State Legislation 89 



the fall. A citizen's ticket, largely non-partisan in 

 character, was run for certain local offices, receiving 

 its support from among those who claimed to be, 

 and who undoubtedly were, the best men of both 

 parties. The ticket contained the names of candi- 

 dates only for municipal offices, and had nothing 

 whatever to do with the election of men to the Leg- 

 islature; yet it proved absolutely impossible to drill 

 this simple fact through the heads of a great many 

 worthy people, who, when election day came round, 

 declined to vote anything but the citizens' ticket, 

 and persisted in thinking that if no legislative can- 

 didate was on the ticket, it was because, for some 

 reason or other, the citizens' committee did not con- 

 sider any legislative candidate worth voting for. All 

 over the city the better class of candidates for legis- 

 lative offices lost from this cause votes which they 

 had a right to expect, and in the particular district 

 under consideration the loss was so great as to 

 cause the defeat of the sitting member, or rather 

 to elect him by so narrow a vote as to enable an 

 unscrupulously partisan legislative majority to keep 

 him out of his seat. 



It is this kind of ignorance of the simplest po- 

 litical matters among really good citizens, combined 

 with their timidity, which is so apt to characterize 

 a wealthy bourgeoisie, and, with their short-sighted 

 selfishness in being unwilling to take the smallest 

 portion of time away from their business or pleas- 

 ure to devote to public affairs, which renders it 

 so easy for corrupt men from the city to keep 



