some at the polls. The people wouldn't have minded much if I had
been accused of robbin' the city treasury, for they're used to
slanders of that kind in campaigns, but the automobile and the
dress suit were too much for them.

Another thing that people won't stand for is showin' off your
learnin'. That's just puttin' on style in another way. If you're makin'
speeches in a campaign, talk the language the people talk. Don't try
to show how the situation is by quotin' Shakespeare. Shakespeare
was all right in his way, but he didn't know anything about
Fifteenth District politics. If you know Latin and Greek and have a
hankerin' to work them off on somebody, hire a stranger to come
to your house and listen to you for a couple of hours; then go out
and talk the language of the Fifteenth to the people. I know it's an
awful temptation, the hankerin' to show off your learnin'. I've felt it
myself, but I always resist it. I know the awful consequences.

Chapter 13. On Municipal Ownership

I AM for municipal ownership on one condition: that the civil
service law be repealed. It's a grand idea-the city the railroads, the
gas works and all that. Just see how many thousands of new places
there would be for the workers in Tammany. Why, there would be
almost enough to go around, if no civil service law stood in the
way. My plan is this: first get rid of that infamous law, and then go
ahead and by degrees get municipal ownership.

Some of the reformers are sayin' that municipal ownership won't
do because it would give a lot of patronage to the politicians. How
those fellows mix things up when they argue! They're givin' the