holding the lamp high. The front picket fence would be black with people. He wondered if there would be enough of the campaign fund left to provide the cake she must offer the band boys, and whether a part of its office was to meet such contingencies. So the old squire sat in his old chair, the split bottom of which had been worn shiny years ago, and smoked his old pipe, with sharp, dry puffs of contentment.
The squire looked forward to disbursing the fund himself, but the court-house ring still clung to it in indecision. Friday morning, when they met, election was but three days off, and the ring agreed that they must get down to business. Major Turner said, with profound wisdom, that money could be used to best advantage in the saloons. Charley Bassett—he was prosecuting attorney then—asked, with a lawyer’s passion for fine distinctions, in what sense the major employed the word “used.” Before the major could reply—he had knit his brows and was whittling a fresh chew from his plug, to irrigate his thought—old Bill Williams said:
“No, that won’t do; we must use it to get out the vote.”
“Well,” said Bassett, who always annoyed the old fellows with his young haggling, “how’ll you get out the vote?”
The auditor, with an effort at something definite, said:
“Why, we must have organization—that’s what wins in elections these days.” He shook his head, in a keen triumph, for the phrase pleased him, as phrases do please politicians. He began to conceive himself—gladly, as a great political leader, as an organizer of victory. “Organization, that’s the word,” he persisted, and then, growing bolder, he brought his fist down on his fat knee, and plunged on heedlessly into detail.
“You just give me that fund,” he said, “and I’ll—I’ll show you,” he brought up lamely.
“Well, tell us how you’d spend it,” insisted Bassett. “What’d you buy first? Remember, election’s only next Tuesday.”
“Why, why,” hesitated Williams, “I’d spend it gittin’ out the vote. I’d git kerriages, and have signs painted to hang on the horses, readin’,” and he lined the imaginary letters on the rough palm of his left hand with the gnarled forefinger of his right, “‘Republican City Committee—Vote for Goddard.’”
The old squire, tickled with the sound of the last legend, broke in with:
“You’ve got the idee, Billy.”
“Course,” said Williams, expanding more and more, “I seen ’em that way when I was in Columbus onct, on ’lection day. Get about five good two-horse kerriages—”
But the captious Bassett, remembering that old Bill’s son-in-law, Hi Wellman, kept the livery stable, interrupted him by saying:
“Oh, that wouldn’t cost more’n twenty dollars, and, anyway, we can use our own buggies, same as we’ve always done.”
Captain Bishop, who had been carefully combing his whiskers with his fingers, then advanced his scheme.
“Seems to me,” he said, “that we’d ought to have a campaign committee, with a treasur’ and a finance committee, and let the treasur’ pay out only on warrants drawed by the finance committee—then there’d be no question.”
“No, there’d be no question,” said Bassett cynically, “there’d be no question. And the finance committee could draw warrants for their own arrest, while they’re about it.”
The ring gasped, and though the captain tried to say something about business methods, they were all silent for a long time, chewing their tobacco gravely and thoughtfully, until the squire nervously ventured to ask:
“But what do you think we’d best spend it fer?”
“Votes,” said Bassett laconically.
“That’s surely what we want,” said Judge Ernest, speaking for the first time. The old men in the circle wheeled toward the probate judge. They had not been surprised at what Bassett said, for he never attended service, and was reputed to be a free-thinker, but Judge Ernest was a pillar in the church.
“Why, John,” said Major Turner, “you don’t mean to say you’d buy votes?”
“Didn’t say I would, did I?” snapped the old man, wriggling uneasily in his Delaware chair. “I meant that the money ought to be used so as to produce votes.”
“Exactly,” assented Bassett.
“And if it don’t do that,” the judge went on, “why we’d ought to give it back to them as contributed.” The judge offered this solution with a new hope dawning in his heart, for he had mourned over the ten dollars he had invested in the fund. A murmur of approval ran around the ring, and the old squire, fearing the dissolution of the fund, was the only one in the room whose face did not glow.
“I’ll tell you, boys,” said Joe Bogle, “we might whack her up among the crowd and everybody do the best they can with their share.”
“That’s what I call a grand su’gestion,” said Judge Ernest, shaking his head approvingly.
But Bassett shook his head the other way. “No,” he said, “that won’t do, we want some system in this thing. It ought to be changed into dollar bills and then given to the central committeemen to use in their wards election day. Of course we won’t need so much in the strong Republican wards—we’ll put it out in Lighttown and down in Gooseville among the niggers, and some of it across the tracks among the boys in the shops—that’s where it’ll tell.”
But the ring stubbornly opposed the idea of letting that pile of money go out of its hands. They put only young men on the city committee, and the honor and importance were enough for them. They would be wanting office next.
The old squire voiced the protest.
“’Pears to me,” he whined, “that as I’m runnin’, I’d ought to have a leetle of it fer my own expenses on ’lection day. I’ve been givin’ of my services to the party now fer nigh on to twenty year, not countin’ my term in the army, and it’s expensive, ’specially with that young Halliday carryin’ on the way he is—”
“No one never made up a fund for none of us, Hod Goddard,” chorused the old fellows.
“Yes, and there’s others on the ticket besides you,” interrupted Bassett. “Let each candidate spend his own money if he wants to. You hain’t paid your assessment yet, anyhow.”
“But I’m the head o’ the ticket,” stammered the squire, his red face deepening to purple.
The booming of the town clock in the court-house tower startled the ring, and the county officials glanced at their big silver watches. They were already half an hour late for their dinners.
“And my wife told me to fetch home some meat,” said Bassett, forgetting all else as he seized his hat.
And so the conference broke up. Saturday night came, they had no solution, and, like those that do business in great waters, were at their wits’ end.
Sunday morning a report spread through the town that caused the ring to take heart of grace. It was a report of serious defections in Halliday’s ranks. Jerry Sullivan, Scotty Gordon, old man Garwood, Rice Murrell and even Hank Defrees had been going about town all Saturday afternoon and evening, and everywhere they went they told people it was no use—Halliday couldn’t be elected. He might have been two weeks ago, if he had acted differently, but now—they shook their heads. They couldn’t stand for him any more—he needn’t look to them for support—he hadn’t treated them right—they had been fools to expect anything from such a dude. Five hundred dollars, they said, judiciously used, would settle his hash. They wished they had the management of it, they would revenge themselves for his slights and insults. And these were representative men, even if their portraits had not been made in half-tone for the History of Gordon County.
Jerry Sullivan lived on the hill behind the priest’s house, and was the “darlint” of all the old women in Lighttown. He was a lad of power in the Fifth Ward. Scotty Gordon lived across the tracks in the Second Ward and worked in the shops. Old man Garwood lived just at the edge of town, on the Blue Jacket road, in the Fourth Ward, and Rice Murrell, the Reverend Rice Murrell, the pastor of the A. M. E. church—who had turned Democrat when they took the janitorship of the court-house away from him—could do more with the colored voters down in Gooseville than any man, save Judge Halliday, and he was out of politics. Hank Defrees, of course, who still shivered under the fringe of a ragged garment of respectability by clinging to a heavily mortgaged home far out on Scioto Street, where the better element of the town began to thin out into social mediocrity, stood for the aristocratic Third Ward, with its normal Republican majority of two hundred and eleven. The Democrats had never been able to make up a ward delegation in the Third, and Defrees for years and years had sat in all city and county conventions very much at large.
Such a defection, on the eve of election, was serious, as every one recognized. Just after dinner, on Sunday, Judge Halliday, who had disclaimed all interest in the campaign, beckoned his son into the parlor, darkened for secrets, and said to him in a whisper that Mrs. Halliday plainly heard over the banister of the staircase in the hall:
“Did you know that Hank Defrees and that Sullivan boy and Gordon and old man Garwood, and even Rice Murrell, are around working against you?”
George gasped with surprise.
“And did you know,” the father whispered on, “that the Republicans have raised a corruption fund—five hundred dollars, I understand?”
“Yes, I heard that,” said George, “must be getting desperate, you fellows, eh?”
“Now, my son,” said the judge, with brows lowered, “you know I would have absolutely nothing to do with such a business as that. You know my opinions on such things too well.”
“Oh, of course, father,” said the boy, “that’s all right. I know you wouldn’t countenance it—”
“And I was just going to say,” the elder man continued, “that while I do not agree with you, and while I would not vote for you—at least, I do not think I would—I was just going to say that if you need any money yourself, to meet any of the—ah—legitimate expenses of your campaign, why, just call on me.”
The boy grasped his father’s hand, and when he could speak, he said:
“Thank you, father, thank you, but not now—it isn’t worth it—but I’ll see what’s the matter with these Indians, anyway.”
George went to his offices, over the People’s National Bank and waited an hour in the rear room, a dark and dingy room, with the dust of a country law office deep on everything, and one ray of sunlight scrambling in through the heavy shutters from the alley. Then one after another, up the worn and splintered stairs with tin signs of insurance agents and notaries public on every step, five men clambered. They were grinning when they entered the room, grinning and standing about awkwardly, all save Hank Defrees, who was solemn and imponderable, chewing his tobacco as gravely as if he were making an appearance in court.
“Well,” said George, standing in the middle of the floor, “anything happened?”
The men all looked at one another, hesitating to speak, but finally Scotty Gordon said:
“Happened! Well, I guess yes.”
“What?” queried George.
“Well,” he began, “now I done it, and last night old Bill Williams hunted me up in Jake Fogarty’s saloon, and, well, he offered me fifty dollars to use if I wanted it.”
“Say,” Jerry Sullivan broke in—“Captain Bishop offered me seventy-five.”
“And didn’t you take it?”
“Why, no,” said Jerry.
“What did you tell him?”
The lad’s eyes twinkled.
“I told him,” he answered slowly, “that it wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket.”
“Good for you,” said George. “And now, Mr. Garwood?”
“Well,” said the old man, “don’t know as I got much to say. Major Turner, though, ’as ’round to my house this morning, an’—Well, he offered me fifty dollars if I felt the way I had been reported, and thought I could use it.”
“Judge,” said George, turning to Defrees, “it’s up to you.”
The old lawyer took his tobacco in his fist and chucked it away. “Joe Bogle,” he said, “told me he knew where there’s a hundred for me if I could do any good with it.”
“And, doctor,” said Halliday, facing around to the Reverend Mr. Murrell, who stood solemn in his black garments and white tie, “what happened to you?”
The old negro glanced all around him cautiously and even craned his neck to peer into the room beyond.
“Well, suh,” he began, “Judge Ernest ’as out this mornin’ to hyah me preach, an’ aftah service was ovah, he drawed me to one side, and ’gin to talk politics. He ast me how I felt towa’ds you all, Mistuh Halliday, an’—Ah didn’ like to say it—but you done tol’ me, ’membah.”
“That’s right,” said George, urging the parson out of his hesitation, “you made it strong, I hope.”
“Wellum, Ah tol’ the judge that Ah wasn’ pow’ful strong on you any moah, sense, Ah said, you all hadn’t felt ’sposed to help us ’ith the subscription fo’ the new roof on ouah chu’ch.”
“That was clever,” said George, “damned clever—I beg your pardon.” The old negro’s eyes had widened till their whites showed, and he had raised his hands, holding up his yellow palms before George. “But go on.”
“Well, suh, the jedge ’as al’ays had an interest in ouah spiritual welfare, an’ so he ’lowed we’d ought to be holpen out some.” The old man paused and swallowed ceremoniously. “An’ so, gen’lemen, he offered me a hundred an’ fifty dollahs.”
The dark eyes of the old man shone with a strange new luster.
“What did you say?”
“Well, suh,” the preacher hesitated, “Ah took it.”
George brought his hand down on the parson’s shoulder with a heavy slap and he laughed. “Good, Bishop, good.”
They counted the money out on the table—exactly four hundred and ninety dollars, the first campaign fund Macochee had ever known. Then they laughed and laughed and laughed.
When Halliday had laid his plans for the morrow’s battle before his companions, he leaned back in his chair and said, turning to the Reverend Rice Murrell:
“I don’t suppose, Bishop, that you approve of the use of money in politics, do you?”
“No, suh,” the old preacher replied, with a smart gravity, “an’ somepin’ done tol’ me, yist’day, when the jedge come to see me, that it ’as jus’ providential that this much o’ that filthy lucah ’as removed from corruptin’ ouah ’lections by bein’ placed in mah han’s.” His rolling eyes bulged and he dribbled at the mouth as he fingered the pile of bills.
“Well,” said George, “don’t put too big a roof on the church, and remember—Gooseville’s going to vote to-morrow.”
“Oh, nevah you feah ’bout Gooseville, mah brothah—she’ll be votin’ early an’ of’en to-morrah, an’ she’ll vote right.”
George Halliday was mayor of Macochee but one term. That is a trick that has been played once in every town in this free republic—but it can never be played twice.