Here is the story of an individual whose political and social example, if such things are ever worth anything (the moralists to the contrary notwithstanding), should have been, at the time, of the greatest importance to every citizen of the United States.  Only it was not.  Or was it?  Who really knows?  Anyway, he and his career are entirely forgotten by now, and have been these many years.

He was the mayor of one of those dreary New England mill towns in northern Massachusetts—­a bleak, pleasureless realm of about forty thousand, where, from the time he was born until he finally left at the age of thirty-six to seek his fortune elsewhere, he had resided without change.  During that time he had worked in various of the local mills, which in one way and another involved nearly all of the population.  He was a mill shoe-maker by trade, or, in other words, a factory shoe-hand, knowing only a part of all the processes necessary to make a shoe in that fashion.  Still, he was a fair workman, and earned as much as fifteen or eighteen dollars a week at times—­rather good pay for that region.  By temperament a humanitarian, or possibly because of his own humble state one who was compelled to take cognizance of the difficulties of others, he finally expressed his mental unrest by organizing a club for the study and propagation of socialism, and later, when it became powerful enough to have a candidate and look for political expression of some kind, he was its first, and thereafter for a number of years, its regular candidate for mayor.  For a long time, or until its membership became sufficient to attract some slight political attention, its members (following our regular American, unintellectual custom) were looked upon by the rest of the people as a body of harmless kickers, filled with fool notions about a man’s duty to his fellowman, some silly dream about an honest and economical administration of public affairs—­their city’s affairs, to be exact.  We are so wise in America, so interested in our fellowman, so regardful of his welfare.  They were so small in number, however, that they were little more than an object of pleasant jest, useful for that purpose alone.

This club, however, continued to put up its candidate until about 1895, when suddenly it succeeded in polling the very modest number of fifty-four votes—­double the number it had succeeded in polling any previous year.  A year later one hundred and thirty-six were registered, and the next year six hundred.  Then suddenly the mayor who won that year’s battle died, and a special election was called.  Here the club polled six hundred and one, a total and astonishing gain of one.  In 1898 the perennial candidate was again nominated and received fifteen hundred, and in 1899, when he ran again, twenty-three hundred votes, which elected him.