If Gordon
runs and is elected, his platform will be flatly anti-railroad."
"Oh, I don't know," was the calm rejoinder. "Gordon is a mighty square
fellow; an honest man and a fair one. If you could stay out of the fight
and go to him with clean hands--but you couldn't do that, McVickar;
you're too badly out of practice."
"We needn't go into that phase of it. We are so savagely handicapped in
this State that we can't afford to take a divided chance; can't afford
to pass our case up to a man who has been elected by an unfriendly
opposition. If we should wash our hands of the fight, as you suggest,
we might just as well throw up our franchises and quit, so far as any
prospect of earning a reasonable return upon our investment here is
concerned."
"I know; that is what you always say, and you have said it so often--you
and your fellow railroad string-pullers--that you have lost the
straightforward combination completely. If you ever knew how to make a
clean fight you've forgotten the moves, and it's your own fault."
Once more the man with the fierce eyes and the dominating jaw took time
to consider. Like others of his class, he was partisan only in the sense
of one fighting hardily for the side upon which he had happened to be
drawn in the great world battle. If he had not long ago parted with his
convictions, the heat and smoke of the battle had obscured them, and he
chose his weapons now with little regard for anything beyond their
possible efficacy.
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