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Lynde, Francis, 1856-1930

"The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush"


"We've got the strongest argument in the world in the fact that the
present law is an unfair one, needing modification or repeal. We mustn't
spoil that argument by becoming law-breakers ourselves and descending to
the methods of the grafters and the machine politicians the country
over. If you have been sending these pie-eaters to me, stop it--don't do
it any more. I have no earthly use for them; and they won't have any use
for me after I open up on them and tell them a few things they don't
seem to know, or to care to know."
"I don't believe I'd do anything brash," Gantry suggested mildly, and he
was still saying the same thing in diversified forms when Blount led the
way back to the crowded drawing-rooms.
Dating from this little heart-to-heart talk with the traffic manager,
Blount began to carry out the new policy--the starvation policy, as it
soon came to be known among the would-be henchmen. The result was not
altogether reassuring. The first few rebuffs he administered left him
with the feeling that he was winning Pyrrhic victories; it was as if he
were trying to handle a complicated mechanism with the working details
of which he was only theoretically familiar. There were wheels within
wheels, and the application of the brakes to the smallest of them led to
discordant janglings throughout the whole.


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