THE FIRST VICTORY 



quence of once popular leaders could move 

 them. What old-school politicians had said 

 could never happen was upon them; the 

 farmers had arisen to vote for themselves. 



The primaries came on at the end of that 

 campaign, in which Frazier and the other can- 

 didates visited every part of the state, and 

 when the votes were counted that night the 

 League was found to have swept to victory 

 with pluralities of about seventeen thousand. 



That meant, of course, that it would carry 

 the state in the November election; it meant 

 that the old machine was tottering to its fall. 

 As a parting shot it sought to becloud the 

 situation with an ingenious trick. The Dem- 

 ocratic party hi the state was split, one fac- 

 tion being called radical and the other con- 

 servative. The machine arranged to have the 

 conservative element withdraw and leave the 

 choice of a candidate to the radical wing. 

 This nominated a candidate of convictions at 

 least as advanced as those of any Leaguer. 

 The object of this was to deprive the certain 

 election of Frazier of any radical significance, 

 since he was of the two rather the more or- 

 thodox in his opinions, and his victory might 

 be misreported as, after all, some triumph of 

 conservatism. The Democratic candidate, 

 with a degree of self-abnegation hardly to be 

 expected in a fight between parties, check- 

 mated this move by practically advising his 



219 



