They were useful
sometimes, he learned, and many of them served as go-betweens in
matters where business must touch politics. He learned also how
breweries and "traction" companies and banks and other institutions
fought one another for the political control of the city. The
newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political influence,
especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a skeptical
humor, believing the journals either to be retained partisans, like
lawyers, or else striving to forward the personal ambitions of their
owners. The control of the city lay not with them, but was usually
obtained by giving the hordes of negroes gin-money, and by other
largesses. The revenues of the people were then distributed as fairly
as possible among a great number of men who had assisted the winning
side. Names and titles of offices went with many of the prizes, and
most of these title-holders were expected to present a busy appearance
at times; and, indeed, some among them did work honestly and
faithfully.
Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known
and customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment
of forgetting that he was done with writing--he thought that if he
had known them and written of them, how like a satire the plainest
relation of them must have seemed! Strangest of all to him was the
vehement and sincere patriotism.
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