The Beast

4. The Beast in the Democracy

c 37 d M EANWHILE I had thought I saw that new birth coming in the rejuvenation of the Democratic party under Bryan, in 1900. I really had thought so. I had learned that the Republican machine represented nothing but the rich corporations of the city and the state; and I naturally concluded that the Democracy, being opposed to that machine, was opposed also to the owners of it. I knew that “Tom” Maloney, then the Democratic boss, was reputed to be in the pay of the gas company, but there was an attempt being made to oust Maloney, and I believed that if he and his henchmen could be gotten rid of, the party would be purged of all uncleanness and we might “raise a standard to which the wise and the honest might repair.” Under such a standard, backed by the power of a people’s party, we could elect an honest Legislature and pass the anti-corporation laws that the community needed. I took up my hope again. I volunteered my services to the opponents of Maloney. THE BEAST IN THE DEMOCRACY C H A P T E R I V T h e Be a s t c 38 d They were led by Governor Thomas and Boss Speer—Robert W. Speer, who comes into my story, here, to stay. He was then the president of the Fire and Police Board of Denver, and he was recognized already as an astute politician, very smooth and very powerful. He was a man nearly six feet in height, unusually weighty, with a round, clean-shaven face of heavy muscles—with his thin hair trained over his increasing baldness—his skin fresh, his eyes clear, his mouth strongjawed and firm. He had called a meeting of Governor Thomas’s friends in his own real-estate office downtown, one evening, and I attended, sat in a leather chair, joined in the discussion and was appointed “precinct committeeman” of the district in which I lived. I was in the battle again—if only in the ranks—and I was happy. My district was a fashionable quarter, on Capitol Hill, where the well-to-do citizens of Denver have built their residences and their coach houses, laid out their rolled lawns and planted their shade trees. It had always been an overwhelmingly Republican district, and I thought I knew why. But I argued that though the rich owners of these houses were naturally of the party of the “interests,” their servants would not necessarily be so; and when, in my house-to-house canvass, I was refused admittance at a front door I went to the back one, and talked to the coachman, the cook, the furnace man and the servant girl about the iniquities of Boss Maloney, the crimes of the “interests” and the new hope there was of an honest party of the people to give us just laws and decent government in Denver. (We had female suffrage in Colorado even then, of course.) I always got a much more respectful hearing in the servants’ hall than I did in the parlour. When I got any hearing at all from the master or mistress of the house it was usually a cynical or an indifferent one. I was amazed to find how many people did not vote, and were proud of it—how many would reply, “You can’t tell me that one party is any better than another; they’re all a lot of thieves together”—how many would listen with a “what’s-the-use” expression that made me feel I was merely a bore. One curt old doctor, as soon as he heard what I had come for, slammed the door in my face and left me to T H E BE A S T I N T H E DE MO C R AC Y c 39 d finish my explanations to his brass name-plate. However, my work was not wasted. At our party’s primary, I heard one of my opponents say, “Good heavens! Lindsey’s got all the servant girls in the country here.” I defeated Maloney’s man. And, finally, at the elections, I had the satisfaction of seeing the Republican majority in our district largely reduced. I do not intend to give here all the tiresome details of the fight between the Maloney faction and the Speer faction. Having...