The Plum Tree | Page 9

but the boss of each machine assigns to vote for them all
the men whose seats are secure beyond any ordinary assault of public
indignation. In this case, of the ninety-one members of the lower house,
thirty-two were assigned by Dunkirk and seventeen by Silliman to
make up a majority with three to spare.
My boss, Dominick, got wind that Dunkirk and Silliman were cutting
an extra melon of uncommon size. He descended upon the capitol and
served notice on Dunkirk that the eleven Dominick men assigned to
vote for the bill would vote against it unless he got seven thousand
dollars apiece for them,--seventy-seven thousand dollars. Dunkirk
needed every one of Dominick's men to make up his portion of the
majority; he yielded after trying in vain to reduce the price. All
Dominick would say to him on that point, so I heard afterward, was:
"Every day you put me off, I go up a thousand dollars a head."
We who were to be voted so profitably for Dunkirk, Silliman,
Dominick, and the railroads, learned what was going on,--Silliman
went on a "tear" and talked too much. Nine of us, not including myself,
got together and sent Cassidy, member from the second Jackson
County district, to Dominick to plead for a share. I happened to be with
him in the Capital City Hotel bar when Cassidy came up, and,
hemming and hawing, explained how he and his fellow insurgents felt.
Dominick's veins seemed cords straining to bind down a demon
struggling to escape. "It's back to the bench you go, Pat Cassidy,--back
to the bench where I found you," he snarled, with a volley of profanity
and sewage. "I don't know nothing about this here bill except that it's
for the good of the party. Go back to that gang of damned wharf rats,
and tell 'em, if I hear another squeak, I'll put 'em where I got 'em."

Cassidy shrank away with a furtive glance of envy and hate at me,
whom Dominick treated with peculiar consideration,--I think it was
because I was the only man of education and of any pretensions to
"family" in official position in his machine. He used to like to class
himself and me together as "us gentlemen," in contrast to "them
muckers," meaning my colleagues.
Next day, just before the voting began, Dominick seated himself at the
front of the governor's gallery,--the only person in it. I see him now as
he looked that day,--black and heavy-jawed and scowling, leaning
forward with both forearms on the railing, and his big, flat chin resting
on his upturned, stubby thumbs. He was there to see that each of us, his
creatures, dependent absolutely upon him for our political lives, should
vote as he had sold us in block. There was no chance to shirk or even to
squirm. As the roll-call proceeded, one after another, seven of us,
obeyed that will frowning from the gallery,--jumped through the hoop
of fire under the quivering lash. I was eighth on the roll.
"Sayler!" How my name echoed through that horrible silence!
I could not answer. Gradually every face turned toward me,--I could
see them, could feel them, and, to make bad enough worse, I yielded to
an imperious fascination, the fascination of that incarnation of
brute-power,--power of muscle and power of will. I turned my eyes
upon the amazed, furious eyes of my master. It seemed to me that his
lips must give passage to the oaths and filth swelling beneath his chest,
and seething behind his eyes.
"Sayler!" repeated the clerk in a voice that exploded within me.
"No!" I shouted,--not in answer to the clerk, but in denial of that
insolent master-to-dog command from the beast in the gallery.
The look in his eyes changed to relief and contemptuous approval.
There was a murmur of derision from my fellow members. Then I
remembered that a negative was, at that stage of the bill, a vote for it,--I
had done just the reverse of what I intended. The roll-call went on, and
I sat debating with myself. Prudence, inclination, the natural timidity of

youth, the utter futility of opposition, fear, above all else, fear,--these
joined in bidding me let my vote stand as cast. On the other side stood
my notion of self-respect. I felt I must then and there and for ever
decide whether I was a thing or a man. Yet, again and again I had voted
for measures just as corrupt,--had voted for them with no protest
beyond a cynical shrug and a wry look. Every man, even the laxest, if
he is to continue to "count as one," must have a point where he draws
the line beyond which he will not go. The liar must have things he will
not lie about,