He was at his genial, indomitable best, the magnetic charm
of fellowship putting into eclipse the selfishness of the man. He had been
known to boast of his political exploits, of how he had been the Warwick
that had made and unmade governors and United States senators; but the
fraternal "we" to-night replaced his usual first person singular.
The business interests of the Consolidated were supreme all over the State.
That corporation owned forests and mills and railroads and mines. It ran
sheep and cattle-ranches as well as stores and manufactories. Most of the
newspapers in the State were dominated by it. Of a population of two
hundred and fifty thousand, it controlled more than half directly by the
simple means of filling dinner-pails. That so powerful a corporation,
greedy for power and wealth, should create a strong but scattered hostility
in the course of its growth, became inevitable. This enmity Ridgway
proposed to consolidate into a political organization, with opposition to
the trust as its cohesive principle, that should hold the balance of power
in the State.
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