POLITICS as such had never greatly interested Jeremy Robson. The trivial and blatant insincerities of party platforms offended a mind naturally direct and sincere. As he saw the game played at the Capitol, it seemed to consist mainly in clumsy finesse directed to unprofitable ends, on the part of the lawmakers, back of whom sat the little tin gods of finance and commerce, as players sit back of the pieces on a chessboard. Only, it dawned upon Jeremy, in this game it was the public that paid the stakes; the public which Jeremy intended that The Guardian should represent. His platform was “Fair play all around and a chance for all.” Being of such mind, he was naturally sympathetic to the fervent and altruistic radicalism of Senator Embree. Almost before he knew it, he was committed to the broad, general policies of a new faction whose immediate object was to capture the party machinery and elect Embree Governor. Farmers, the more thoughtful class of labor in the industrial centers, and that floating vote which is always restless of party control, made up the bulk of “Smiling Mart’s” support. His newspaper backing was scanty. In Bellair, the chief city of Centralia, The Journal lent its valuable support to most of his measures and to his general policies. A score of country journals were thick-and-thin adherents. The Guardian soon began to be classed with these for loyalty and with the Bellair Journal for weightiness, in support of the new movement. Jeremy Robson’s spirited editorial attacks upon the controlled State administration were now establishing his paper as a gospel to the fermenting political elements, and had earned the indignant distrust of those interests which base loud claims to impregnable respectability upon the ground of returning reliable dividends to their stockholders. To these he was anathema; a “dangerous radical,” a “half-Socialist,” an “enemy of American institutions,” a “confessed demagogue,” and the like impressive and silly characterizations. The Guardian was quoted, confuted, and abused over the State. It had become a power.