However, the time had now come when I must assert myself. I made no radical changes in that first program of Burbank's term. I contented myself with cutting off the worst items, those it would have ruined Burbank to indorse. My clients were soon grumbling, but Woodruff handled them well, placating them with excuses that soothed their annoyance to discontented silence. So ably did he manage it that not until Burbank's third year did they begin to come directly to me and complain of the way they were being "thrown down" at the capitol.
Roebuck, knowing me most intimately and feeling that he was my author and protector, was frankly insistent. "We got almost nothing at the last session," he protested, "and this winter--Woodruff tells me we may not get the only thing we're asking."
I was ready for him, as I was for each of the ten. I took out the list of measures passed or killed at the last session in the interest of the Power Trust. It contained seventy-eight items, thirty-four of them passed. I handed it to him.
"Yes,--a few things," he admitted, "but all trifles!"
"That little amendment to the Waterways law must alone have netted you three or four millions already."
"I can organize a company within twenty-four hours that will pay you four millions in cash for the right, and stock besides."
"You have already had thirteen matters attended to this winter," I pursued. "The one that can't be done--Really, Mr. Roebuck, the whole state knows that the trustees of the Waukeegan Christian University are your dummies. It would be insanity for the party to turn over a hundred thousand acres of valuable public land gratis to them, so that they can presently sell it to you for a song."
He reddened. "Newspaper scandal!" he blustered, but changed the subject as soon as he had shown me and re-shown himself that his motives were pure.
I saw that Burbank's last winter was to be crucial. My clients were clamorous, and were hinting at all sorts of dire doings if they were not treated better. Roebuck was questioning, in the most malignantly friendly manner, "whether, after all, Harvey, the combine isn't a mistake, and the old way wasn't the best." On the other hand Burbank was becoming restless. He had so cleverly taken advantage of the chances to do popular things, which I had either made for him or pointed out to him, that he had become something of a national figure. When he got eighty-one votes for the presidential nomination in our party's national convention his brain was dizzied. Now he was in a tremor lest my clients should demand of him things that would diminish or destroy this sapling popularity which, in his dreams, he already saw grown into a mighty tree obscuring the national heavens.