I've gone on their summer excursions. I've talked
with them all over the district. I have helped them in their troubles. I
have said a kind word over their dead. I'm godfather to many. With
others I've stood shoulder to shoulder when the bullets were flying.
Why, the voters who were children when I first came here, with whom I
use to sit in the angle, are almost numerous enough now to carry an
election as I advise. Do you suppose, because speakers, unknown to them,
say I'm wrong, and because the three-cent papers, which they never see,
abuse me, that they are going to turn from me unless I make them? That
is the true secret of the failure of reformers. A logical argument is
all right in a court of appeals, but when it comes to swaying five
thousand votes, give me five thousand loving hearts rather than five
thousand logical reasons."
"Yet you have carried reforms."
"I have tried, but always in a practical way. That is, by not
antagonizing the popular men in politics, but by becoming one of them
and making them help me.
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