CHAPTER XXX VIII. THE EDITOR GETS MY GOAT

Madison county, Indiana, was a Democratic stronghold outside the mill

towns, and a few farming townships. Free silver orators were telling

the farmers that under a gold standard no factory could run. The farmers

could see the smoke of the tin mills which had built a great city just

beyond their corn-fields. The silver men explained that smoke as “a

dummy factory set up by Mark Hanna with Wall Street money to make a

smoke and fool the people into thinking that it was a real factory and

that industry was reviving under a Republican tariff.” The orators

said the best proof that it was a sham mill lay in the fact that the

plutocrats claimed it was a tin mill, while “everybody knows it is

impossible to manufacture tin plate in America.”

My method of getting votes for the tariff was to take young Democrats

from the mill and transport them to Democratic rallies in the far corner

of the county where they heard their Democratic orators saying that the

mill was a sham put up to fool voters and that it was not manufacturing

any tin. When the young Democrats heard such rot they turned against

their party. They were farm boys who had been brought up in that county

and had quit the farm and gone into the tin mill because they could

earn twice as much making tin as they could farming. A worker at work

is hard-headed enough to know that when an orator tells him he is not

working and not earning any money, the orator is an ass. These lies

about fake factories hurt the Democrats by turning all the mill

Democrats into Republicans. This is the only method I have ever used in

campaigning. The Republicans carried the town. When, two years later,

I ran for city clerk, they passed around the rumor that I was a wild

Welshman from a land where the tribes lived in caves and wore leather

skirts and wooden shoes, and that I had had my first introduction to a

pants-wearing people when I came to America. They said that I had not

yet learned to speak English, could not spell my own name, and was

unable to count above ten.

These charges printed in the opposition paper offered me my only chance

for election. I went to all my meetings with a big slate. I asked my

audience to call out numbers. I wrote down the figures and then did sums

in arithmetic to prove that I could count. I would ask if there was a

school-teacher in the audience (there was always one there). He would

rise, and I would ask him to verify my calculations. I would also have

him ask me to spell words. He would give me such words as “combustion,”

“garbage disposal,” “bonded indebtedness” and so on. I would spell the

words and write them on the slate. He would then ask me questions in

history, geography and political economy. Then the school-teacher would

turn to the crowd and say:

“Friends, I came to this meeting because I had read that Mr. Davis is an

ignorant foreigner unfitted for the duties of city clerk. I find to

my surprise that he is well informed. I am glad we came here and

investigated, for we can all rest assured that if he is elected to the

office, he is entirely capable of filling it.”

I handled the money and kept the books for the union, and this work in

addition to my campaign efforts wore me down at last. Two nights before

the election I decided that I had small chance of winning. I was on the

Republican ticket, and the Republicans had been in office four years

and their administration had proved unfortunate. There had been rich

pickings for contractors in that new and overgrown city, and the people

blamed the Republicans and were determined on a change.

I was passing the office of the opposition editor late at night after

canvassing for votes all day. I thought of the nasty slurs he had

written about me and my whole ancestry. I had fought hard to educate

myself and had been helpful to others. My self-respect revolted under

this editor's malicious goading. I happened to see him in his front

office, and on a sudden impulse, I went in, took hold of his collar, and

gave him a good licking.

The next day he bawled me out worse than ever. He said I was not only

a wild Welshman and a blockhead, but what is more deadly still, I was a

gorilla and an assassin.

And the next day I was elected.