William MacLeod Raine

“ The price of votes had been high, and he had bidden for them recklessly, and almost openly. His superiors had given him a free hand, and success was the only justification he could offer them for his prodigality. He must succeed. To fail now would be to beggar his future as a railroad official, to have forfeited his good name in vain.
He came back to the table and drove his fist down so hard that the glasses jingled. “It amounts to this, then. We have to get Blake to win. Get him. I don’t care how you do it, but get his vote for Stoneman. Why, damn it, he’s a Democrat. ”

“ Bulger. Tell me exactly what you want me to do, and what you will pay me for it.” His voice was crisp and sharp, without a trace of its native languor in it.
“That’s the way I like to hear a man talk. If you and your three friends will vote for Stoneman on Monday, and continue to vote for him until he is elected, the Three C’s will give you sixty-five thousand for your wood-yard.” ”

“ They took the position that no legislator was bound to support a member of his party for the Senate if an outsider were better fitted to represent the State. That outsider, his papers claimed, was Jefferson B. Stoneman.
Since Schaffner, the Republican candidate for the Senate, was president of the company representing the most important mining and smelting interests in the West, and was entrenched behind the fact that his party controlled both branches of the legislature, Stoneman’s declared intention to continue the fight was at first regarded as mere vaporings of a disappointed man. ”

“ This had gained him a large following among the social malcontents, and this following he had greatly increased by championing various much-needed reforms, and by opposing in season and out of season the aggressions of corporate wealth. ”