“You mean to proceed with this scheme of yours?” asked a prominent member of the local bar who called one morning to interview him.  “I represent the gentlemen who are interested in our local gas company.”

“I certainly do,” replied the mayor.

“Well,” replied the uncredentialed representative of private interests, after expostulating a long time and offering various “reasons” why it would be more profitable and politically advantageous for the new mayor not to proceed, “I’ve said all I can say.  Now I want to tell you that you are going up against a combination that will be your ruin.  You’re not dealing with this town now; you’re dealing with the State, the whole nation.  These corporations can’t afford to let you win, and they won’t.  You’re not the one to do it; you’re not big enough.”

The mayor smiled and replied that of course he could not say as to that.

The lawyer went away, and that next day the mayor had his legal counsel look up the annual reports of the company for the consecutive years of its existence, as well as a bulletin issued by a firm of brokers, into whose hands the matter of selling a vast amount of watered stock it proposed to issue had been placed.  He also sent for a gas expert and set him to figuring out a case for the people.

It was found by this gentleman that since the company was first organized it had paid dividends on its capital stock at the rate of ten per cent per annum, for the first thirty years; had made vast improvements in the last ten, and notwithstanding this fact, had paid twenty per cent, and even twenty-five per cent per annum in dividends.  All the details of cost and expenditure were figured out, and then the mayor with his counsel took the train for the State capitol.

Never was there more excitement in political circles than when this young representative of no important political organization whatsoever arrived at the State capitol and walked, at the appointed time, into the private audience room of the commission.  Every gas company, as well as every newspaper and every other representative of the people, had curiously enough become interested in the fight he was making, and there was a band of reporters at the hotel where he was stopping, as well as in the commission chambers in the State capitol where the hearing was to be.  They wanted to know about him—­why he was doing this, whether it wasn’t a “strike” or the work of some rival corporation.  The fact that he might foolishly be sincere was hard to believe.

“Gentlemen,” said the mayor, as he took his stand in front of an august array of legal talent which was waiting to pick his argument to pieces in the commission chambers at the capitol, “I miscalculated but one thing in this case which I am about to lay before you, and that is the extent of public interest.  I came here prepared to make a private argument, but now I want to ask the privilege of making it public.  I see the public itself is interested, or should be.  I will ask leave to postpone my argument until the day after tomorrow.”