University of Virginia Library

7. PUPPETS AND PULLS.

The new joys of home life have caused Ned to feel the responsibility of making substantial provision for his family in the way of going out after a fat Federal job—and he intimates that he has a political pull which will do the work of a steam derrick. This spurs the old Governor to offer a few observations on the reliable uncertainty of pulls in general and proves his point by a story of a pull that outdid all expectations.

Brokenstraw Ranch, —, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

I'm mighty glad that you find the present joys of your new home better than any picture of a future paradise painted in the sermons that Elder Ripp used to preach to you in the little old Free Will church those Sundays when you opened the campaign by taking up your devotional duties again. I always did think you were put on the light running domestic order and that you'd drop gracefully into the responsibilities of married life.

Consequently, I'm not surprised to have you write in a strain that shows you are disgustingly happy and that you have some earthly interest beyond the glory of representing a constituency and being an exalted errand boy for a bunch of folks you wouldn't hire out to for day wages. It's good for you to feel that there's something in life beyond pulling and being pulled—and for that which "profiteth not."

Your decision to make a try for some good fat appointment that will put you in position to provide for your wife is a practical resolution—but it recalls to me a certain speech which you delivered at Canada Corners, on the fourth of July, in which you magnified the glories of an elective and representative once and dealt out high scorn for the "political pot hunters" who "prostituted ambition for public service and made it a matter of ignoble commerce."

Those were your words, Ned; but I can forgive your change of heart when I remember that you were dealing a side cut to the boss of the other machine, who let the other fellows take all the elective, bandstand places while he dropped quietly into the kind of a nest you are now looking for. Then, again, you're just married—and that is enough to account for almost any sort of a stampede in the direction of settled income and "secure tenure of service."

But the man who can plunge into matrimony and at the same time stake his future on the efficacy of political pulls is so full of faith that he ought to be talking from behind a pulpit instead of prancing around on the stump.

In all the calendar of "long shots," the political pull is the rangiest and most cocksure uncertainty. Of course, you're going to come back at me with the statement that the political pull may be depended upon not to realize more than the candidate's expectations. Generally that's so—but such is the consistency of this splendid uncertainty that I'll have to tell you what happened to my friend Driggs, just over the state line. He's recently been out to visit me, and so the matter is fresh in my mind.

Now, Billy was always on the other side of the fence from me, politically, and I used to rally him about being always out in the cold. But he kept right at the mourner's bench, leading the faithful and exhorting the political sinners to come forward and get the true light. And all this time Billy's law practice continued to grow lighter and his line of credit and longtime notes heavier.

Well, as you know, his side finally came in on the great tidal wave. I never saw a pastor who had prayed and sowed and watered and waited for the increase who was more surprised when a real red hot revival actually opened up right at his feet and made the rafters ring with the shouts of the saved than was Billy when he heard that the country had gone his way. Naturally, he had the pulchritude of a singed cat. What came out of his face, when he talked to a crowd, however, was so much beyond the promise of the face it came from that the people took to him like women to religion. It seemed as if they had tired of the handsome, "black eagle," imposing type of political hero, and were ready to find relief in the plain, red headed, pug nosed, freckled, and sawed off sort of a leader that came under the head of Billy Driggs.

Anyhow, he was given credit for carrying his part of the state—and his other line of credit began to pick up considerably, too, as the war horses gathered at the county seat and talked over the office that Billy would probably be appointed to.

Well, he finally went on to Washington with all the pulls that he could scare up working overtime in his behalf. He had made up his mind to strike high and ask for the position of United States marshal for his end of the state. The marshalship paid $6,000 a year—and that was more money than he had handled in six years. Every little while, before Billy went up to Jerusalem to the great feast of the chosen, he would stop and say to himself, "Too good to be true! Too good to happen to me!"

Now, while Billy had always been a twelve hour laborer in the vineyard, he was so absorbed in the conversion of sinners that he didn't know what the fat places on the circuit paid—and he had to ask what was the best paying appointment ever held by a man from that district before he knew what to apply for. "Topnotch or nothing," was his battle cry when he went out for the indorsement of the party leaders.

He had seen so many lean years of faithful service when the enemy held the corner on all the official cribs that, now in the days of his party's fatness and of his own righteous reward, the habit of good, honest hustling stuck to him, and he lined up an array of pulls and indorsements that made him swell with happiness every time he went over the list. "Some folks have to die before they can get that sort of thing," he would say as he tapped the bundle of indorsements.

In Washington he kept right on hustling just as if he'd only started out with his petition. The public men seemed to take to his style of beauty, and even the President was uncommonly gracious to Billy when Congressman Skipp introduced him. The wise ones told Billy that he was all right, and that nothing short of an O. K. on an application ever went with that peculiar brand of smile.

But somehow the appointment didn't come out quite as quickly as Billy had hoped—and this delay only made him hustle the harder. His only antidote for "hope deferred" was more hustling. And he did it in a quiet, unobtrusive way that didn't stir up opposition.

One day, however, when Billy was about to cinch himself up again for another "pull" campaign, he got word that something was going to happen at the Senate that afternoon which might be of particular interest to him. He was there in the gallery listening to every word that fell from the lips of the oracle of the chair. Finally he heard his own name read off in connection with the words, "To be collector of the port."

Billy jumped to his feet in a minute as if he were back home in a county convention and some Indian was trying to commit the party to a hopeless heresy.

"It's a mistake," he started to shout, when the friend who was with him laid violent hands on his coat tails, yanked him back into his seat and said:

"Shut up, you fool! What if it is a mistake! Don't you know the collectorship pays $12,000 a year! Mistakes of that kind don't happen to anybody but fools and the elect—and you're not anybody's fool!"

Well, it turned out that Billy's appointment stuck, and he made good in such a way that a bunch of big fellows in his party took an interest in him and put him in the way of making more money than he had ever dreamed of seeing. And he made it honestly, too. Then his fame as a party oracle spread with the growth of his bank account until now he is known in every state in the union among the solid moneyed men.

I hope, Ned, that your pull will be of this "thirty baskets of fragments" kind, but I'm afraid that you're not quite enough of a singed cat to have a claim to that kind of luck.

When it comes time to put on the screws and really come to a showdown, I hope you'll not have quite the experience that came to a young chap from my old home town, who went out into the sheep country, made friends as fast as he lost money, and finally landed the comfortable little job of reading clerk in the house.

Jim had a voice like the sound of many waters, the presence of a Presidential possibility and the nerve of a goat. He fitted into the place as handy as a hoe into dirt, and made friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness right and left. Before the session was fairly under way he had done a trick or two that made him solid with the strong minority and he was considered a sort of consulting pilot for any difficult piece of legislative navigation that came up. Beside him, the Wobbly Willie speaker was small potatoes.

One day a member came to him and said:

"Jim, how in tunket am I going to get that bill of mine through creating the office of state oil inspector? You see, they killed my measure in the Senate, and I got even by burying the Senate bill, to the same effect, here in the House."

"Looks a great deal as if the state would worry along awhile without an oil inspector," said Jim, "but if there's a ghost of a show to, I'm going to help you out, Tom, for I've made up my mind to land that particular job myself."

"Well," replied Tom, "my goose is cooked if I don't get that bill through. I can't support you for the place when it's made; but I won't do anything in particular to keep you from getting it."

"There's just one bluff that may work," said Jim, "if the measly parliamentary sticklers don't catch on to the game. Spring a resolution for a conference committee of five—two from the Senate and three from the House—and have the bill revised and put through."

This scheme worked, the bill was passed, and inside of a week every member of Jim's political faith in the House, with two exceptions, went before the Governor in a body and asked for his appointment to the new position, which was worth $20,000 a year.

"This is the strongest indorsement any man has ever had for any appointment," replied the Governor, "and the request of this delegation shall be granted if it is within my power to do so."

Privately the Governor explained to Jim that he made this slight reservation for fear that possibly he might have given the Senator who introduced the "oil bill" to understand that he was favorably inclined toward a friend of the Senator's. Later, Jim was informed that the records of executive correspondence showed no such entanglement and that his appointment would be made as soon as circumstances would permit. But, somehow, there appeared to be a regular glut of executive circumstances, and the big plum still stuck to the tree in spite of all the shaking Jim could do. Finally, months afterward, when Jim's bank account was wasted to a shadow from an acute attack of creeping consumption, he got a straight tip from a square politician, who had one leg in the grave, that the Governor had appointed another fellow. Then Jim went up to the mansion and put his case strong. He got a square in the eye assurance that all was well and that the delay was simply for reason of executive policy.

Next day, while the man with the pull of practically a solid party at his back and working overtime was pondering and guessing, he was called to the chamber.

"Your state needs you," said the Governor, "in another capacity, sir, and I shall not take 'No' for an answer. I am about to make up a commission to exploit to the world one of the greatest industries of our commonwealth. You know that industry, as few of our citizens do; true, there is no salary attached to the position, but your labor will bring you in contact with the great captains of finance, and the way will speedily open for you to make a great deal of money. Your sacrifice in letting the other position pass will be only temporary and you will soon come into your reward."

Before Jim could catch his breath and get his bearings he had accepted a tinfoil honor. When the announcement of the appointment was made the state boss came to Jim and explained:

"You old ninny! Two months ago the Governor gave his absolute pledge that he would make you oil inspector, but bound me not to tell you because you might tell your wife and let the thing leak out before he could fix his fences for the United States Senatorship. And now he's worked you into trading $20,000 a year for a tin horn."

Jim meditated for a while on the perverseness of dead sure pulls and then started in on a campaign that cost the Governor the Senatorship.

But that didn't pay his grocery bills, and before the next session he saw several hungry days. And I could tell you a dozen other incidents that show as clearly how a double riveted pull can taper off into thin air and an empty stomach. So, don't rent a new house, buy bonds, or throw over your present job until you have the commission that you hanker for actually in your hands.

Yours as ever,

William Bradley.