"I don't quite believe I'd do that, if I were you, Evan. There are pie-eaters on both sides in every political contest, and while they can't do any cause any great amount of good, they can often do a good bit of harm. I wouldn't be too hard on them, if I were you."
"What would you do?--or, rather, what did you do when you were managing the State campaign two years ago?" inquired Blount pointedly.
"I cut the pie," said the traffic manager simply.
"In other words, you let this riffraff blackmail you and, incidentally, put a big black mark against the company's good name."
"Oh, no; I wouldn't put it quite that strong. Not many of these little fellows ask for money, or expect it. A free ride now and then in the varnished cars is about all they look for."
"But you can't give them passes under the interstate law," protested the purist.
"Not outside of the State, of course. But inside of the State boundaries it's our own business."
"You mean it _was_ our own business, previous to the passage of the State rate law two years ago," corrected Blount.
"It is our own business to this good day--in effect. That part of the law has been a complete dead-letter from the day the governor signed it. Why, bless your innocent heart, Evan, the very men who argued the loudest and voted the most spitefully for it came to me for their return tickets home at the end of the session. Of course, we kept the letter of the law. It says that no 'free passes' shall be given. We didn't issue passes; we merely gave them tickets out of the case and charged them up to 'expense.'"
"Faugh!" said Blount, "you make me sick! Gantry, it's that same childish whipping of the devil around the stump by the corporations--an expedient that wouldn't deceive the most ignorant voter that ever cast a ballot--it's that very thing that has stirred the whole nation up to this unreasonable fight against corporate capital. Don't you see it?"
"I guess I take the line of the least resistance--like the majority of them," was the colorless reply. "When it comes down to practical politics--"
"Don't say 'practical politics' to me, Dick!" rasped the reformer. "We've got the strongest argument in the world in the fact that the present law is an unfair one, needing modification or repeal. We mustn't spoil that argument by becoming law-breakers ourselves and descending to the methods of the grafters and the machine politicians the country over. If you have been sending these pie-eaters to me, stop it--don't do it any more. I have no earthly use for them; and they won't have any use for me after I open up on them and tell them a few things they don't seem to know, or to care to know."