Excellent as these services were in their way, the mayor realized later that a powerful opposition was being generated and that if he were to retain the interest of his constituents he would have to set about something which would endear him and his cause to the public.

“I may be honest,” he told one of his friends, “but honesty will play a lone hand with these people.  The public isn’t interested in its own welfare very much.  It can’t be bothered or hasn’t the time.  What I need is something that will impress it and still be worth while.  I can’t be reelected on promises, or on my looks, either.”

When he looked about him, however, he found the possibility of independent municipal action pretty well hampered by mandatory legislation.  He had promised, for instance, to do all he could to lower the exorbitant gas rate and to abolish grade crossings, but the law said that no municipality could do either of these things without first voting to do so three years in succession—­a little precaution taken by the corporation representing such things long before he came into power.  Each vote must be for such contemplated action, or it could not become a law.

“I know well enough that promises are all right,” he said to one of his friends, “and that these laws are good enough excuses, but the public won’t take excuses from me for three years.  If I want to be mayor again I want to be doing something, and doing it quick.”

In the city was a gas corporation, originally capitalized at $45,000, and subsequently increased to $75,000, which was earning that year the actual sum of $58,000 over and above all expenses.  It was getting ready to inflate the capitalization, as usual, and water its stock to the extent of $500,000, when it occurred to the mayor that if the corporation was making such enormous profits out of a $75,000 investment as to be able to offer to pay six per cent on $500,000 to investors, and put the money it would get for such stocks into its pocket, perhaps it could reduce the price of gas from one dollar and nineteen cents to a more reasonable figure.  There was the three years’ voting law, however, behind which, as behind an entrenchment, the very luxurious corporation lay comfortable and indifferent.

The mayor sent for his corporation counsel, and studied gas law for awhile.  He found that at the State capital there was a State board, or commission, which had been created to look after gas companies in general, and to hear the complaints of municipalities which considered themselves unjustly treated.

“This is the thing for me,” he said.

Lacking the municipal authority himself, he decided to present the facts in the case and appeal to this commission for a reduction of the gas rate.

When he came to talk about it he found that the opposition he would generate would be something much more than local.  Back of the local reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations whose dividends would be threatened by any agitation on this question.