University of Virginia Library

13. THE GLAD-HAND BRIGADE.

In which William Bradley tells a pointed story of the poker table and cautions Ned against the conclusion that there is a bass under every lily pad or a friendly vote behind every glad hand.

Brokenstraw Ranch, —, 19—.

Dear Ned: —

It's mighty good of you to come straight out and say that whenever we've had a friendly difference you've found, finally, that I was in the right of it. That reminds me of an episode that occurred when I was in the Senate. In a little joint session of select members representing both houses a dispute arose. The youngest man in the bunch, who was being tried out by the old hands, was hot about his point of the contention, and was putting up a spirited argument when in came Senator Bill, who had been raised in a Mississippi river tavern and learned poker from the great masters on the old time steamboats.

"Look here," suggested one of the players, "Billy knows more about poker than any of us'll ever learn if we sacrifice all our salary and perquisites on the altar of the kitty. I move that we leave it to Billy."

"All right," said the new man, turning to the referee. "I contend, Senator, that the ante man has the right to raise the pot before the draw. Am I right, sir?"

"The chair decides that you are right," was Billy's prompt answer, and the game proceeded.

But every few minutes the new man who had been sustained by the referee would pound the table and declare: "Didn't I tell you I was right?" After awhile he began to contend for other points with the argument: "There you go again! Same old thing! Can't you see I'm right? Didn't the Senator say I was right?"

There was more and more of this sort of thing until it grew monotonous. Finally the Senator, who had stood it as long as he could, broke out and exclaimed:

"Look here, young man. Don't get it into your head that, just because you've been right once, you're entitled to get noisy and be a d—d fool for the remainder of your life."

Now, Ned, because you are big and broad enough to declare me in the right I'm not going to keep on pounding the table forever and claiming that I can't be wrong in any position. But I can't help remarking that there are a lot of men in politics who, because they have happened to be right once or twice, feel that they're entitled to act like fools for the remainder of their lives.

There is just one point, Ned, on which I must put all the emphasis of a sad experience, starting with the board of supervisors and trailing along through the city council, the legislature, the lower house of Congress, the Governor's chair, and the United States Senate: "Put not your trust in the Gladhand Brigade"—and especially in that contingent of it that has to have its palms crossed with silver before the charm will work.

The candidate for once who counts his strength by the number of glad hands he gets in that campaign is a good deal like the angler who figures out the catch of black bass he's going to make by the number of lily pads in sight. And sometimes it takes a long while for men of a trusting and buoyant temperament to learn that there isn't an available black bass under every lily pad or a friendly vote behind every glad hand.

According to my classification, the Gladhand Brigade is cut up into traitors, trimmers, drifters, and stayers. You must have the stayers to draw in the drifters and the trimmers; the traitors you could get along without—but never do! The drifters and the trimmers are fair weather fowls, and if you're caught in a storm look out for a scattering.

When anybody brings up the subject of the Gladhand Brigade I always recall what Gen. Logan said to me one time when we happened to meet in New York. He was on his way to Washington to take his seat in the Senate, to which he had just been elected after a fierce fight and a deadlock lasting about six months. He brushed back his splendid black hair, in his quick way, and said:

"Yes, Bill, I'm going back. There'll be a brass band and a lot of job holders waiting with glad hands at the station to meet me. But somehow it won't go to the spot as it used to. You may have forgotten it, Bill, but I was once the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Right after the convention that nominated Mr. Blaine and myself I went back to Washington, as I had been in the habit of doing, quietly sending word to my private secretary on what train I should arrive. That was all I thought about the matter until I got into the station and heard the bands begin to play some unprophetic airs of the 'Conquering Hero' stripe. Several thousand department clerks gave me the glad hand until my arm ached, and then I was escorted, to slow music, back to the hotel.

"Somehow, Bill, that made my foolish old heart feel kind of good. Just then the thought that every one of those fellows had an ax to grind did come to me, but I cursed my own cynicism and said: 'Yes, but they're American citizens; they're my kind of folks and I've no right to think their gladness isn't genuine.' This was the way in which I reasoned with myself as I was being driven in the carriage of honor."

"Well," continued Senator Logan, "after that presidential campaign was over and Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Hendricks had begun making history, I found it necessary to go back to Washington again and clean things up ready for retirement. As usual, I wired my private secretary to meet me at a certain train. Somehow, as I stood on the station platform, searching in vain for my secretary, I couldn't help thinking how different the landscape looked from what it did the last time I had stepped off the train and heard the yells of thousands.

"Of course, all that might be naturally accounted for; no doubt the boys were considerably depressed at the prospect of losing their scalps, and perhaps they thought that brass bands might jar my nerves after the protracted excitement of the campaign. But if there had been just a few—say, two or three of the boys who were closest to me—there to meet me at the station the future wouldn't have seemed half so dark or the unselfishness of the race so doubtful. When your private secretary forgets the train at which he is to meet you, make up your mind that public sentiment on the score of your usefulness and general consequence has touched the freezing point.

"But, now that I'm again in position to scratch backs and indorse applications, you will see that my ride from the station'll not be as lonesome as it was last time. I'll be met by a brass band and a thousand clerks."

That night I had a telegram from Logan which read: "Two bands, 5,000 clerks in line. Secretary on board before wheels stopped moving."

However, Ned, it doesn't do to get sour and persuade yourself that there's no balm in Gilead and no such thing as disinterested loyalty in the world of glad hands.

When I was a boy our folks used to put me through an annual week of prayer revival season, and it always resulted in giving me the feeling that everything was going to the bow-wows anyhow, and that man was the only mistake the Almighty had ever made. I used to grow thin and peaked under the pressure of this sort of religious pessimism, until my father would say: "Now, son, just laugh a little and turn your liver over! It's a good thing to face the serious side of life, but when you've gone around for a month with the book of Ecclesiastes written on your face and the feeling in your heart that everybody ought to be damned right away, then you'd better remember your mother and Aunt Jane and a few other good folks and cheer up."

So it is on the question of the Gladhand Brigade. I always feel like tempering my general attitude with a remembrance of a few good folks. There was little Jimmy Sands, for instance. You knew him. He rode my district over, the first time I ran for Congress, and when I tried to hand him something for his actual expenses he looked really hurt and said he wasn't doing things on that basis. Of course, the thought did come to me: "That man'll strike me heavy for some good job that'll be harder to give than money." But in the scramble of a hot campaign for a big place, and a new one, a man grabs at every straw that comes his way, without stopping to look at the price mark, so I not only accepted Jim's help at the time but routed him out at any time of night that the good of the cause demanded.

But that wasn't all. I mortgaged every postmastership in the district and every other scrap of patronage that by any possibility could come my way. If some of my promises overlapped a little I just told the boys that it was my first fling at the game, and that in the excitement of the moment I must have dealt the same card twice! But, anyhow, I calculated I'd make good some way in the general settlement. And I did! But by the time I had worked that puzzle out I had added ten years to my age and used up every scrap of patronage that could be raised by haunting the executive office and the departments until they began to call me the Importunate Widow. However, I landed all who could prove that I had made them any sort of promise. But there wasn't even an empty honor for steadfast Jimmy Sands. I tried to make myself think that perhaps he didn't want anything, and that if he had he would have asked for it. There wasn't a harder job in connection with that first congressional campaign than dreading to have it out with Jimmy. At last, however, I faced the music, called him, and explained that I had been trying to cover a six foot bed of promises with a five foot patchwork quilt of offices. Jimmy looked a little solemn and admitted that if he had been offered something that wasn't above his grade in education he wouldn't have refused it. "But," he added, "I didn't ask you for anything, Bill."

That was all right until I came to hustle for re-election. Of course, I wanted to be returned worse, if anything, than I had wanted to go just once in the first place—"had important work to finish," as the local paper said. In other words, I felt a failure to go back would mean disgrace. Consequently, I needed the help of every stanch friend like Jimmy Sands more than ever. Lots of gladhanders had given me just as good assurances that they were "all right and satisfied" as had Jimmy, and had then gone over to the opposition. But when I made my appeal to him he turned up at headquarters.

"You remember, Jimmy," I said, "how it was last time that you were left out in the cold." "But," he said, "I didn't ask you for anything. My fault, wasn't it?"

Then I waited for him to come forward with a plain proposal as to what he should have this time. He said nothing, however—simply took off his coat and went to work. All through that campaign I said to the boys in the organization: "There's just one office that I'm going to keep to play with. It's a matter of sentiment, and if I can't win without mortgaging that, then I'll lose. But I won—and I waited to see how long it would take Jimmy Sands to come forward and ask for the reward of an unobtrusive stayer.

He didn't come, however—even after some of the best appointments in the district had been given out. Then I landed his appointment to a place that paid him ten times what he had been earning and made him a king among his fellows. Jimmy Sands would have had his hand cut off without wincing, I imagine; but he bawled good when I broke the news to him at his own home—and how his little wife did hug him!

But you really don't get the full force of the Gladhand Habit until you get into the Senate. When I made the race there was one politician with a weazel face and a neck about half the length of his arm who was a trimmer from way-back, but he had some influence. He'd sneak around and meet me on the sly, protesting that he was for me, "heart and soul"—but you couldn't drag him into my headquarters. He played safety from start to finish, but I worried along and landed without his help.

I hadn't any more than taken the oath of office and warmed my seat in the Senate, when his card was sent in to me.

"Senator," he said, blinking his bright little eyes and dipping his long neck, "I've come to ask you for the postmastership in my city."

"And your indorsement?" I asked.

"I don't think you will need any other proof of my loyalty than this," he replied, taking from his pocket a carbon copy of the message of congratulation he had sent me four hours after my election.

"That office," said I, "is worth $10,000 a year and there are just twenty-nine applicants for it. Every one of them camped in my headquarters and sat up nights for me. They weren't afraid to be caught wearing my campaign button. Now, I have on file just 589 telegrams of congratulations sent by people who actually were on my side before the final ballot. The man who gets that job you're after is the one who's after your political scalp, and he's going to get it if I can help him—for he's not a coward or a trimmer, and he doesn't keep carbons of his congratulatory telegrams."

Above all, Ned, set it down in red letters that the man who comes to you and asks money for his time hasn't influence enough to make his time worth anything. The only thing he's good for is to tell the rest of the honey bees where your bank account is. I've lined too many bee trees not to know how that plan works. Just put out some sweets on a shingle and in a minute a few bees will light. Right away every one of them will return with mates. That's the way bee trees are located, and the only thing that the grafting politician has in common with a worker bee is the habit of bringing others back with him to fill up. Turn down all the fellows who come to you straight for money. They're dear at any price.

Yours ever, William Bradley.