In the Arena
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Booth Tarkington >> In the Arena
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IN THE ARENA
Stories of Political Life
BY
BOOTH TARKINGTON
TO MY FATHER
[Illustration: THE CONVERSION OF THE SENATOR FROM STACKPOLE]
CONTENTS
PART I
Boss Gorgett
The Aliens
The Need of Money
Hector
PART II
Mrs. Protheroe
Great Men's Sons
"IN THE FIRST PLACE"
The old-timer, a lean, retired pantaloon, sitting with loosely
slippered feet close to the fire, thus gave of his wisdom to the
questioning student:
"Looking back upon it all, what we most need in politics is more good
men. Thousands of good men _are_ in; and they need the others who
are not in. More would come if they knew how _much_ they are
needed. The dilettantes of the clubs who have so easily abused me, for
instance, all my life, for being a ward-worker, these and those other
reformers who write papers about national corruption when they don't
know how their own wards are swung, probably aren't so useful as they
might be. The exquisite who says that politics is 'too dirty a
business for a gentleman to meddle with' is like the woman who lived
in the parlour and complained that the rest of her family kept the
other rooms so dirty that she never went into them.
"There are many thousands of young men belonging to what is for some
reason called the 'best class,' who would like to be 'in politics' if
they could begin high enough up--as ambassadors, for instance. That
is, they would like the country to do something for them, though they
wouldn't put it that way. A young man of this sort doesn't know how
much he'd miss if his wishes were gratified. For my part, I'd hate not
to have begun at the beginning of the game.
"I speak of it as a game," the old gentleman went on, "and in some
ways it is. That's where the fun of it comes in. Yet, there are times
when it looks to me more like a series of combats, hand-to-hand fights
for life, and fierce struggles between men and strange powers. You buy
your newspaper and that's your ticket to the amphitheatre. But the
distance is hazy and far; there are clouds of dust and you can't see
clearly. To make out just what is going on you ought to get down in
the arena yourself. Once you're in it, the view you'll have and the
fighting that will come your way will more than repay you. Still, I
don't think we ought to go in with the idea of being repaid.
"It seems an odd thing to me that so many men feel they haven't any
time for politics; can't put in even a little, trying to see how their
cities (let alone their states and the country) are run. When we have
a war, look at the millions of volunteers that lay down everything and
answer the call of the country. Well, in politics, the country needs
_all_ the men who have any patriotism--_not_ to be seeking
office, but to watch and to understand what is going on. It doesn't
take a great deal of time; you can attend to your business and do that
much, too. When wrong things are going on and all the good men
understand them, that is all that is needed. The wrong things stop
going on."
PART I
BOSS GORGETT
I guess I've been what you might call kind of an assistant boss pretty
much all my life; at least, ever since I could vote; and I was
something of a ward-heeler even before that. I don't suppose there's
any way a man of my disposition could have put in his time to less
advantage and greater cost to himself. I've never got a thing by it,
all these years, not a job, not a penny--nothing but injury to my
business and trouble with my wife. _She_ begins going for me,
first of every campaign.
Yet I just can't seem to keep out of it. It takes a hold on a man that
I never could get away from; and when I reach my second childhood and
the boys have turned me out, I reckon I'll potter along trying to look
knowing and secretive, like the rest of the has-beens, letting on as
if I still had a place inside. Lord, if I'd put in the energy at my
business that I've frittered away on small politics! But what's the
use thinking about it?
Plenty of men go to pot horse-racing and stock gambling; and I guess
this has just been my way of working off some of my nature in another
fashion. There's a good many like me, too; not out for office or
contracts, nor anything that you can put your finger on in
particular--nothing except the _game_. Of course, it's a
pleasure, knowing you've got more influence than some, but I believe
the most you ever get out of it is in being able to help your friends,
to get a man you like a job, or a good contract, something he wants,
when he needs it.
I tell you _then's_ when you feel satisfied, and your time don't
seem to have been so much thrown away. You go and buy a higher-priced
cigar than you can afford, and sit and smoke it with your feet out in
the sunshine on your porch railing, and watch your neighbour's
children playing in their yard; and they look mighty nice to you; and
you feel kind, and as if everybody else was.
But that wasn't the way I felt when I helped to hand over to a
reformer the nomination for mayor; then it was just selfish
desperation and nothing else. We had to do it. You see, it was this
way: the other side had had the city for four terms, and, naturally,
they'd earned the name of being rotten by that time. Big Lafe Gorgett
was their best. "Boss Gorgett," of course our papers called him when
they went for him, which was all the time; and pretty considerable of
a man he was, too. Most people that knew him liked Lafe. I did. But he
got a bad name, as they say, by the end of his fourth term as
Mayor--and who wouldn't? Of course, the cry went up all round that he
and his crowd were making a fat thing out of it, which wasn't so much
the case as that Lafe had got to depending on humouring the gamblers
and the brewers for campaign funds and so forth. In fact, he had the
reputation of running a disorderly town, and the truth is, it
_was_ too wide open.
But _we_ hadn't been much better when we'd had it, before Lafe
beat us and got in; and everybody remembered that. The "respectable
element" wouldn't come over to us strong enough for anybody we could
pick of our own crowd; and so, after trying it on four times, we
started in to play it another way, and nominated Farwell Knowles, who
was already running on an independent ticket, got out by the reform
and purity people. That is: we made him a fusion candidate, hoping to
find some way to control him later. We'd never have done it if we
hadn't thought it was our only hope. Gorgett was too strong, and he
handled the darkeys better than any man I ever knew. He had an
organization for it which we couldn't break; and the coloured voters
really held the balance of power with us, you know, as they do so many
other places near the same size, They were getting pretty well on to
it, too, and cost more every election. Our best chance seemed to be in
so satisfying the "law-and-order" people that they'd do something to
counterbalance this vote--which they never did.
Well, sir, it was a mighty curious campaign. There never really was a
day when we could tell where we stood, for certain. As anybody knows,
the "better element" can't be depended on. There's too many of 'em
forget to vote, and if the weather isn't just right they won't go to
the polls. Some of 'em won't go anyway--act as if they looked down on
politics; say it's only helping one boodler against another. So your
true aristocrat won't vote for either. The real truth is, he don't
_care_. Don't care as much about the management of his city,
State, and country as about the way his club is run. Or he's ignorant
about the whole business, and what between ignorance and indifference
the worse and smarter of the two rings gets in again and old Mr.
Aristocrat gets soaked some more on his sewer assessments. _Then_
he'll holler like a stabbed hand-organ; but he'll keep on talking
about politics being too low a business for a gentleman to mix in,
just the same!
Somebody said a pessimist is a man who has a choice of two evils, and
takes both. There's your man that don't vote.
And the best-dressed wards are the ones that fool us oftenest. We're
always thinking they'll do something, and they don't. But we thought,
when we took Farwell Knowles, that we had 'em at last. Fact is, they
did seem stirred up, too. They called it a "moral victory" when we
were forced to nominate Knowles to have any chance of beating
Gorgett. That was because it was _their_ victory.
Farwell Knowles was a young man, about thirty-two, an editorial writer
on the _Herald_, an independent paper. I'd known him all his
life, and his wife--too, a mighty sweet-looking lady she was. I'd
always thought Farwell was kind of a dreamer, and too excitable; he
was always reading papers to literary clubs, and on the speech-making
side he wasn't so bad--he liked it; but he hadn't seemed to me to know
any more about politics and people than a royal family would. He was
always talking about life and writing about corruption, when, all the
time, so it struck me, it was only books he was really interested in;
and he saw things along book lines. Of course he was a tin god,
politically.
He was for "stern virtue" only, and everlastingly lashed compromise
and temporizing; called politicians all the elegant hard names there
are, in every one of his editorials, especially Lafe Gorgett, whom
he'd never seen. He made mighty free with Lafe, referred to him
habitually as "Boodler Gorgett", and never let up on him from one
year's end to another.
I was against our adopting him, not only for our own sakes--because I
knew he'd be a hard man to handle--but for Farwell's too. I'd been a
friend of his father's, and I liked his wife--everybody liked his
wife. But the boys overruled me, and I had to turn in and give it to
him.
Not without a lot of misgivings, you can be sure. I had one little
experience with him right at the start that made me uneasy and got me
to thinking he was what you might call too literary, or theatrical, or
something, and that he was more interested in being things than doing
them. I'd been aware, ever since he got back from Harvard, that
_I_ was one of his literary interests, so to speak. He had a way
of talking to me in a _quizzical_, condescending style, in the
belief that he was drawing me out, the way you talk to some old
book-peddler in your office when you've got nothing to do for a while;
and it was easy to see he regarded me as a "character" and thought he
was studying me. Besides, he felt it his duty to study the wickedness
of politics in a Parkhurstian fashion, and I was one of the lost.
One day, just after we'd nominated him, he came to me and said he had
a friend who wanted to meet me. Asked me couldn't I go with him right
away. It was about five in the afternoon; I hadn't anything to do and
said, "Certainly," thinking he meant to introduce me to some friend of
his who thought I'd talk politics with him. I took that for granted so
much that I didn't ask a question, just followed along up street,
talking weather. He turned in at old General Buskirk's, and may I be
shot if the person he meant wasn't Buskirk's daughter, Bella! He'd
brought me to call on a girl young enough to be my daughter. Maybe you
won't believe I felt like a fool!
I knew Buskirk, of course (he didn't appear), but I hadn't seen Bella
since she was a child. She'd been "highly educated" and had been
living abroad a good deal, but I can't say that my visit made me
_for_ her--not very strong. She was good-looking enough, in her
thinnish, solemn way, but it seemed to me she was kind of overdressed
and too grand. You could see in a minute that she was intense and
dreamy and theatrical with herself and superior, like Farwell; and I
guess I thought they thought they'd discovered they were "kindred
souls," and that each of them understood (without saying it) that both
of them felt that Farwell's lot in life was a hard one because
Mrs. Knowles wasn't up to him. Bella gave him little, quiet, deep
glances, that seemed to help her play the part of a person who
understood everything--especially him, and reverenced greatness--
especially his. I remember a fellow who called the sort of game it
struck me they were carrying on "those soully flirtations."
Well, sir, I wasn't long puzzling over why he had brought _me_ up
there. It stuck out all over, though they didn't know it, and would
have been mighty astonished to think that I saw. It was in their
manner, in her condescending ways with me, in her assumption of
serious interest, and in his going through the trick of "drawing me
out," and exhibiting me to her. I'll have to admit that these young
people viewed me in the light of a "character." That was the part
Farwell had me there to play.
I can't say I was too pleased with the notion, and I was kind of sorry
for Mrs. Knowles, too. I'd have staked a good deal that my guess was
right, for instance: that Farwell had gone first to this girl for her
congratulations when he got the nomination, instead of to his wife;
and that she felt--or pretended she felt--a soully sympathy with his
ambitions; that she wanted to be, or to play the part of, a woman of
affairs, and that he talked over everything he knew with her. I
imagined they thought they were studying political reform together,
and she, in her novel-reading way, wanted to pose to herself as the
brilliant lady diplomat, kind of a Madam Roland advising statesmen, or
something of that sort. And I was there as part of their political
studies, an object-lesson, to bring her "more closely in touch" (as
Farwell would say) with the realities he had to contend with. I was
one of the "evils of politics," because I knew how to control a few
wards, and get out the darkey vote almost as well as Gorgett. Gorgett
would have been better, but Farwell couldn't very easily get at him.
I had to sit there for a little while, of course, like a ninny between
them; and I wasn't the more comfortable because I thought Knowles
looked like a bigger fool than I did. Bella's presence seemed to
excite him to a kind of exaltation; he had a dark flush on his face
and his eyes were large and shiny.
I got out as soon as I could, naturally, wondering what my wife would
say if she knew; and while I was fumbling around among the
knick-knacks and fancy things in the hall for my hat and coat, I heard
Farwell get up and cross the room to a chair nearer Bella, and then
she said, in a sort of pungent whisper, that came out to me
distinctly:
"My knight!" That's what she called him. "My knight!" That's what she
said.
I don't know whether I was more disgusted with myself for hearing, or
with old Buskirk who spent his whole time frittering around the club
library, and let his daughter go in for the sort of soulliness she was
carrying on with Farwell Knowles.
* * * * *
Trouble in our ranks began right away. Our nominee knew too much, and
did all the wrong things from the start; he began by antagonizing most
of our old wheel-horses; he wouldn't consult with us, and advised with
his own kind. In spite of that, we had a good organization working for
him, and by a week before election I felt pretty confident that our
show was as good as Gorgett's. It looked like it would be close.
Just about then things happened. We had dropped onto one of Lafe's
little tricks mighty smartly. We got one of his heelers fixed (of
course we usually tried to keep all that kind of work dark from
Farwell Knowles), and this heeler showed the whole business up for a
consideration. There was a precinct certain to be strong for Knowles,
where the balloting was to take place in the office-room of a
hook-and-ladder company. In the corner was a small closet with one
shelf, high up toward the ceiling. It was in the good old free and
easy Hayes and Wheeler times, and when the polls closed at six o'clock
it was planned that the election officers should set the ballot-box up
on this shelf, lock the closet door, and go out for their suppers,
leaving one of each side to watch in the room so that nobody could
open the closet-door with a pass-key and tamper with the ballots
before they were counted. Now, the ceiling over the shelf in the
closet wasn't plastered, and it formed, of course, part of the
flooring in the room above. The boards were to be loosened by a
Gorgett man upstairs, as soon as the box was locked in; he would take
up a piece of planking--enough to get an arm in--and stuff the box
with Gorgett ballots till it grunted. Then he would replace the board
and slide out. Of course, when they began the count our people would
know there was something wrong, but they would be practically up
against it, and the precinct would be counted for Gorgett.
They brought the heeler up to me, not at headquarters (I was city
chairman) but at a hotel room I'd hired as a convenient place for the
more important conferences and to keep out of the way of every
Tom-Dick-and-Harry grafter. Bob Crowder, a ward committee-man,
brought him up and stayed in the room, while the fellow--his name was
Genz--went over the whole thing.
"What do you think of it?" says Bob, when Genz finished. "Ain't it
worth the money? I declare, it's so neat and simple and so almighty
smart besides, I'm almost ashamed some of our boys hadn't thought of
it for us."
I was just opening my mouth to answer, when there was a signal knock
at the door and a young fellow we had as a kind of watcher in the next
room (opening into the one I used) put his head in and said
Mr. Knowles wanted to see me.
"Ask him to wait a minute," said I, for I didn't want him to know
anything about Genz. "I'll be there right away."
Then came Farwell Knowles's voice from the other room, sharp and
excited. "I believe I'll not wait," says he. "I'll come in there now!"
And that's what he did, pushing by our watcher before I could hustle
Genz into the hall through an outer door, though I tried to. There's
no denying it looked a little suspicious.
Farwell came to a dead halt in the middle of the room.
"I know that person!" he said, pointing at Genz, his brow mighty
black. "I saw him and Crowder sneaking into the hotel by the back way,
half an hour ago, and I knew there was some devilish--"
"Keep your shirt on, Farwell," said I.
He was pretty hot. "I'll be obliged to you," he returned, "if you'll
explain what you're doing here in secret with this low hound of
Gorgett's. Do you think you can play with me the way you do with your
petty committee-men? If you do, I'll _show_ you! You're not
dealing with a child, and I'm not going to be tricked or sold out of
this elec--"
I took him by the shoulders and sat him down hard on a cane-bottomed
chair. "That's a dirty thought," said I, "and if you knew enough to
be responsible I reckon you'd have to account for it. As it is--why,
I don't care whether you apologize or not."
He weakened right away, or, at least, he saw his mistake. "Then won't
you give me some explanation," he asked, in a less excitable way, "why
are you closeted here with a notorious member of Gorgett's ring?"
"No," said I, "I won't."
"Be careful," said he. "This won't look well in print."
That was just so plumb foolish that I began to laugh at him; and when
I got to laughing I couldn't keep up being angry. It _was_
ridiculous, his childishness and suspiciousness. Right there was where
I made my mistake.
"All right," says I to Bob Crowder, giving way to the impulse. "He's
the candidate. Tell him."
"Do you mean it?" asks Bob, surprised.
"Yes. Tell him the whole thing."
So Bob did, helped by Genz, who was more or less sulky, of course; and
is wasn't long till I saw how stupid I'd been. Knowles went straight
up in the air.
"I knew it was a dirty business, politics," he said, jumping out of
his chair, "but I didn't _realize_ it before. And I'd like to
know," he went on, turning to me, "how you learn to sit there so
calmly and listen to such iniquities. How do you dull your conscience
so that you can do it? And what course do you propose to follow in the
matter of this confession?"
"Me?" I answered. "Why, I'm going to send supper in to our fellows,
and the box'll never see that closet. The man upstairs may get a
little tired. I reckon the laugh's on Gorgett; it's his scheme and--"
Farwell interrupted me; his face was outrageously red. "_What!_
You actually mean you hadn't intended to expose this infamy?"
"Steady," I said. I was getting a little hot, too, and talked more
than I ought. "Mr. Genz here has our pledge that he's not given away,
or he'd never have--"
"_Mister_ Genz!" sneered Farwell. "_Mister_ Genz has your
pledge, has he? Allow me to tell you that I represent the people, the
_honest_ people, in this campaign, and that the people and I have
made no pledges to _Mister_ Genz. You've paid the scoundrel--"
"_Here!_" says Genz.
"The scoundrel!" Farwell repeated, his voice rising and rising, "paid
him for his information, and I tell you by that act and your silence
on such a matter you make yourself a party to a conspiracy."
"Shut the transom," says I to Crowder.
"_I'm_ under no pledge, I say," shouted Farwell, "and I do not
compound felonies. You're not conducting my campaign. I'm doing that,
and I don't conduct it along such lines. It's precisely the kind of
fraud and corruption that I intend to stamp out in this town, and this
is where I begin to work."
"How?" said I.
"You'll see--and you'll see soon! The penitentiaries are built for
just this--"
"_Sh, sh!_" said I, but he paid no attention.
"They say Gorgett owns the Grand Jury," he went on. "Well, let him!
Within a week I'll be mayor of this town--and Gorgett's Grand Jury
won't outlast his defeat very long. By his own confession this man
Genz is party to a conspiracy with Gorgett, and you and Crowder are
witnesses to the confession. I'll see that you have the pleasure of
giving your testimony before a Grand Jury of determined men. Do you
hear me? And tomorrow afternoon's _Herald_ will have the whole
infamous story to the last word. I give you my solemn oath upon it!"
All three of us, Crowder, Genz, and I, sprang to our feet. We were
considerably worked up, and none of us said anything for a minute or
so, just looked at Knowles.
"Yes, you're a little shocked," he said. "It's always shocking to men
like you to come in contact with honesty that won't compromise. You
needn't talk to me; you can't say anything that would change me to
save your lives. I've taken my oath upon it, and you couldn't alter me
a hair's breadth if you burned me at a slow fire. Light, light, that's
what you need, the light of day and publicity! I'm going to clear this
town of fraud, and if Gorgett don't wear the stripes for this my
name's not Farwell Knowles! He'll go over the road, handcuffed to a
deputy, before three months are gone. Don't tell me I'm injuring
_you_ and the party by it. Pah! It will give me a thousand more
votes. I'm not exactly a child, my friends! On my honour, the whole
thing will be printed in to-morrow's paper!"
"For God's sake--" Crowder broke out, but Knowles cut him off.
"I bid you good-afternoon," he said, sharply. We all started toward
him, but before we'd got half across the room he was gone, and the
door slammed behind him.
Bob dropped into a chair; he was looking considerably pale; I guess I
was, too, but Genz was ghastly.
"Let me out of here," he said in a sick voice. "Let me out of here!"
"Sit down!" I told him.
"Just let me out of here," he said again. And before I could stop him,
he'd gone, too, in a blind hurry.
Bob and I were left alone, and not talking any.
Not for a while. Then Bob said: "Where do you reckon he's gone?"
"Reckon who's gone?"
"Genz."
"To see Lafe."
"What?"
"Of course he has. What else can he do? He's gone up any way. The best
he can do is to try to square himself a little by owning up the whole
thing. Gorgett will know it all any way, tomorrow afternoon, when the
_Herald_ comes out."
"I guess you're right," said Bob. "We're done up along with Gorgett;
but I believe that idiot's right, he won't lose votes by playing hob
with _us_. What's to be done?"
"Nothing," I answered. "You can't head Farwell off. It's all my fault,
Bob."
"Isn't there any way to get hold of him? A crazy man could see that
his best friend couldn't _beg_ it out of him, and that he
wouldn't spare any of us; but don't you know of some bludgeon we could
hang up over him?"
"Nothing. It's up to Gorgett."
"Well," said Bob, "Lafe's mighty smart, but it looks like
God-help-Gorgett now!"
Well, sir, I couldn't think of anything better to do than to go around
and see Gorgett; so, after waiting long enough for Genz to see him and
get away, I went. Lafe was always cool and slow; but I own I expected
to find him flustered, and was astonished to see right away that he
wasn't. He was smoking, as usual, and wearing his hat, as he always
did, indoors and out, sitting with his feet upon his desk, and a
pleasant look of contemplation on his face.
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