An admirable summing up of Cromwell's candidacy. And I knew that it would so appear to the country, that no matter how great a corruption fund Goodrich might throw into the campaign, we should, in that time of public exasperation, be routed if Cromwell was our standard-bearer--so utterly routed that we could not possibly get ourselves together again for eight, perhaps twelve years. There might even be a re-alignment of parties with some sort of socialism in control of one of them. If control were to be retained by the few who have the capital and the intellect to make efficient the nation's resources and energy, my projects must be put through at once.
I had accumulated a fund of five hundred thousand dollars for my "presidential flotation"--half of it contributed by Roebuck in exchange for a promise that his son-in-law should have an ambassadorship if Burbank were elected; the other half set aside by me from the "reserve" I had formed out of the year-by-year contributions of my combine. By the judicious investment of that capital I purposed to get Burbank the nomination on the first ballot--at least four hundred and sixty of the nine hundred-odd delegates.
In a national convention the delegates are, roughly speaking, about evenly divided among the three sections of the country--a third from east of the Alleghanies; a third from the West; a third from the South. It was hopeless for us to gun for delegates in the East; that was the especial bailiwick of Senator Goodrich. The most we could do there would be to keep him occupied by quietly encouraging any anti-Cromwell sentiment--and it existed a-plenty. Our real efforts were to be in the West and South.
I organized under Woodruff a corps of about thirty traveling agents. Each man knew only his own duties, knew nothing of the general plan, not even that there was a general plan. Each was a trained political worker, a personal retainer of ours. I gave them their instructions; Woodruff equipped them with the necessary cash. During the next five months they were incessantly on the go--dealing with our party's western machines where they could; setting up rival machines in promising localities where Goodrich controlled the regular machines; using money here, diplomacy there, both yonder, promises of patronage everywhere.