Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town Stephen Leacock (ready to read books TXT) 📖

all, but what I will say is that how any set of rational responsible men could nominate such a skunk as the Conservative candidate passes the bounds of my comprehension. Gentlemen, in the present campaign there is no room for vindictive abuse. Let us rise to a higher level than that. They tell me that my opponent, Smith, is a common saloon keeper. Let it pass. They tell me that he has stood convicted of horse stealing, that he is a notable perjurer, that he is known as the blackest-hearted liar in Missinaba County. Let us not speak of it. Let no whisper of it pass our lips.

“No, gentlemen,” continued Bagshaw, pausing to take a drink of water, “let us rather consider this question on the high plane of national welfare. Let us not think of our own particular interests but let us consider the good of the country at large. And to do this, let me present to you some facts in regard to the price of barley in Tecumseh Township.”

Then, amid a deep stillness, Bagshaw read off the list of prices of sixteen kinds of grain in sixteen different places during sixteen years.

“But let me turn,” Bagshaw went on to another phase of the national subject, “and view for a moment the price of marsh hay in Missinaba County⁠—”

When Bagshaw sat down that night it was felt that a Liberal vote in Tecumseh Township was a foregone conclusion.

But here they hadn’t reckoned on the political genius of Mr. Smith. When he heard next day of the meeting, he summoned some of his leading speakers to him and he said:

“Boys, they’re beating us on them statissicks. Ourn ain’t good enough.”

Then he turned to Nivens and he said:

“What was them figures you had here the other night?”

Nivens took out a paper and began reading.

“Stop,” said Mr. Smith, “what was that figure for bacon?”

“Fourteen million dollars,” said Nivens.

“Not enough,” said Mr. Smith, “make it twenty. They’ll stand for it, them farmers.”

Nivens changed it.

“And what was that for hay?”

“Two dollars a ton.”

“Shove it up to four,” said Mr. Smith. “And I tell you,” he added, “if any of them farmers says the figures ain’t correct, tell them to go to Washington and see for themselves; say that if any man wants the proof of your figures let him go over to England and ask⁠—tell him to go straight to London and see it all for himself in the books.”

After this, there was no more trouble over statistics. I must say though that it is a wonderfully convincing thing to hear trade figures of this kind properly handled. Perhaps the best man on this sort of thing in the campaign was Mullins, the banker. A man of his profession simply has to have figures of trade and population and money at his fingers’ ends and the effect of it in public speaking is wonderful.

No doubt you have listened to speakers of this kind, but I question whether you have ever heard anything more typical of the sort of effect that I allude to than Mullins’s speech at the big rally at the Fourth Concession.

Mullins himself, of course, knows the figures so well that he never bothers to write them into notes and the effect is very striking.

“Now, gentlemen,” he said very earnestly, “how many of you know just to what extent the exports of this country have increased in the last ten years? How many could tell what percent of increase there has been in one decade of our national importation?”⁠—then Mullins paused and looked round. Not a man knew it.

“I don’t recall,” he said, “exactly the precise amount myself⁠—not at this moment⁠—but it must be simply tremendous. Or take the question of population,” Mullins went on, warming up again as a born statistician always does at the proximity of figures, “how many of you know, how many of you can state, what has been the decennial percentage increase in our leading cities⁠—?”

There he paused, and would you believe it, not a man could state it.

“I don’t recall the exact figures,” said Mullins, “but I have them at home and they are positively colossal.”

But just in one phase of the public speaking, the candidacy of Mr. Smith received a serious setback.

It had been arranged that Mr. Smith should run on a platform of total prohibition. But they soon found that it was a mistake. They had imported a special speaker from the city, a grave man with a white tie, who put his whole heart into the work and would take nothing for it except his expenses and a sum of money for each speech. But beyond the money, I say, he would take nothing.

He spoke one night at the Tecumseh Corners social hall at the same time when the Liberal meeting was going on at the Tecumseh Corners school house.

“Gentlemen,” he said, as he paused half way in his speech⁠—“while we are gathered here in earnest discussion, do you know what is happening over at the meeting place of our opponents? Do you know that seventeen bottles of rye whiskey were sent out from the town this afternoon to that innocent and unsuspecting school house? Seventeen bottles of whiskey hidden in between the blackboard and the wall, and every single man that attends that meeting⁠—mark my words, every single man⁠—will drink his fill of the abominable stuff at the expense of the Liberal candidate!”

Just as soon as the speaker said this, you could see the Smith men at the meeting look at one another in injured surprise, and before the speech was half over the hall was practically emptied.

After that the total prohibition plank was changed and the committee substituted a declaration in favour of such a form of restrictive license as should promote temperance while encouraging the manufacture of spirituous liquors, and by a severe regulation of the liquor traffic should place intoxicants only in the hands of those fitted to use them.

Finally there came the great day itself, the Election Day that brought, as everybody knows,