It was the same
story everywhere. Preferential freight rates had been given in return
for votes controlled, and the rates were still in effect.
The investigator turned sick at heart when these men talked quite freely
to him, thus showing conclusively that they were cynically discounting
his public utterances. McDarragh, owner and manager of the "Wire-Gold"
properties in the Moscow district, winked slyly when Blount cautiously
inserted the probe.
"You're on, Mr. Blount. I sat up there in the Op'ry-house last night
listening to your game, and says I to myself, 'Thim railroad
shift-bosses know their trade.' 'Twas a gr-reat talk you gave us, and
it'll make the swinging of the har-rd-rock vote as easy as twice two. Of
course, we have a thin paring on the ore rate; you'll be knowing that as
well as annybody in the game, I'm thinking. 'Tis well that we fellows at
the top know how to make one hand wash the other. Come again, Mr.
Blount, and give my regards to the sinator when ye see him. And ye might
whisper in his ear that it's a waste of good wor-rk for him to be
sinding his gum-shoe wire-pullers to be laboring with our min. We're
safe as the clock up here in the Moscow."
This was not the first hint that Blount had been given pointing to the
underground work of the machine. That this work was being directed
toward the subversion of the popular will, he made no doubt; and there
were times when he was strongly tempted to carry the war boldly into the
wider field of graft and bossism.
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