A Spoil of Office Part 23

Cargill was not at the table the next morning, but he came in later, and greeted Bradley brusquely, as he flung his rag of a hat on the floor.

"Well, legislator, what is on the tapis this morning? Anything I can do for you?"

"No, I guess not. I am going to look up a new boarding-house."

"What's the matter with this?"

"Too rich for my blood."

"Just repeat that, please."

"Can't stand the expense."

Cargill poured the cream on his oatmeal before he replied: "But, dear sir, nothing is too good for a representative. Young man, you don't seem to know how to farm yourself out."

All day Sat.u.r.day the Windom rotunda was crowded with men. The speakers.h.i.+ps, the house offices, were being contested for here; the real battle was being fought here, and under Cargill's cynical comment the scene a.s.sumed great significance to Bradley's uninitiated eyes.

They took seats on the balcony which ran around the "bear pit," as he called it. Around them, flitting to and fro, were dozens of bright, rather self-sufficient young women.

"This is one of the most dangerous and demoralizing features of each legislature," he said to Bradley. "These girls come down here from every part of the State to cajole and flatter their way into a State House office. You see them down there b.u.t.tonholing every man they can get an introduction to, and some of them don't even wait for an introduction. They'd be after you if you were a Republican."

Bradley looked out upon it all with a growing shadow in his eyes. He suddenly saw terrible results of this unwomanly struggle for office. He saw back of it also the need for employment which really forced these girls into such a contest.

"They soon learn," Cargill was saying, "where their strength lies. The pretty ones and the bold ones succeed where the plain and timid ones fail. It has its abuses. Good G.o.d, how could it be otherwise! It's a part of our legislative rottenness. Legal labor pays so little, and vice and corruption pay so well. Now see those two girls b.u.t.ton-holing that leprous old goat Bergheim! If it don't mean ruin to them both, it will be because they're as knowing as he is. Every year this thing goes on. What the friends and parents of these girls are thinking of, I'll be d.a.m.ned if I know."

Bradley was dumb with the horror of it all. He had such an instinctive reverence for women that this scene produced in him a profound, almost despairing sorrow. He sat there after Cargill left him, and gazed upon it all with stern eyes. There was no more tragical thing to him than the woman who could willingly allure men for pay. It made him shudder to see those bright, pretty girls go down among those men, whose hard, peculiar, savage stare he knew almost as well as a woman.

They did not know that he was a legislator, and he escaped their importunities; but he overheard several of them, as they came up with some member--sometimes a married man--and took seats on the balcony near him.

"But you had no business to promise Miss Jones! How could you when I was living?"

"But I didn't know you then!"

"Well, then, now you've seen me, you can tell Miss Jones your contract don't go," laughed the girl.

"Oh, that wouldn't do, she'd kick."

"Let'er kick. She aint got any people who are const.i.tuents. My people are your const.i.tuents."

Bradley walked away sick at heart. As he pa.s.sed a settee near the stairway, he saw another girl with a childish face looking up at a hard-featured young man, and saying with eager, wistful voice, her hands clasped, "Oh, I _hope_ you can help me. I need it so much."

Her sweet face haunted him because of its suggested helplessness and its danger. His heart swelled with an indefinable and bitter rebellion.

Everywhere was a scramble for office--everywhere a pouring into the city from the farms and villages. Why was it? Was he not a part of the movement as well as these girls? Did it not all spring from the barrenness and vacuity of rural life?

Bradley went to church, for the reason that he had nothing better to do, and, in order to get as much out of it as possible, went to the largest sanctuary in the city. The hotels were thronged by men who took little thought of the day. The rotunda echoed with roaring laughter and the tramp of feet. Every new member was being introduced and manipulated, but Bradley shrank from declaring himself. His name, B.

Talcott, conveyed no information to those who saw it on the register, and so he sat aside from the crowd all day, untouched by the male lobbyist or the girl office seekers.

He went next day, according to promise, to call at Cargill's office, which was on the fifth floor of a large six-story building on the main street. There were two ornamental ground-gla.s.s doors opening from the end of a narrow hall. One was marked, "Bergen & Cargill, Commission Merchants, Private," and Bradley entered. A man seated at a low table was operating a telegraphic machine. He was in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, and wore blue checked over-sleeves, and carried a handkerchief under his chin to keep his collar from getting soiled. He sat near two desks which separated the private room from the larger room, in which were seated several men looking at one side of the wall, which was a blackboard checked off in small squares by red lines. Columns of figures in chalk were there displayed.

Cargill did not seem to be about, and the busy operator did not see the visitor. A brisk young man of Scandinavian type was walking about in the larger office with a piece of chalk in his hand. He came to the desk and looked inquiringly at Bradley, who started to speak, but the sonorous voice of the operator interrupted him.

"Three eighths bid on wheat," he called, and handed a little slip of paper to the brisk young man with the flaxen mustache.

"Wheat, three eighths," he repeated in a resonant tone, and proceeded to put the figures in a small square under the section marked "Wheat"

on the blackboard. When he came back, Bradley asked for Cargill.

"He'll be in soon; take a seat."

"Three eighths bid. They still hammer the market, as they sold short,"

shouted the operator.

Bergen repeated the telegram to the crowd. "Of course they'll do that,"

said one of the smokers, a young man with an a.s.sumption of great wisdom on all matters relating to wheat. He looked prematurely knowing, and spit with a manly air.

As Bradley took a seat at the desk, Bergen was calling into the telephone in a high, sonorous, monotonous voice, "Wheat opened at ninety-three, three quarters; sold as high as ninety-four; is now ninety-three and three eighths. Corn opened at forty-two; is now forty-one and seven eighths. Bradstreet's decrease on both coasts the past week, two and a quarter millions. Cables very strong."

Cargill came in a little later, and greeted Bradley with a nod while crossing the room to look at the blackboard.

"Draw up a chair," he said, and they took a seat at the table, while the business of the office went on. "You'll be interested in knowing something about this business," he said to Bradley. "It's as legitimate as buying or selling real estate on a commission; but so far as the popular impression goes, there is no difference between this and a bucket-shop."

"It's all very new to me," said Bradley. "I don't know the difference between this and the bucket-shop."

"Ninety-three and seven eighths bid on wheat," called Bergen from a slip, as he walked back and chalked the latest intelligence upon the board.

"Well, there is a difference. In this case, we simply buy and sell on commission. These are real purchases and sales. The order for wheat is transmitted to Chicago and registered, and has its effect upon the market; whereas in a bucket-shop the sale does not go out of the office, and, if there is a loss to the customer, the proprietor gains it. In other words, we buy and sell for others, with no personal interest in the sale; the bucket-shop is a pure gambling establishment, where men bet on what other men are going to do. But that ain't what I had you call to talk over. I want you to meet Bergen. Chris, come over here," he called. "I want to introduce the Honorable Talcott of Rock River. He's started in, like yourself, to reform politics.

"The reason why I wanted you to meet Bergen," Cargill went on, "is because he is a sincerer lover of literature than myself, and like yourself, I imagine, believes thoroughly in the cla.s.sics. He's translating Ibsen for the Square Table Club. His idea of amus.e.m.e.nt ain't mine, I needn't say."

"New York still hammers away on the market. Partridge quietly buying to cover on the decline."

"Excuse me a moment," said Bergen, returning to business.

Cargill took an easy position. "I don't know why I have sized you up as literary in general effect, but I have. That's one reason why I took to you. It's so d.a.m.ned unusual to find a politician that has a single idea above votes. And then I'm literary myself," he said, his face a mask of impenetrable gravity. "I wrote up the sheep industry of Iowa for the Agricultural Encyclopaedia. That puts me in the front rank of Des Moines literary aspirants.

"Towns like this," he said, going off on a speculative side track, "have a two-per-cent. population who are inordinately literary. They recognize my genius. The other ninety-eight per cent. don't care a continental d.a.m.n for Shakespeare or anybody else, barring Mary Jane Holmes, of course, and the five-cent story papers. But literary Des Moines _is_ literary. They stand by Shakespeare and Homer, I can tell you, and they recognize genius when they see it. By the way, Bergen,"

he said, calling his brother-in-law to him again, "we must make this young man acquainted with our one literary girl."

"Wheat is ninety-four bid. New York strong." It was impossible to hold Bergen's attention, however, with a sharp bulge on the market, and Cargill was forced to turn to Bradley again.

"There is a girl in this town who has the literary quality. True, she has recognized my ability, which prejudices me in her favor, of course.

In turn I presented her with my report on the sheep industry."

Bradley laughed, but Cargill proceeded as if there were nothing funny in the situation--

"And she read it, actually, and quoted it in one of her great speeches.

It made the reporter bug out his eyes. He said he had observed of late quite a vein of poetry running through Miss Wilbur's speeches, which lifted them out of the common rut."

Bradley lost sight of the humor in this speech at the sound of Ida's name, and his face flushed. He had not heard her name spoken by a third person in months, and had never dared to say it out loud himself.

Cargill went on: "She's an infernal heretic and suffragist and all that, but she's a power. Her name is Wilbur--Ida Wilbur. Used to lecture for the Grange or something of that kind. Is still lecturing, I believe, but the Grange has snuffed out."